Wired In Survival Guide — Profitable Website Management Designers Developers & Agencies, Oh My!

Who hasn’t had those timid, awkward feelings that we all have at some point when we spend time figuring out how to get engaged with high-tech talent for a website design or development project? Will they understand my vision? Will the project be big or cool enough? Can I afford this? Am I making the right decision? The lack of confidence has little to do with one’s value or worth, but rather a vague understanding about the business and a small strategy for dealing with industry talent.

Inexperienced, yet yearning to learn, I bought business and marketing books by the dozen early in my IT career, hoping to unlock millionaire secrets of the sales and marketing superstars. A lot of the sales and marketing systems were as confusing as they are complicated to me until I bought Selling Microsoft: Sales Secrets from Inside the World’s Most Successful Company by Doug Dayton (ex-Microsoft marketing guru) and accompanying templates from his website. The next day I received a phone call. It was Doug Dayton. Little did I realize that, over time, I would be encouraged and inspired by Doug to pursue my dreams and follow a career I had only fantasized about. To this day, I learn more about life through my friendship with Doug than I could have imagined from reading books.

Leveraging Industry Talent
Books on my shelf still hold a place in my heart, but they no longer lay enshrined in the golden light of the gods. I have had the pleasure of meeting authors, website designers, developers, consultants, marketing gurus and photographers and have come to realize that they too are human. The fantasies we conjure can sometimes stand in the way of profit and productivity. Putting aside names and faces, you can build a strategy to leverage the knowledge and experience that you will need to move business forward. The relationship you nurture is where the value is, and should come first place next to the façade that encompasses the talent’s reputation.

So instead of worrying about whether your star talent will give you the time of day, focus on how the critical human factor affects your business’ performance, and the value that social networking and an ongoing dialogue brings to the table. Popular social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter are enabling technologies for such a strategy.

Other factors will affect your ability to leverage talented people on your projects. For example, by realizing that:
1) You have something to give. Demonstrating, perhaps by regular contributions to your blog, that you make valuable contributions to your industry, which makes you more attractive as a customer. A thoughtful review or endorsement of a designer or a developer’s work can become an important dynamic in project development to both sides.
2) Anyone can have good ideas. Heaven forbid that an IT guy might have a good marketing idea, or that photographers have good Web design ideas. Even more, good ideas feed off each other, and the dynamic that follows is often mutually beneficial. A Web designer wants nothing more than a famously successful project that he or she can brag about and share with future clients.
3) You are committed to your industry’s work. If it’s true that you are serious about your work, and feel that you were made for your industry (or vice versa) then nobody can claim any more rights or stake to an honorable day’s work than you. With the end customer in mind, neither you nor the talent would have a job anyways.
4) It’s all about business. It should be clear from the beginning that nobody is looking for handouts, and we aren’t discussing charitable organizations. So consider yourself a peer, not a member of the fan club. Fan club members pay dues. Entrepreneurs collect payments (and I’m ready for a payday).

What Are Developers, Designers and Agencies Saying?
To help see this strategy in context, I had an email powwow with several of the photography industry’s expert Web talent (see below) to help you begin thinking through very critical questions, and help you start a dialogue with your developer, designer or creative agency.

With a positive attitude, a clear vision and a lively brick business to substantiate the effort in starting a website makeover project, finding and working with the right people will come easier, as will growing business online become more profitable. Most of the successful designers and developers that I know can pick and choose which projects they work on, so it’s important to consider how your project can offer more than a paycheck.

It’s possible to avoid the painful mistakes of others who have gone before you by nurturing your talent network and seeking the brainstorming and idea-generating conversations that will help take your business to the next level. It’s important to ask the difficult questions that at times we might not have an answer for right away. As conventional wisdom has it, success is achieved by finding many counselors to guide you along the way.

Q: What trends are making the biggest impact on photography website design?
A:
(LB): True branding, not just some font they use for a logo.
(ITDR): Search-engine optimized flash websites, scalable large format images for multiple browsers and a content management system.
(Elev): Presentation of high quality images requires images to be displayed at a large size and requires additional load time. Inclusion of third party applications such as proofing centers, picture fulfillment and blogs require strategic integration and multiple access points.
(blu): Probably the most recent development has been to have large or full screen photographs. Video is also becoming more and more popular as Internet connection speed is getting faster.

Q: What are your thoughts about template-based photography websites?
A:
(LB): Only if you are able to implement your brand effectively and present your work in a way that will cause the potential client to contact you.
(ITDR): Template websites have their place in the world. For a newer photographer it allows for better prices. The downfall is that everyone has the same design, making it difficult for the photographers to separate themselves from the competition.
(Elev): I think they are a great entry point into the industry for most new photographers. They offer a good value for the price and some are not too badly designed either. Unfortunately, template-based sites have limits and offer little in distinguishing one photographer from another.
(blu): The number one benefit of a template is that you get a very technically advanced and visually impressive website for a fraction of the cost of which you would pay for a custom website.

Q:What advice would you give to a photographer who wants to work with a designer/developer/agency, but doesn’t know where to begin to look or what to ask?
A:
(LB): Make sure you will be speaking with the designer that will be working on your site. Know that the person you will be working with has excellent customer service behind them. How easily is the site to update as they produce new work?
(ITDR): Ask to see some examples of their work. Get referrals from other photographers. See what other products they offer that the photographer can leverage. Ask how long they have been developing websites. See how quickly they respond to your first call.
(Elev): Start with brand development. It is so much more than a logo and will provide the foundation for all visual communications and marketing activities (and all client touch points). Good brand development will foster a well developed and well designed website.
(blu): When making a choice, it is important to pick a designer whose design style suits your images. This may not be the one that appeals most to you visually.

Q: What do you see photography websites doing wrong that is so easy to fix?
A:
(LB): Not leveraging a site’s potential for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Although I think that SEO should only be about 10–20 percent of a marketing plan anyway.
(ITDR): Way too many photos. Keeping it simple is best. Do not overload the user with images. Give them just enough so they want to call you.
(Elev): Well, not always easy to fix, but most websites are built prior to any brand development. It’s like building walls onto a house without pouring the foundation
(blu): Over complicating things and putting too much on a page. The less the better, which gives a much more powerful presentation.

Q: What is the typical cost and duration of a website design and development or makeover project, and what can photographers do to better manage the cost of working with a developer, designer or an agency?
A:
(LB): $2000–4000 and four to six weeks. Everything is a process, so treat it as such. Have the cost discussed upfront and put into a contract. Without that, get ready to pay more than you thought.
(ITDR): Our LTD websites start at approximately $2000 and take a few weeks to go live. Our custom websites start at approximately $5000 and take a few months to go live.
(Elev): As an agency, we have a particular process that helps us discover our client’s vision and needs when they come to us. Cost to engage with our agency for Web development starts around $8000 and goes up from there depending on need and sophistication.
(blu): The typical cost would probably average out to $300. We recommend you change your site out every six months to one year. Keeping things fresh will always keep people coming back.

Steve Tout is the owner and principal photographer of Coffeehouse Photography, a boutique wedding photography shop in the Pacific Northwest. He has worked in sales, consulting, Web development and information security for 10 years with recent positions at Oracle Corporation and US Bank. Readers can contact him directly by email at [email protected].