The Best Photography Website Templates: Introducing a New Series

***UPDATE: Below I say that I ultimately chose Photobiz as my solution. I did for my wedding site. But I’ve recently converted my personal site (as well as this site) to the new Photocrati WordPress themes. You can check out the themes here: Photocrati’s WordPress photography themes.

Of all the template shops I considered in my recent search for a new web template for danzerphotography.com, I ultimately chose Photobiz. Here is a screen shot of a gallery page on my site as it currently appears with thumbnails on the right:

Since I chose Photobiz, that should mean I think it’s the best choice out there, right? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Photobiz, like all template-style solutions has it’s own limitations. For some users, lack of flexibility, high cost, or search engine optimization challenges might mean trying another solution.

OVERVIEW

Photobiz is an all in one web solution for photographers. For a mixture of one time fees (to buy a template, set up shoppting carts etc) and monthly fees (for hosting), they handle everything: flash templates, hosting (in fact, you HAVE to host there, which is a limitation), online proofing and sales functionality so you can sell prints directly to clients, and a range of other functions and services.
Photobiz templates and the system for selecting them is at the heart of the Photobiz solution. They offer over 30 different templates, all with Flash and HTML equivalents, to choose from. One of the best features is that you’re allowed to change templates as often as you like. So if you decide you don’t like one (which I do often) you can change to another with a few mouse clicks. That’s incredibly useful. Their internal architecture ensures that all your galleries and information pages get convert seamlessly to the new theme.

OVERALL APPEARANCE

The main reason I chose Photobiz was that I liked the look of it’s websites. I wanted to try a flash site for my website this time, and Photobiz offers a ample array of beautiful flash templates and allows you to switch between them effortlessly. Their templates vary from traditional to modern, simple to decorative. You can see demos of most of their templates from their home page. Here is a screen shot of the template selection page in the back end where you can change your template with a few mouse clicks:

For each template, Photobiz offers an array of color palettes that can transform the look of your site even with the same template. They also offer the option of  setting your own colors – you can manually change the color of backgrounds, titles, text, menus, and other parts of the site.

While I have not set up the e-commerce functionality on my site yet, I should also note that the appearance of their online ordering pages seems quite elegant, simple, and user friendly. See below for full description.

The combination of beautiful templates, and the ability to not only choose between templates but customize colors within them means that, overall, I really give Photobiz high grades on appearance.

Grade: A

EASE OF USE

This is another strength of Photobiz. Their back end management system is super easy. I don’t think they could have made it any easier to add, substract, and change your website than they have. Here’s a quick look at the backend management system. When you first log in, you are taken to this page:

The round “Flash/HTML” icon on that screen shot, which takes you to all of your main site content. Here’s what you see when click that button and look at your site from the back end:

On the left hand side, you will see a list of pages and galleries. To make changes to any of those, you click on the relevant menu item. You change text using a normal text-edit box. And you upload photos with an easy-to-use, java-based upload system that looks much like the page above. You tell Photobiz which directory on you computer you want to upload photos from, and it show a list of thumbnails in that folder on your computer. You just select the ones you want, and click upload. The uploading process is relatively fast and glitch free.

Grade: A

FLEXIBILITY OF DESIGN

As already noted, there is substantial flexibility to choose between templates and customize colors within templates. That is, however, as far as the flexibility goes. While Photobiz’s template system creates all kinds of advantages, one of the biggest disadvantages is that you cannot customize your site in the myriad small ways you may be used to if you’ve had your own site in the past. You can’t add extra notes and announcements to your home page, and your home page title is limited to a specific number of characters.

What this ultimately comes down to: when you set up a site with Photobiz, you won’t have direct access to any of the html, css, or other files that comprise your website. Actually, since the sites are flash-based, even if you had access to the site files, making any adjustments would be very difficult. So it’s partly a function of flash, and partly a function of the fact that Photobiz only allows you to work on your site through their provided back end management system. You don’t get FTP or other access to the server.

