Websites for Photographers, Studios & Creative
The work is the entire pitch, which creates the exact problem most portfolio sites fail at: images have to look superb and still appear instantly. Get the compression wrong and your best shot is a grey rectangle for four seconds — by which point the person comparing you against two other photographers has moved on.
Audit back within 24 hours · Working demo within 2 days · No deposit, ever
The four problems I find most in this trade.
Not generic web-design advice. These are the specific failures that turn up over and over when running real Google audits on businesses like yours — each one with what it's actually costing you and how it gets fixed.
Galleries are beautiful and unusably slow
No prices anywhere
One giant mixed gallery
Nothing captures the enquiry properly
Want to know which of these apply to you? Test your site free on the home page for the speed number in thirty seconds, or ask for the written audit and get all four checked properly by hand, back within 24 hours.
Designed around your business, not a template.
A wedding photographer, a commercial photographer and a family portrait studio are chosen in completely different ways. Weddings are chosen emotionally, months ahead, by two people scrolling full galleries late at night — so the work needs room to breathe and the enquiry form needs a date field. Commercial work is chosen on sector credibility and turnaround, so client logos and process matter more than mood. Portrait studios are chosen on price and convenience, so packages and availability lead. The gallery structure gets built around which of those you actually sell.
- Home led by your strongest work
- A gallery per category, each findable separately
- Packages and pricing laid out clearly
- About — your style and how you work
- Testimonials from real clients
- Contact with a proper booking enquiry
- Compressed galleries — sharp but genuinely fast
- Click-to-enlarge lightbox on every image
- A page per package with exactly what's included
- Enquiry form with date, type and budget
- Instagram feed embedded live
- Password-protected client galleries (Platform tier)
- Photograph and LocalBusiness schema
- A rankable page per category and per location
- Image alt text written properly, for search and screen readers
- Google Business Profile with your work on it
- Blog posts per shoot — very strong for local search
- Fast on mobile, where the comparing happens
What it would cost you.
Guide prices based on the typical scope for this trade, one-off, with £0 a month on every tier. The free audit turns this into a real number — often a lower tier than people expect. And don't feel boxed in by the recommendation: pick by what you need the site to do.
- Home, Portfolio, About, Pricing, Contact
- Properly compressed galleries — sharp but fast
- Packages and pricing laid out clearly
- Enquiry form with date and event type
- Google indexing set up from day one
- Everything in Starter, up to 8 pages
- Multiple galleries by category with click-to-enlarge
- A page per package with exactly what's included
- Client testimonials given real visual weight
- Instagram feed embedded live
- Everything in Business, up to 12 pages
- Upload new galleries yourself
- Password-protected client galleries
- Blog for recent shoots — strong for local search
- Availability and booking enquiry routing
- Free audit with real Google data first
- A working demo before you pay anything
- £0 per month — hosting is genuinely free, forever
- Your existing booking or payment system kept exactly as is
- Built mobile-first and tested to WCAG 2.2 AA
- You own the code, the domain and every login
- 14-day fix guarantee from launch
- No deposit at any point before you've seen the work
Want to edit it yourself? You don't need the top tier for that. Add the £150 self-edit content panel to any build and change prices, photos and text yourself with no monthly fee — it's on the add-ons list with everything else.
Worth adding for photographers
Fixed one-off prices, addable to any tier, and addable later rather than up front. These four are the ones that actually earn their money in this trade — the full list of fifteen is on the pricing page.
Don't buy any of these speculatively. After the free audit you'll be told which one or two would genuinely move your numbers, and which of the rest would just be me taking your money.
The searches that actually bring you work.
Getting found isn't one thing called “SEO” — it's whether your pages answer the exact questions being typed. Here are the ones that matter in this trade, and what your site has to say to win them.
| What they type | What your site has to answer |
|---|---|
| “wedding photographer [town]” | A wedding-specific gallery, not a mixed portfolio |
| “wedding photography prices [county]” | A real package price or an honest from-price |
| “family photoshoot near me” | Availability, location and what a session involves |
| “[venue name] wedding photographer” | Work shot at that venue — a genuinely winnable search |
| “newborn photographer [town]” | A dedicated page for it, because it's a separate decision |
Every one of these is winnable locally, because most of your competitors have never written a page that answers them. That's the whole job: one properly written page per real question, marked up so Google can read it, on a site fast enough to keep the person who clicked.
The ones that come up every time.
Will compressing my images ruin the quality?
No — and this is the objection most photographers raise, fairly. Modern AVIF and WebP hold visual quality at a fraction of the file size, and the site serves a different size to a phone than to a 27-inch monitor. Your work looks identical and loads roughly ten times faster. The before-and-after numbers get handed over so you can check rather than take my word.
Should I publish package prices?
In almost every case yes. "Enquire for pricing" filters out serious clients and lets in tyre-kickers, which is precisely backwards. A from-price with a clear explanation of what moves it means every enquiry you receive has already accepted the ballpark.
Can I upload new galleries myself?
Yes. On the £1,495 tier it's included; on £395 or £795 add the £150 self-edit panel and you can upload a shoot yourself in minutes, with no monthly fee. Compression happens automatically, so you can't accidentally break the site's speed by uploading full-size exports.
Two ways to start, both free.
Already have a site? Take the audit — real Google data plus the checks an automated tool can't run, back within 24 hours. Haven't got one? Take the demo — a real working site for your business on a live link within 2 days. Neither costs you anything and neither needs a deposit.