How to Create a Photography Website

Whether you're a seasoned photographer looking to grow your business or are new to the field and building your portfolio, learning how to make a photography website is crucial to your future success. A well-designed photography website helps you put your best foot forward and stand out from the competition.

Creating a photography website involves designing a template that aligns with your desired marketing and sales goals, and optimizing your images for an online audience. To grow your business and web presence, you'll also need to develop a marketing and social media strategy.

Read on for a step-by-step guide on how to create a photography website—or optimize your existing online photography portfolio for greater professional success.

The importance of creating a photography portfolio website

Since the popularity of smartphones and digital cameras, photography is now an activity anyone can do. Without your own portfolio website, it can be difficult to stand out from all the other amateur and professional photographers out there.

Sharing photos effectively has always been a challenge. Before the arrival of digital photo technology, showing friends and family your snaps meant you needed to develop film at a drugstore or lab. Early digital cameras required people to manually transfer photos to computers via a cable, and then upload to third-party photo hosting platforms.

Even the emergence of social media didn't make sharing photos easier right away: These channels were text-heavy at first and not necessarily public platforms that reached many people. Today, displaying photos online can still be challenging due to privacy concerns and the ways social media algorithms dictate which posts are delivered to users.

Creating a photography website is your best way to carve out a permanent, public home for your portfolio. It allows you to share your images with anyone, without relying on social media algorithms or design restrictions. With a photography website, you have control over how your work is presented and who sees your work. As a result, websites are often the first step in establishing a professional photography career or business.

While some photographers choose to sell prints of photos they've taken, others prefer to use their websites as a place to display their best work to attract more clients. Other photographers opt to start a website once they're more established and ready to take their business to the next level. No matter your reason for launching a website, sharing your portfolio online helps you create connections and add beauty to the world.

While some photographers choose to sell prints of photos they've taken, others prefer to use their websites as a place to display their best work to attract more clients. Other photographers opt to start a website once they're more established and ready to take their business to the next level. No matter your reason for launching a website, sharing your portfolio online helps you create connections and add beauty to the world.

Designing a photography website

Your photography portfolio is your professional calling card. Designing a photography website is different from designing a website for writing or another small business. Displaying images requires specialized templates that emphasize images over text. You might have to edit your photos before uploading, so they look crisp and professional online.

Photographers launch websites for many different reasons. For example, a photographer might be looking to grow their business in a niche area, like engagement photos or headshots, and will create a website emphasizing this kind of work. Other photographers may use their website as a hub to schedule photo shoots. Some photographers view their website as an online portfolio to send to prospective clients, and so they display a variety of photography styles and projects.

Websites for photographers aren't always set up to promote services or sell tangible goods. In fact, some people set up a photography website simply because they're proud to show off their art. Identifying your goals in advance will help shape the design of your photography website. For example, if you’re looking to make some extra money, you can implement an online store and sell prints of your best photos.

Read more about how to design a photography website

Selling photos and prints online

Selling prints is part of a smart business strategy, as this can help you expand your brand and audience, while creating an additional income stream for working photographers. Your customers will appreciate being able to buy additional prints of photo shoots you've done together to give as gifts. Other customers might be fond of a photo you've taken and want a print to frame, or opt to license a print for an editorial or advertising project.

To sell printed pictures, you'll need to build a photography website that allows you to implement ecommerce activities. Squarespace offers website templates and different subscription tiers to fit the needs of every photographer. For example, its shop options offer built-in checkout capabilities that calculate shipping and taxes, as well as the ability for sellers to choose payment and shipping methods.

Squarespace also offers print on demand extensions that are useful for photographers looking to expand their business. Those extensions handle shipping and inventory fulfillment, saving photographers a lot of time. Print on demand products typically also provide different canvas textures on which to print photos, as well as photo album options.

Selling photography prints might not be for everyone—at least not right away. You'll have the best luck selling prints once you've developed a following, a solid customer base, and a marketing strategy to a wider audience.