As a consquence, YOUR ARE LIMITIED TO WHAT EVER DESIGNS AND FUNCTIONS PHOTOBIZ HAS THOUGHT TO PROVIDE. If you are technically savvy and like the ability to tweak the appearance of your site and add little extras here and there, that won’t happen at Photobiz.

Grade: D

BLOGGING CAPABILITY

None. The other, and perhaps even more important limitation to a Photobiz site, is that there is no blogging capability. If want to maintain a blog, you would need to host it on a different server and different domain name. Give the importance of blogging today as a critical way to interact with past or potential clients, that’s a surprising omission and big, big limitation, as least as far as I’m concerned.

Grade: F

E-COMMERCE FUNCTIONALITY

Now we move back into one of the potential strength areas for Photobiz. I haven’t set up e-commerce functionality on my site yet. It costs an extra $125, and I have not yet had a reason to pay the extra fee.

Once set up, a link appears on the top menu of your site that takes you to the main landing page for online proofing/shoppting galleries. The landing page can be set to show categories; within each category you can set up a list of galleries. Click in the galleries for thumbnails of images, and click on the thumbnails to see a particular image. Pretty straight forward.

Here’s an individual image page, where clients are able to place orders. You can see the interface on the upper right where clients can select print sizes, number of prints, etc, before adding the image to their cart.

There seems to be an upside and a down side to Photobiz’s e-commerce functionality. On the upside, their online ordering pages and seem remarkably elegant and user friendly. This seems to fit with their overall knack for design. Also on the upside, this functionality is remarkably easy to set up, and it’s great to have a beautiful selection of flash templates AND online ordering in the same place.

On the down side, while the Photobiz online ordering system takes orders for you, it DOES NOT offer order fulfillment. Once a client submits and order, Photobiz simply emails you with the order, and you must fulfill the order through your normal labs. I talked to a Photobiz representative about this, and they said they may add this functionality in the next year. They also noted that many photographers prefer it this way, because they can use their own preferred labs.

Personally, I would strongly prefer to be removed from the order fulfillment process, and have orders go directly to a lab, as happens with pro storefronts at places like Printroom or SmugMug. Individual order fulfillment can be very time consuming.

Grade: B

COST AND FEE STRUCTURE

So how much does this all cost? Clearly, Photobix is a premium template provider. They’re not selling based on price, but based on an impressive packages of services. Accordingly, Photobiz is very much on the expensive side of spectrum for photographer templates. Beyond that, I also find their fee structure a bit confusing in the sense that there are a lot of add on costs that you won’t expect if you are not paying very careful attention.

For most of their services, they charge a one time fee. For example, it costs $125 to get a flash template plus the right to switch templates as often as you like. It costs $45 to set up an HTML mirror of your flash site, $95 to set up online shopping functionality, etc.

On top of those one-time fees, you then pay a monthly that varies depending on the total number of images hosted on your site. On the low end, you can pay $15/month if you have 200 or less photos. On the high-end, it will cost you $100 if you have 12000 photos. For most photographers, the best level is someplace in the middle – say $60 for 3600 photos.

This monthly fee is the potential killer. If you are pro who shoots lots of weddings, for example, and you upload 500 images per wedding for your clients, those photos add up fast. You are going to need to pay between $60 and $100 per month to host all those images.

In addition, there are strange small fees that seem a bit stingy. For example, by default a website comes with 4-5 text pages – any non-gallery page with text on it, like your about page or the page where you describe your services. If you would like to add another text page, you have to pay a one-time fee of $15. Seems like an unnecessary way to extract a bit more from you.

Given all this, how much would it cost to set up a basic site? One time fees are $140, including flash template for $125 and an extra text page for $15. Monthly fees are $15 per month (for 200 or less total photos on your site). So the total for the first year: $320.

