FIELD GUIDE NO 02
Taking Control of Your Website & Domain
- 00. Taking Control Main
- 01. Buying & Registering a Domain Name
- 02. DNS Explained
- 03. The Non-Geeks Guide To WordPress Hosting
- 04. Professional Email For Your Business
- 05. Tips for Better Email Deliverability and Avoiding Spam Filters
- 06. Choosing the Best Website Platform
- 07. How to Choose a WordPress Theme
- 08. SEO Optimized Site
- 09. Keeping Your Passwords Secure
Part 6
Choosing the Best Website Platform
For many creatives and entrepreneurs getting a website can be both an overwhelming and frustrating process. I see questions in Facebook groups almost every day about websites and everything related to them.
Since my experience has been mainly working with photographers the question I get asked about and see most often is this:
"Which website builder or service is best for photographers?"
The answer, of course, is "It depends." Because it’s not something that’s simple to answer. It’s a BIG question.
From my experience, people run into problems with their websites because:
- They choose a site based on cost rather than a site that has the tools they need
- They have unrealistic expectations about how much time it will take to learn and setup
- They aren't clear on what they need or want to accomplish
- They are getting bad advice
Far too often I come across sites that are poorly designed, don't perform, are low quality and out of date.
Sadly, some are the sites of some 'big names' in the photography industry. Often times industry leaders - despite good intentions - are misinformed as to what businesses need to be doing when it comes to digital marketing in today’s market.
Having spent a fair amount of time helping photographers fix their websites as a result of really bad advice they received from so-called experts, this is something I feel strongly about.
Much of the 'advice' I see given in Facebook groups is not good.
Getting recommendations from colleagues is a good place to start, especially because they have experience using tools in a business that is similar to yours.
However, it also means having to figure out how to separate the good advice from the bad.
Asking the right questions and being armed with the right knowledge will help you weed out the bad advice.
Which is why I’m writing this.
First, though, there are a couple of things to note before we get started.
I work almost exclusively with WordPress to build custom sites, and all of our sites are built on top of WordPress.
With that said, I do not necessarily recommend that photographers use WordPress. Sometimes I even tell people that WordPress might not be a good choice for them even though I personally think it's amazing.
My goal is to help you choose the best solution for you based on your specific business needs and budget.
I’m not here to evangelize a particular web builder or tool simply because I’m enamored with it or because I use it myself.
It’s more important to share why it is we’ve chosen these tools, rather than just telling you which ones you should use. There are a lot of choices out there when it comes to websites and everyone's needs are different.
How to use this guide
You’ll want to bookmark this page so you can come back to it as needed.
This is a pretty big guide, and it can be overwhelming to tackle all at once. We've broken it down into a 9 point checklist with a list of criteria to consider when choosing your own solution choosing a site. That way when you do get recommendations and are looking for a service, you can make an informed decision.
Click any item for more detailed information.
It’s important to make a list of things that you want your website to do, and what will support your business goals.
For example, things like:
- Do you want people to be able to book a session or consult?
- Do you want to offer online proofing galleries for clients for services like reorders or album proofing?
- Does the site integrate or work well with other business and marketing tools you use? Things like your email marketing service, your studio management software or CRM, and the ability to add a Facebook Retargeting Pixel.
- Can you easily add a contact form that links to your studio management software?
- Can you integrate your social media profiles by automatically displaying your posts?
- Do you want Ecommerce functionality in order to be able to sell things online? If so, you'll want to consider things such as payment gateways, shipping features and things like that.
Start by making a list of all the things you want your website to do.
“Ask better questions and you’ll get better answers”
Tony Robbins
As I mentioned earlier, I often see people go into a Facebook group and ask what web service or template that people use. Then 20 people will all list their favorite service as the 'best ever.'
But those answers only tell you what they use.
What those answers don't tell you is:
- Are they getting actual leads from their site, or booking more clients from their site?
