Web design for photographers
They will judge twenty photographers in ten minutes.
A couple opens a folder of bookmarks on a Sunday night and works through it fast. Most sites are eliminated before the second image loads: a splash screen, a slideshow that fades for four seconds, a gallery of 180 pictures that all look the same. The ones that survive show a coherent style immediately, say what a wedding costs, and make it easy to ask about a date. We build that site, host it and look after it, with a £0 upfront website design fee.
- Per month: £49.99
- Upfront website design fee: £0
Illustration: a photographers pictogram beside an example website built for that trade.
The portfolio
Thirty photographs, chosen ruthlessly, beat three hundred.
The most common mistake on a photographer's website is generosity. Every extra image dilutes the ones that earned the booking, and every weak frame is the one somebody stops on. A tight, coherent edit reads as confidence, and confidence is most of what is being sold.
Photographs here are illustrative. Your own work replaces every one of them, sized and compressed properly so a full gallery loads in a couple of seconds on a phone.
Collections
Say what a wedding costs. It is the second thing they look for.
Photographers agonise over this and their customers do not. Somebody with a venue booked has a figure in mind, and a site that will not give them one gets closed in favour of a site that will. Publishing a starting collection does not commit you to anything except being findable by people who can afford you.
- One starting figure removes half the emails
"Collections start at £1,650" answers the question everybody asks first, and the enquiries that follow are from people who have already decided they can afford it.
- Say what changes it
Hours, travel, a second photographer, an album, a pre-wedding shoot. Four honest lines beside the price prevent the awkward part of the first phone call.
- Albums and prints belong further down
They matter to the client after they have booked, and they are the part of the income most photographers under-sell. Give them their own space rather than crowding the collections.
Prices shown are the example studio's illustrative rates. Yours are your own, and we change them whenever you want.
The enquiry
Date, venue, and roughly what they are imagining.
A contact form with a name and a message box produces "Hi, are you free on 14 June?" and three days of email. Ask the four things that decide whether you can do the job, and the first reply can be a real answer with a price attached.
- Date first, always
It is the field that ends the conversation either way. Everything else is detail, and detail is worth nothing if the day is already booked.
- Ask how they found you
One optional line that tells you, over a year, whether the venue recommendations, the directories or the search work is actually producing bookings.
- Let them describe the day in their own words
"No set-up shots" or "my grandmother is 94" tells you more about whether this is your kind of wedding than any dropdown ever will.
PrimeStart sites do not take deposits or payments, and do not include a client gallery. Where you already use a delivery or booking system we link into it, and the enquiry arrives as an email you can answer from anywhere.
Style, and being chosen for it
Being liked by everyone is how you get booked by nobody.
The photographers with full diaries are rarely the most technically accomplished. They are the ones whose work is instantly recognisable, so that a couple looking at it thinks "that is what we want our day to look like" rather than "those are nice photographs". A website built around a single coherent edit does that work. A website that shows dark and moody, bright and airy, black and white, studio portraits and a commercial job on the same page does the opposite.
This matters commercially, not just artistically. A distinctive style means fewer enquiries and a higher proportion of them booking, at prices you set rather than prices you match. It also makes the venue recommendations far more likely, because a venue coordinator passing on a name is staking their own reputation on knowing what they are going to get.
So the structure follows the style: one edit that represents the work you want more of, the other genres given their own pages rather than mixed in, and everything else — the pricing, the process, the delivery times — kept short and factual underneath.
Your site plan
Five pages, and the portfolio is not the home page.
The home page is an argument, made in about eight photographs, for why somebody should look at the rest. The full galleries sit behind it, where people who are already interested will happily go.
Your suggested site plan
5 pagesHome
Eight photographs that show the style, one line about what you do, the starting price and one obvious way to enquire.
- The edit
- From
- Enquire
Weddings
Full galleries from three or four weddings, how the day works with you there, and what you deliver afterwards.
- Full days
- Delivery
- Second shooter
Portraits & commercial
The other work kept separate, so it never dilutes the wedding edit: families, headshots and business photography.
- Families
- Headshots
- Business
Pricing
Collections with starting prices, what changes them, albums and prints, travel, and how booking works.
- Collections
- Albums
- Travel
About & enquire
Who you are, how you work on a day, the area you cover, and the date enquiry form.
- About
- Area
- Availability
Generally up to five pages on Website, planned around how your customers choose.
Need something extra later? No problem. PrimeStart customers can order additional services such as extra pages, branding and one-off optimisation through their client dashboard whenever they need them.
Your Client Platform
Swap the portfolio after a good wedding, from your phone.
Every PrimeStart customer gets their own Client Platform. It is where the project lives while it is being built, and where you ask for changes once it is live.
- Follow the build stage by stage, without emailing to ask
- Send a new set of images and say which ones to swap in
- Message PrimeStart directly, with the whole thread in one place
- Preview the draft on a phone before anybody else sees it
- Approve the website before it goes live
- Ask for changes afterwards, and order services when you need them
- See your SEO report, tracked searches and recommendations each month (Website + SEO)
Photographs get sized, compressed and put up properly by us. You never have to think about file weight, formats or whether the gallery still loads on a phone.
