To Flash Or Not To Flash- Website Design Success Strategies For Photographers

By Robert Provencher

“The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choices words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.” ~Edwin H. Friedman~

Photography Website Strategies: To Flash or Not To Flash

I know of few areas or industries that use flash as much as photographers do. The typical scenario is this: Go to photographers website, and three options open up.  Some weird split screen that says:

[ ENTER SITE FULL SCREEN ]                         [ ENTER SITE SAME WINDOW]

[ ENTER BLOG | SNEAK PEEK ]

Okay, so what now? I have choices. Three. Or, is that four choices.

Think about your typical client or prospect. What would she be going through when she sees this?

YOU know what these options  mean, as a matter of fact, you’re rather proud of it all. Since these are doorways to your amazing world of creativity and art, and why wouldn’t  anyone not see what you see??!! You probably think the visitor is waiting with bated breath, edge of seat anxious to click the next link.

The next question should be whether or not having any of these options makes any or much marketing sense, let alone whether the visitor can make any sense of it all.

The truth is (you knew I was getting to that didn’t you) this is the kind of behavior that comes out of the  Sales Prevention Dept.

The Sales Prevention Dept comes up with ideas and strategies that help make the buying decision harder, more complex and occasionally impossible to buy.  That’s their job.

Your job is to silence or fire the sales prevention dept. Your job is to find ways to INCREASE sales, not decrease them. Then why do so many photographers insist on creating so many barriers to the sales process?

My best guess is they simply don’t understand the selling process, they tend to follow one another, (marketing incest- get’s dumber with each generation) and their egos have led them to believe their work is so awesome they don’t need to do the dirty deed of selling.

Why, everyone will see this awesomeness of their talent and will call their studios automatically. If you’re one of the lucky ones where this is happening to you, my guess is your marketing in a  vacuum and once another ten photographers just like you shows up in your town, you’ll wonder what happened to all that business.

So, after one clicks on one of those links, it typically doesn’t get much better. Often, another window opens up. More distractions. And then, this circular thing shows up. You know it, it looks like this:

Depending on your patience level and your internet connection, getting beyond that, to the promised land, will vary. Some will stay. Some, like me, have little patience, and leave after , hmm, ooo, about 4 seconds.

I don’t know about you, but I do not want to risk testing the patience level of my clients and leads by risking any delays, any barriers to entry to my sales process.

And your website is a sales process. The web, and your web pages, are only media. And media is the delivery mechanism of, you guessed it, your sales message.

Why would you not have a sales process on the first place, let alone create all that hassle to get INTO your site.

Oprah uses flash.

Okay, sometimes you will see flash. Oprah uses it on her site, as well as many other uber successful celebs and place like amazon or cnn.  But, they use it as small boxes inside their main page. But  wait a minute, I just checked her site since I last went on it and saw no flash. Hmmm, so, my guess is, she uses it sometimes. But not always.

Why do I bring up Oprah? Several reasons. She be smart, and successful. Also, many of my target group would know her show, read her magazine, and visit her website. Just go look at her site. It’s fast, loaded with stuff. And her design and layout, I guarantee, wasn’t random. She can afford the best when it comes to testing and using what truly works with her visitors, most of whom would be women. And it’s loaded with newsie stuff and articles. Loads of information. And, you get to it FAST!

Your website should be the same. Fast, easy, loaded with information, offers, name capture devices and entertaining.

Not an ego fest.

One photographer who, in my opinion, has just about nailed this down, is Larry Peters. When I Checked out his site, my first reaction was, here’s a guy who gets it!

Go see for yourself. Click HERE.

Now, it’s obvious he does a huge senior business.You are directed to one of two sites when you visit his page. One for seniors, one for portraits. His senior business must be huge. He’s dedicated an entire site to it.

But look closely at both his pages.They look great, load fast, and mostly he’s constantly pitching offers. Smart. Very smart. The portrait page has loads of specials and offers, and very clean and nicely laid out. The senior page also is loaded with offer and styles. And, loads fast. No barriers to entry, great images, great offers, easy on the eyes. Isn’t that what a site should be? Not complicated and confusing, and slow.

If you really want to dig deep into this the very best place I know of is Jakob Nielsen’s. Go HERE and see what he has to say about web design.

In conclusion, a website should sell. It should sell the targeted lead to the next move. Contact with your studio, so they can continue onto the next step of the sales process and become long term clients. Isn’t that what this is all about?

yours in photography,
Robert Provencher