How much would it cost to set up a very complete site and take advantage of all Photobiz’s functionality? One time fees are $310, including flash tempate $125, HTML mirro4r $45, shopping cart and online ordering $125, an extra text page $15. Monthly fees are $60-100 (for 1800-12000 photos on your site). Total cost for first year: $1030-$1510.

Needless to say, that’s quite a bit. Obviously you’re getting a lot for the money. And, of course, if you compare it with the cost of hiring a web designer to create a flash html site with e-commerce functionality – which would cost $1500-5000 – it seems reasonable. But the difference is that if you keep your site with Photobiz, you will continue to pay this amount year after year, rather than just once for your own site. And the appropriate comparison here is not your own designer, but other templates you might consider.

Grade: C-

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Flash-based websites have traditionally created problems for search engines. This is of critical importance, since most traffic to most websites comes via search engines. What’s the point of having a beautiful site if it can’t be found?

The problem with flash is that search engines see your whole “flash unit” for lack of a better term, as a single image or video with no readable information. Because the text is effectively part of the flash animation, search engines cannot see it, and that’s how they generally determine the relevance of a given site. So you don’t get the same benefits of a text rich website.

There are a number of ways to mitigate the negative SEO-effects. Photobiz is obviously aware of this and provides a means to add meta tags to each of your pages.

From their FAQ: “Can I optimize my website for search engines? You will have the ability to add meta-tags to your website. We also offer useful links to submit your website for free to major search engines.”

But this only gets you so far. In addition to the internal SEO challenges, another related problem is that you can’t link to any of the individual pages on your site. You can only link to your homepage.

Grade: D

FREE TRIALS AND GUARANTEES

Photobiz offers a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee. I haven’t tried it, so I don’t know how easy it is to ask for a refund, but I’ll take them at their word and assume it’s relatively straight forward.

Grade: A

CONCLUSION

In short, Photobiz offers an impressive array of beautiful flash templates, and allows you to switch between them for free. The templates, the back end management system, and online ordering system underscore that Photobiz has some great designers who know how to make websites that look great and are very easy to use, all while packing powerful functionality.

On the downside, Photobiz occupies the most expensive end of the spectrum for template-style solutions at $300-$1500 for the first year. It lacks flexibility for tweaking a site if you are the tech-savvy type and, more important, lacks any blogging functionality. It’s online order system, while elegant, does not offer any order fulfillment, so you still have to do that part yourself.

Overall Grade: B+/A-

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But I’d push you to move beyond simple site design and think creatively about all the other content you might add to attract people to your site, enhance your reputation, and increase your income. While the types of content you might add are limited only by your imagination, you might start by considering things like blogs, reviews, or advice. Blogs, especially, are becoming almost standard for many pro photographers.

Why? First, good quality content attracts more viewers and more potential clients, and keeps them coming back to your site. That is, it generates traffic. High traffic helps you indirectly by getting your name out there and expanding your reputation. It helps you directly by generating more leads for your photography. And, if you manage your site well, it will help you directly by generating immediate sales and advertising revenue from your site.

By far the most common type of additional content today, and easiest to start and develop, is the blog, one of the great new communication forms of the web. As I’m sure readers here know, blogs deal with all kinds of subjects: photography, law, politics, economics. There are many blogs that don’t seem to deal with anything at all. They just circulate gossip or recount people’s personal stories. There are at least two broad categories of blogs that you can consider adding to your photography site: a blog targeting other photographers, or a blog targeting prospective and past clients.

Client-oriented blogs

Client-oriented blogs are by far the most common for pro photographers. On a client-oriented blog, you write light fare about recent photographic work you’ve been doing, post samples from recent shoots, announce new projects, and offer personal ruminations about your photography work. Much of the content is specifically client-related – “check out this photo from my wedding last weekend…Mark and Lisa were great!” But other posts may be of a more personal or general nature – “I was out at Red Rocks park yesterday taking landscape photographs. The lighting was brilliant, and it made me think about …..”