- Are they setting up the site themselves and maintaining it? If so, how much time do they spend a week/month with site upkeep?
- Has the performance of their website improved since switching services or redesigning their site?
- How has their conversation rate improved?
- Does it have the features the you need?
It’s important to ask yourself some questions based on what your needs are and what exactly you want your site to accomplish.
Here are key features you'll want to look for, along with some important questions to consider when choosing a website builder.
How easy is it to use
Most website builders or services do not require any technical knowledge to use them. However, some are easier to work with than others. I'd recommend looking for drag-and-drop features for creating page layouts and making changes.
Also, look for a browser-based tool rather than a desktop one. This is far easier to use and will save you a lot of time.
Design Flexibility
- Look for flexible layout options. How easy is it to change page width and layout both globally and on individual pages? Look at header, page and menu layout options - these things will determine how flexible the layout is.
- Can you add your logo or change colors and styles?
- What types of menu navigation styles does the site have?
- Most services have templates that you can use to start your site. Find out what design template elements are customizable.
Do you own it?
- Can you use your own domain url?
- Can you take the site with you if you want to move it in the future? With some site builders you cannot move your content out of their software.
Portability & Future Proof
This is a biggie. When you want to move your site or content to a different service, or you want to change the design of your site, what happens?
Some services have features that allow you to export content. Others don't. Changing the design may require that you start over, or it could be as simple as choosing a new design and replacing your existing one.
I've seen it happen quite often where content is 'stuck' with the web service and there's no way of exporting it. That means when you go change things you'll have to start completely over. Not good!
Support
The level of support you receive varies by service and platform. Support by email or via an online help desk is what is most common. Some services offer 24/7 phone support. I prefer help via an online desk instead of phone support.
When looking at new service one of the first things I do is go to the knowledge base and comb through some of the documentation. This can tell you more about some of the features the offer, and how much importance is placed on user experience.
Also, contact support for whatever website builder you are looking at and ask them some questions about the features as well. Their response is a good indication of how support will be once you've purchased.
Key things you want to consider
- How good is the documentation or instruction for using that particular tool or service?
- Do you prefer online or phone support?
- Contact support. How fast do they respond? How well did they answer your question?
Some other things to consider
- Can you take or move your content easily?
- How hard is it to change the design? Do you have to start over?
- Will the site grow with your business? Can you add additional features if needed?
- What type of support do they offer?
Most website services and platforms claim that their sites are SEO friendly. But how do you know if that's really true?
Search engine optimization is important because it's one of the keys to your site being found by potential clients.
If your website or WordPress theme is optimized for SEO it means it has things like image optimization, semantic coding, site speed, and search engine friendly page titles.
There are four key parts to an SEO (Search Engine Optimized) friendly site.
1. Website Structure and SEO Optimized Code
Website structure & ‘clean-code’ affects how the search engines will 'see' your content and site.
A website or WordPress theme is 'search engine optimized' if it uses Semantic Markup and Coding. Semantic code or HTML means your site code is properly structured, and proper tags are being used for the different types of content. For example using the "h1" tag for page titles and "p" tags for the body. By using semantic code search engines can crawl the site easily.
Without the proper semantic markup, a computer has no way of understanding what your content is about. This is why semantic code does better in search engine ranking and results, and why search engine spiders cannot see flash sites. Flash sites aren't crawlable.
WordPress uses Cascading Style Sheets (style.css) which keeps the design of your site separate from the code. This means that updating your site is easier because styles can be applied to the entire site instead of page by page, and the styles can be changed without touching the code. Search engines view these techniques favorably, which may help improve ranking and find-ability.
2. Site Speed
Site speed is dependent on good coding practices as mentioned above, and good hosting. Good hosting is so important to your site. A slow site means lost visitors, and many users today will abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Some website builders package hosting with their monthly service.
If you choose an ‘all-in-one’ service like Squarespace or Shopify for example, then web hosting is already included. That’s both good and bad. Good because it’s easy, bad because you are stuck with whatever hosting they provide, which gives you no control over the speed.