Read more about how to sell prints online via a photography website

Optimizing images on your website

When you upload photos to your personal social media accounts, chances are you might give them a light edit before posting them online. However, uploading and displaying images on your professional photography website often involves more extensive editing.

It's important to take these extra steps to optimize images for the web. Images that are too large might look blurry online or affect how quickly your website loads. This might cause people to leave your website before viewing your photos. Images that are too small might not look as good on a desktop browser or lose detail on a mobile phone. Having photos that look unprofessional won't reflect well on your photography business and may turn off prospective clients.

Editing photos could involve several tweaks. You might need to:

• Adjust the color settings

• Reduce the image file size

• Rename the file to conform to certain specifications

Squarespace accepts the most common file extensions (.jpg, .gif, or .png), with names that only contain letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens. 

Photographers often use third-party applications and programs to compress images, improve image quality, or make other adjustments before uploading. However, Squarespace's templates offer built-in filters and editing tools for more streamlined image optimization. Users can adjust how many photos are visible in a gallery block, and how they're displayed. For example, an automatic slideshow at the top of a page will roll through your photos one-by-one, or make your images visible all at once using a neatly defined grid. You can also add captions and links to photo projects, giving clients a fuller picture of your capabilities. 

Squarespace also offers responsive design capabilities, so your photos look good on any device. 

Read more about how to optimize images on your website

Creating a watermark

A photo watermark is an image that's layered on top of a photograph before it's uploaded to a website. Watermarks are a permanent signifier that you are the creator of an image or photograph. 

Watermarks can be large or small and placed in prominent locations—for example, across the middle of a photo—or in more subtle places, such as the corner of an image. Depending on your preference, consider rendering your watermark designs as text or your business logo.

Photo watermarks offer multiple advantages in the areas of copyright and promotion. When a photo of yours is shared on social media, people viewing the image may use a watermark to discover your business. If someone decides to reuse your photo without credit or permission, a watermark can also help you take appropriate action in response.

Read more about how to make a watermark

Marketing your photography business

Once you create and launch a photography website, the next step is promoting it to your personal and professional networks. Creative work often comes from referrals and word of mouth. If people know that you have a photography business—or are taking on new clients—you will be top of mind for recommendations. 

Marketing your photography goods and services is helpful for expanding your reach, gaining new clients, and developing new business ideas. For example, you may discover client interest in photo shoots tied to certain events or holidays (e.g., Halloween, graduation, etc.). 

Determining how to promote your photography business has much in common with launching a blog or website marketing strategy. As a first step, determine your promotional goals. Are you looking to sell more photo prints? Are you looking to build your photography business? Are you looking to sign up more clients?

Next, assess how much time you have for promotion and marketing. If you have a busy schedule, focusing on one or two strategies makes more sense than launching a larger plan. These activities might rotate in and out depending on your needs.

A photography website marketing strategy might include components such as email marketing and newsletters, social media, a blog, SEO optimization, and branding activities. Email marketing campaigns are one of the best ways to promote your business. These can take the form of promotional emails that inform customers about sales or events or a newsletter that gives interesting backstories behind photos. 

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Connecting social media accounts to your photography website

Before starting to use social media with your photography website, it's best to first create a social media strategy. That includes defining which channels align best with your website and business goals. Once you've done that, there are many benefits to connecting your social media accounts to your photography website.

Because it's so image-driven, social media is one of the best promotional tools for photographers. These channels give artists an easy way to share their talents, grow an audience, and cultivate their brand. Promoting your photography portfolio via social media alerts your personal and professional circles that you are available for work.

You can easily promote your website via your social media accounts by mentioning your website and linking to it. Squarespace offers several tools to help users link their websites and social media accounts. Most website templates have built-in areas to include links to your chosen social media accounts. Unfold for Squarespace allows you to create a permanent customized Bio Site. Link to your Bio Site from your social media account profiles, and that page makes it easy to link out to your website, store, booking, other social media accounts, and anywhere else that makes sense for your business strategy. 

Read more about how to connect social media to your photography website