The overall effect of such a blog is to allow readers to get a strong sense of your personality and your work as a photographer. These are the kinds of blogs that family, friends, and fellow photo enthusiasts will enjoy reading as well as clients. But a real advantage is that the blog allows clients to get a feel for what kind of person you are and whether your personality and style fits with what they want.

Depending on how open you are about sharing your own personality, some people use blogs essentially like diaries, just to tell their personal stories. If you think no one is interested in your personal ponderings, think again. It’s always surprising to me that people are interested in reading the personal diaries of others, but they are. People seem to be voyeuristic by nature.

If you are reading this, then you aspire to be a professional photographer. How many other people in the world do you think aspire to be professional photographers? A lot! We often consider that to be a bad thing, because it means more competition. But from the perspective of a blogger, all these people are your compatriots, interested in the same things and engaged in the same struggles. There’s a good chance that many would be interested in reading about your personal journey.

Blogs oriented toward fellow photographers

For this kind of blog, you find a photography-related subject that you have (or can get) special knowledge or insight about. You share that information with other photographers. And if it’s valuable enough, they will come. This blog is a good example, as are two other groups blogs that I run, Photocrati and SLR Geek.

Many people think they don’t know enough about anything interesting to write their own blog. Think again. You know more than you think you do, and you DO have some special knowledge that would be valuable for others. Good possibilities might include the best photography locations in your town, including the best places for landscape shots or wedding photos or some other kind of photography. You might talk about the techniques you’ve used to produce your favorite shots. Or the best camera stores in your town. Or the problems you’ve had with photoshop and how you’ve solved them. Or the best photography books you’ve read.

One adaptation of this kind of blog is to collect existing online advice and to provide an intuitively organized clearinghouse of information on certain subjects. The web universe is so vast that it can take hours of searching to find the right resources, and even then you often don’t find the best ones. If you can find the best resources for others, you can save them time and provide a valuable service.

Another adaptation for the truly enterprising is to expand your blog beyond yourself. You can invite others who know as much (or perhaps more) than you on particular subjects to contribute to your blog. Some blogs are based entirely on this model, providing a forum for many bloggers to post their thoughts on a given subject.

To make all of this more concrete, consider an example. Let’s say you enjoy doing macro and super-close up photography. In addition to showcasing your own imagery on your site, you could collect and organize the most valuable information on the web for close-up photography—locations, techniques, equipment. You could also find other great close up photographers, local or national depending on your ambitions, and get them to post on your site. Now your site is becoming a focal point for the community of photographers who do close-up work. From there you can keep expanding. The additional content not only generates traffic, and therefore opportunities for revenue, but also solidifies your reputation as a close-up photographer.

You can do the same thing if you specialize in weddings, cultural photography in Jordan, wildlife in Kentucky, or extreme sports.

Starting Your Blog

Blogs are remarkably easy to start. The simplest approach is to go to WordPress (www.wordpress.com) or Blogspot (www.blogspot.com) and simply follow the instructions to get started. Your blog can be up an running in minutes, free of charge. They will give you a site address like janesmith.wordress.com to host your blog, and you can just add a link to that address from you photography website. Even those lacking tech savvy will find setting up a blog to be a relatively easy process.

If you want to have the blog based directly on your site (ie. www.janesmith.com), I would suggest downloading and installing WordPress software directly to the server where you site is hosted. While this may sound complicated, it’s not. If you have set your site up yourself, including setting up your domain name and hosting service, then you can simply call your hosting service and ask them for instructions. Most webhosting services have a simple, “one-click” option for installing WordPress on your site that greatly simplifies the process.

Indeed, if you are still waiting to set up your site, you can go to bluehost.com now, use the check domain link to find a web address you like (www.janesmith.com), and then call Bluehost to set up your site and install WordPress at the same time. You can have the whole thing up and running in 15-20 minutes.