Shopify is one of the only ones that I know of that is capable of handling large volumes of traffic and demand. With others I’m not sure, so you’ll want to look at them closely. I’d suspect in many cases it’s a ‘no.’ After all if a $20 per month service is capable of keeping up with demanding use, then why would businesses spend hundreds or thousands a month on their sites?
WordPress, on the other hand, is a self-hosted platform, which means you have to find your own hosting. This is both good and bad as well. You get control over how much speed and power you want. But bad because it’s up to you to figure that out.
I'll elaborate more on this in a bit.
3. Mobile Responsive and Optimized Design
The majority of website use today takes place on some type of mobile device, which is why Google is penalizing sites that aren’t mobile friendly.
Responsive design means that rather than designing for a specific device, like a desktop browser, one design is created that automatically adapts or responds to the device that is accessing the site.
The web is now mobile and your site must look great on any device that it might be viewed on. You can use Google’s mobile friendly tester to see if the web service or website you are using is mobile friendly.
4. Content Structure
These types of features are things that you should be able to control in your website's admin panel.
Your site should allow you do the following:
- Create SEO Friendly Page Titles
- Create Meta Descriptions - a description of page content
- Breadcrumbs - breadcrumbs display to a visitor where they are on your site.
- Set the URL Structure (links should be www.yoursite.com/seo-friendly-title instead of www.yoursite.com/?p=4536)
- Meta Robots - Tells search engines how to index your site pages and content
- Site Maps & Image Site Maps
- Canonical Tags - helps reduce duplicate content issues
- Optimized Images
The most important thing to remember is that the technical things only matter if you have good content.
One of the BIGGEST misconceptions about SEO is that people think that by having certain technical features, that their site is automatically going to start bringing in a flood of traffic.
But you also need to focus on creating good content. The technical things will help if you have that.
No matter which website builder you go with, look for the following:
1. A website builder or WordPress theme with good semantic code and standards
2. The ability to optimize things like content, page titles, meta description, etc.
3. Mobile responsive
4. Fast site speed - choose a good web host
5. Most important - create great content
Building a website is like planning a new house or studio with many different options. You could start from scratch and build a dream house, or you could buy a pre-designed home and add a few touches to make it your own.
In general, what you save in price you pay for in time and in having to do most of the work yourself.
What's the difference between a WordPress website and other website services?
I mentioned in the SEO section that WordPress is a self-hosted platform, meaning you need to find your own web hosting in order to use it. You own it and control it and there pretty much isn’t anything that WordPress won’t do. Which can be both good and bad.
“WordPress is like owning a house. You can do whatever you like. You can knock down the walls, redecorate it any way you want, paint the walls, add on. But there’s more upkeep. You have to keep up the maintenance, property taxes, lawn care and all those sorts of things.” Matt Mullenweg, Founder of WordPress
With other services, you go sign up and choose a pre-packaged design. There are no upgrades, no hosting, no maintenance. It’s all handled for you. You can just add your images and text to a pre-designed template. It’s easy, but you lose a little bit of control when it comes to adding features like Ecommerce, and controlling SEO. You don’t have a yard, you can’t knock down the walls – you don’t have as much flexibility.
With WordPress you can do something more customized and you own it. However you need to find a design, hosting, select plugins/features, and so on. There are hundreds of options to choose from.
That's the trade-off. You have to decide what works best for you. Meaning, what do you need your website to do for your business?