Illustration of the Client Platform for a fictional photographers business. SEO reporting is included with Website + SEO.
Website + SEO
The couple searching has a venue and a date already.
Website + SEO is optional monthly work on how easily local customers find you, aimed at three searches agreed with you. Photography searches are unusually specific, and the specific ones convert far better than the broad ones.
- £349.99/monthTotal. The website is included: the £49.99 Website is not added on top.
- 3 searchesAgreed with you at the start. Additional agreed search targets are £50/month each.
- Monthly workSearch and competitor research, website improvements, Google Business Profile work, local listings, technical monitoring and a clear monthly report in your Client Platform.
- 6-month minimumAfter the SEO minimum you can continue, or stop the SEO work and keep the Website for the rest of its 18-month term. Every month of it counts towards both.
Rankings, a number of leads or a number of jobs. Nobody honest can. What SEO does is create more opportunities for suitable local customers to discover your business, and for enquiries and jobs to follow over time.
Three example searches
- wedding photographer Shrewsbury
- family photographer Shrewsbury
- headshot photographer Shrewsbury
Illustrative results and example searches. Your three searches are agreed with you at the start, and no position is ever promised. For photographers, the searches worth having are often the venue and style ones rather than the biggest ones.
Already have a website you are happy with? Ongoing SEO is only available with the managed website, as Website + SEO — PrimeStart does not run SEO on a site it does not host. If you would rather keep your current site, talk to us first and we will tell you honestly whether moving it across is worth it.
The plans
The same photography website, with or without the monthly SEO work.
The Website is the whole thing: designed, built, hosted, managed and kept current, with your domain name included. Website + SEO adds monthly work on how easily local customers find it. Clear pricing. Straightforward terms. No surprises.
A photography website that shows a tight edit fast, answers the price question and turns a browse into a dated enquiry.
Designers usually charge for the build before the website exists. We absorb that cost and recover it through the monthly service, which is why the plan carries a minimum term, and why there is nothing to pay up front beyond the first month.
Complete the term and the website is yours: stay with us on a rolling basis with no new minimum, or move it to hosting of your own.
Want PrimeStart working on how customers find you? Website + SEO is £349.99 a month in total, with the same website included. The same managed website, plus monthly work on three agreed searches, including the venue and style searches that convert best. How SEO works
£49.99per month
- Upfront website design fee
- £0
- What you pay to start
- Your first £49.99, at signup
- Minimum term
- 18 months
- Over the minimum term
- 18 × £49.99 = £899.82
- After month 18
- The website is yours
- If you stay
- £49.99 a month, rolling, no new minimum
What the plan includes
- A portfolio that loads in secondsSized and compressed properly, so nobody leaves while it fades in
- One coherent edit, not everythingBecause being recognisable is what gets you booked
- Collections with a starting priceThe second thing every enquiry wants to know
- An enquiry that starts with the dateSo the first reply can be a real answer
- Genres kept on their own pagesWeddings, portraits and commercial, never mixed together
- A professionally designed, custom-built WordPress websiteGenerally up to five pages, planned around how photographers are chosen
- Hosting, your domain name and SSLIncluded and managed by PrimeStart
- Security, backups and updatesKept current, backed up regularly, WordPress and plugins updated by us
- Enquiry forms and basic Google foundationsForms that reach you; structure, titles and descriptions search engines read
- Support, small changes and your Client PlatformReasonable small changes subject to fair use, and one place to follow, message and approve
How it works
Your part is choosing thirty photographs.
Choose a plan, send us the edit and your prices, then tell us what to change on the draft. We do the rest.
- 1
Choose your plan
Website, or Website + SEO. The upfront website design fee is £0 and your first monthly payment is taken at signup.
- 2
Send us the work
A short onboarding in your Client Platform: the images you want leading, two or three full galleries, your collections and prices, the area you cover, and where enquiries should land.
- 3
Ready to Build
We check we have what we need. If a price or an edit needs a decision, we say exactly which, and get on with the rest.
- 4
First draft
A working draft with the galleries in place and sized properly, so you can see how fast it actually is on a phone.
- 5
Approve and launch
Reasonable in-scope changes, then you approve it. Nothing is published until you say so.
We aim to have your first website draft ready within 5 working days once PrimeStart has everything needed and confirms your project is Ready to Build. Payment alone doesn’t start the clock; missing details, revisions or domain delays can extend it.
You review the draft and request reasonable in-scope changes. If there’s a genuine problem we can’t put right within scope after reasonable attempts, we can cancel the agreement and refund Website subscription payments made, subject to any disclosed non-recoverable third-party costs.
Questions photographers ask us
How much does a website for a photographer cost?
What happens at the end of the 18 months?
Is the domain name included?
Can clients download their gallery from the site?
How many photographs should the site have?
Will the images be compressed so much that they look bad?
How quickly will I see a first draft?
What is SEO, and do I need it to start?
You take the photographs. We'll run the website.
Web design for photographers at £49.99 a month with a £0 upfront website design fee: a fast, tightly edited portfolio, collections with a starting price, and an enquiry that begins with the date.
Prefer to call? +44 7446 265140 or email contact@primestart.co.uk