Blog as Business Activity

I’ve already noted some of direct benefits of runnig a blog: it solidifies your reputation as an expert in the kind of photography you do, it shows readers your personality, and (due to both of the previous) it helps you attract and keep clients.

If you are enterprising enough, however, you can make your blog a source of income in it’s own right. I’ve written in another article about the importance of Multiple Streams of Photography Income. I honestly believe that most photographers, especially those starting out, need to think beyond the simple take-photos-and-get-paid-for-it model of the photography business. Most pros do a range of income earning activities beyond photography – from writting magazine articles or books to conducting workshops to providing photo editing services to other photographers.

In this spirit, a well-done blog can be its own business activity. Once your blog develops a decent readership, it’s quite feasible that you can bring in an additional $1000/month from a blog. This article is not the place to go into great detail about how to “monetize” a blog. I’ll be clear in saying that you need to do this carefully. Many a blog has been ruined by excessive emphasis on income. But it can be done right, with taste, grace, and a continued emphasis on providing a enjoyable experience for your readers.

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Have a blog? What you think about the role of blogging in photography?

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Note: Photocrati has just released an outstanding set of WordPress-based photography website templates. Unlike most solutions I’ve looked at in this series, they combine both gallery management and blogging in one package. I may be biased, since I’m involved with Photocrati, but I think they’re an awesome solution.

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While I’ve done weddings and portraits in the past to supplement income from my other photographic work, I recently entered the waters of wedding and portrait photography more thoroughly. As part of the new venture, I needed a new website dedicated exclusively to wedding and portrait photography.

These days, there are tons of great website templates and pro storefronts available to photographers: Printroom, Smugmug, BetterPhoto, ifp3, Snapfish, Foliolink, and others. Although all of these solutions have limitations, they also offer some great websites. Unless you’re a web guru or have lots of money to burn, there’s really no reason to build a site from scratch.

In the past, and in my more recent search, I’ve examined or tested a wide range of photo website templates. There are almost no genuine reviews of what’s out there, and the information provided by the sites themselves is obvious biased and limited, so you often have to actually buy and test a templates to really see if it’s the right fit.

The aim of this series is give photographers a better and more systematic basis for choosing their web template. So over the next couple of months, I’m going to write reviews of all the major web template providers. Here’s the list of site providers you’ll hear about over the next two months:

BetterPhoto
Big Black Bag
Foliolink
ifp3
Photobiz
PortfolioSiteZ
Printroom
SiteWelder
SmugMug
Snapfish
Wordpress Templates (from various providers)

I’ll also prepare a article with a round-up review of general template sites like Template Monster, Entheos, and Flash Mint. These are huge template shops that provide photography templates along with many, many others. While they have nice looking templates, they generally don’t anticipate photographers’ needs as well as sites dedicated to photographers.

That’s still an incomplete list, and I’ll add additional sites as I find them. If you know of good quality photography template providers, please let me know in the comments.

In order to be systematic and provide a basis for effective comparison, we’ll be looking each of the following aspects, which reflect some of the features I think are important for today’s photographers.

OVERALL APPEARANCE
FLEXIBILITY OF DESIGN
BLOGGING CAPABILITY
E-COMMERCE FUNCTIONALITY
COST AND FEE STRUCTURE
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
FREE TRIALS AND GUARANTEES
CONCLUSION (INCLUDING PROS AND CONS)

I’ll provide screen shots of sample websites and links to demos built from the templates as well as screen shots of the back end management system so you’ll know what you’re really getting into.

The first review will cover Photobiz, which is the provider I ultimately chose for a new wedding and portrait site. While I like the look, Photobiz also come with important limitations that I’m just now encountering. Look for the first review by early next week.

UPDATE: I’ve since switched my sites to PHOTOCRATI. It’s based on WordPress, which is the fastest growing platform for websites, build for blogging, and among the most SEO friendly platforms.

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