The Pros of using a self-hosted service like WordPress
- You own and control it
- It's SEO optimized right out of the box
- There is design customization & flexibility
- You have unlimited features - WordPress can do anything you need it to
- Integrates with many third party tools
- It's well supported & developed
- You can scale and add features as you need
- Inexpensive to get started
The Cons of using a self-hosted service like WordPress
- Unlimited Features - with great freedom comes responsibility
- You own it so you are responsible for web hosting, and if you aren't using some type of managed hosting you are responsible for all of the technical things and issues
- It's hard for inexperienced users to tell good WordPress themes & plugins from bad ones
- There's more setup involved to get started
The Pros of using some third-party hosted services like Squarespace
- It's hosted for you so there's no technical or server management
- Relatively easy to use and get started
- Can be an inexpensive option to start
The Cons of using some third-party hosted services like Squarespace
- You don't own it so you have no control over some things like hosting or site speed
- You can't add additional features - you are limited to what's included
- You can't always move your content to a new site
- You may outgrow the site as your business grows, which means starting over down the line
An off-the-shelf WordPress theme is a great option if you want more control for your site as well as the best mobile and SEO friendly technology. WordPress gives you the ability to customize your site and you can easily add features with plugins. It's a site that can grow with your business.
Often times with many all-in-one services adding new features means you have to start over and re-develop your site, and if you’re locked into a service then adding customizations may not be an option.
With that said, below are a couple of options for you as well as what the main differences are between them. There are dozens of website services out there that may fit the criteria mentioned above, but these are the website options that I am familiar with and know the best.
If you choose WordPress, use a Managed WordPress Hosting service
One of the biggest pain points that I’ve come across for photographers is really poor web hosting. It’s a hassle to have to deal with a website that is super slow all the time or even one that crashes. Or worse, sites that aren’t secured and then finding out that your website was hacked and your host won’t help clear up the issue.
No one wants to deal with hosting issues, optimizing WordPress software or making sure WordPress is secure and updated.
Specialized WordPress hosting manages that for you. They will install WordPress for you and keep it updated and secure. They’ll backup your site every night so you don’t lose important work. They also have have great around the clock support.
Even better, you’re building your website and business on a platform that is owned by YOU.
No extra fees. No hassles of setting up an SSL or paying a third party service. It’s integrated nicely with your brand and website.
Simply sign up and you’re off and running in less than two minutes. Everything is already installed and ready for you to add your content and designs.
If you're going to build on WordPress, then some type of managed hosting is essential.
If you choose a third party hosted solution, I recommend Squarespace
Squarespace is probably the best of the third party (non-owned) solutions. There are many site designs to choose from and they take care of all the hosting and technical stuff. The features offered with Squarespace have the latest technology including native mobile sites, some SEO features and a built-in blog. There isn't anything I've found that's comparable in this price range when you factor in management or technology.
A blog is also included, which is missing from many services is the same price range. Most of the ones I've found require setting up a WordPress blog separately from the main site, which requires additional work and expense.
If you're starting out, Squarespace might be a good option depending on what your long term goals are. You will most likely grow out of it, but it's a solid option to start with. It's sort of like when you started photography with a Canon Rebel. It's a great camera to get your feet wet with until you're ready for the next step.
A couple things about Squarespace
- If online proofing galleries are important to you, and you want to sell prints or digital downloads, you cannot do that with Squarespace. You'll need another solution for that.
- You cannot add additional features to Squarespace. That’s ok, just make sure that it does have the features you need.
*key image SEO settings are turned off by default
Just recently it was brought to my attention that Squarespace has Image Metadata turned off by default, which means when you upload images that key information is removed from your images. Make sure to double-check filenames and titles. Many of the Squarespace sites I've looked at are using generic titles and URL's.
As a result, Squarespace users may be missing out on their images being properly indexed in search engines.
Image SEO is an important consideration. At Seniors Ignite, almost 30% comes from image searches alone. So that’s something to keep in mind when choosing a service.
Price is always an important consideration, but if it's the only criteria you're using for choosing a website service or builder then you'll most likely be disappointed.
While WordPress is free, and there are many free theme designs and plugins available, that’s not a good reason to choose WordPress as a solution. WordPress is anything but free, especially when you are setting up a site for your business.
There are reasons that WordPress powers almost 30% of the web, and the all-in-one services like Squarespace and Wix make up less than 5% of all sites. Price isn't one of them.
