Photo Credit: Lap Fung Chan from Flickr.

Worth

If you look back over 2013, could you tell me how much business your website generated? Is your business even set up to be able to find out?

Just to get a sense of what I’m talking about, let’s take a completely arbitrary number like $100,000 in sales for the year 2013. You may have a few client acquisition methods, and they may look something like this:

• Website
• Word of mouth
• Networking
• Randomly meeting engaged couples or potential clients (new moms, etc).

So let’s take a look at your website. In this day and age, I’m willing to bet your site is the majority source of clients. For this example let’s say 75% meaning that our example website generated $75,000 worth of sales for you. (If you’re playing along at home, please make sure you use your own numbers).

Value

With that in mind, do you really place enough value on your website?
The majority of photographers that start online get their domain for $10, pay $80/yr for cheap shared hosting, and then slap a ProPhoto template on their site for $200, and set it up pretty much how everyone else sets theirs up (save for design differences).

So you’re up online for under $300 bucks, and probably 30-40 or so hours of your own time, or so which is great.
That might be great for people just starting out, but what about when you’re website starts generating $75,000? Does your website experience reflect that with your visitors?

Put more succinctly: Is that a match for the company that you’re looking to run?

If your website is generating the majority of your income, shouldn’t it look and feel that way?
Look, you don’t have to hire Flaunt Your Site to build you a $5,000 website (but if you want to, you should totally contact us. 🙂 ), or spend lots of money to accomplish your goals.
All you have to do is think about the user experience from your client’s point of view; From the moment they get on the site, to how they find the information they need, to how to contact you, etc.

If you start thinking about that, and start to put things in place that better that experience for your potential clients, you’ll start to increase the value you of your website. And you’ll increase the worth with all the new clients you’re starting to get.