In my experience, people end up choosing something like Squarespace because its fairly inexpensive and they like that they don’t have to hassle with installing any software and deal with things like security and server maintenance. There are some things that these services cannot do, and you're limited to what comes with that service.
In the end, it doesn’t matter how cheap, easy or popular your website builder is if it doesn’t have the features you need to grow your business.
1) Most small businesses don’t need a custom website developed for them to get the functionality and features they need from a website.
However,
2) Anyone would benefit from a website strategist or conversion expert no matter what web platform they are on.
Most people need some type of help from a designer to setup their website, no matter what type of website builder they are using. Most solutions now don’t require any sort of technical knowledge in order to use them. Knowing how to setup a site that sells more products and gets more leads does take some experience, however.
Even all-in-one ‘easy’ solutions will seem hard if it’s new to you. I’ve had people tell me Squarespace is complicated and they aren’t sure where to start.
There’s a lot that goes into creating a site, and with any platform there will be a learning curve.
But most people aren’t website experts so this can be hard even with easy DIY solutions.
3) There will be a learning a curve with any service or builder you use
Don’t be fooled by advertising claims of getting your site up and running in five minutes. Getting web software up and running is just a small part of your website. There’s the planning, creating and gathering content, setting up pages, branding, etc.
4) A new website is not a new brand
A lot of template designs look really good and make it easy to get started. The problem is that without a solid brand your site is just another pretty design without a personality. A solid brand is the foundation of a good site.
1) Make a list of what you want to accomplish with your site, and the features you need in order to do that.
It’s important to know what you want your website to do, and what will support your business goals.
2) Key features & questions to consider when choosing a website builder
- How easy is it to use
- Design flexibly - can you easily change things like colors & layouts and add your logo
- Do you own it?
- Portability & Future Proof - what happens when you want to move your site to a different service or change the design or layout of your site
- Support - what kind of support is offered?
3) Your website needs to have the most current SEO Standards
- Good Website Structure and Clean quality Code
- Fast site speed
- Mobile responsive
- Content structure
4) Website Options
a) Self-hosted platform - Like WordPress
WordPress is a self-hosted platform which means you need to find your own web hosting in order to use it. You own it and control it and there pretty much isn’t anything that WordPress won’t do. Which can be both good and bad.
“WordPress is like owning a house. You can do whatever you like. You can knock down the walls, redecorate it any way you want, paint the walls, add on. But there’s more upkeep. You have to keep up the maintenance, property taxes, lawn care and all those sorts of things.” Matt Mullenweg, Founder of WordPress
If you want to use WordPress, then choose some type of Managed Hosting.
b) Hosted Platform - Like Squarespace
With services like Squarespace, you go sign up and choose a pre-packaged design. There are no upgrades, no hosting, no maintenance. It’s all handled for you. You can just add your images and text to a pre-designed template. It’s easy, but you lose a little bit of control when it comes to adding features like Ecommerce, and controlling SEO. You don’t have a yard, you can’t knock down the walls – you don’t have as much flexibility.
Squarespace is probably the best of the third party (non-owned) solutions.
5) Don’t choose something based on price alone
Price is always an important consideration. However, it doesn’t matter how cheap, easy or popular your website builder is if it doesn’t have the features you need to grow your business.
A few additional tips
6) Most small businesses don’t need a custom website developed for them to get the functionality and features they need from a website.
However,
7) Anyone would benefit from a website strategist or specialist no matter what web platform they are on.
Most solutions now don’t require any sort of technical knowledge in order to use them. Knowing how to setup a site that sells more products and gets more leads does take some experience, however
8) There will be a learning a curve with any service or builder you use
Even all-in-one ‘easy’ solutions will seem hard if it’s new to you. Give yourself enough time to properly learn how to use your website builder. Plus don't forget to budget enough time for planning, creating and gathering content, setting up pages, branding, etc.
9) A new website is not a new brand
A solid brand is the foundation of a good site.