National Press Photographers Association

Photography Web Sites: How To Avoid Stupid Mistakes

 

By Allen Murabayashi
CEO, PhotoShelter

NEW YORK, NY (December 7, 2009) – When you’re a kid, you make some stupid decisions. I certainly did. I once put my finger in a live electrical socket to see what it would feel like (answer: weird). I also ate an ant when I was five. It didn’t taste like much. But, I digress. The point is, you make some dumb decisions because you don’t know any better. You’re a kid. You have no background experience to tell you what’s right and wrong. You have no data to influence your decision.

It turns out that old habits die hard. We all see our fair share of professional photographers’ Web sites. In just about every forum I read, photographers regularly share their “newly redesigned” Web sites, and ask each other for feedback. And every time, I see the same mistakes made over and over again. Why? Because photographers are like kids – we make stupid website mistakes when we lack the basic data to inform our decisions. So, too often, you’ll do something because you and your photographer friends just think it looks good, or even worse, because “all the other kids are doing it.” (Say hello to your all-flash Web sites for me, because Google can’t crawl it so I can’t find it. But that’s basic SEO for photography Web sites, the topic we covered extensively in last month’s PhotoShelter/NPPA Virtual Short Course Webinar.)

At this point you’re probably wondering – “Is he talking about me?”

Here’s how to find out. Ask yourself these questions:

If these questions leave you dumbfounded, you’re probably making some stupid Web site mistakes. And you’ll keep making them as long as you let your gut lead your online strategy. Stop the madness, amigo. Start making smart Web site decisions today – it’s only the most powerful tool you have for marketing your photo business online. And it won’t cost you a dime. The solution is Google Analytics.

We’ll be talking about Google Analytics during this week’s PhotoShelter/NPPA Virtual Short Course Webinar. Please sign up to join us!

Google Analytics is a free and extremely powerful service that provides data on how visitors interact with a website. Savvy photographers use it to support business and marketing decisions. We recently created a free kit called “Google Analytics for Photographers.”. It covers exactly what photographers must do to implement and make sense of Google Analytics. You can consider it your comprehensive guide to leaving stupid Web site decisions in the past. (Side note: if your current Web site vendor does not help you add Google Analytics to your Web site, please press the cancel button immediately, because they’re actually hurting your business.)

Let’s look at five basic marketing questions that Google Analytics can help you understand.

How much traffic comes to my site every month? The basic Google Analytics dashboard can tell you this. If you’re seeing less than 250 visitors per month, you need a marketing strategy, because you’re not generating enough traffic to make smart marketing decisions based on analytics. Consider building your search engine optimization to help drive unsolicited visitors to your Web site. Maintain a blog. Consider developing an email newsletter to engage your audience on a regular basis. If you’re seeing more than 750 visits every month, you can use Google Analytics to fine tune your marketing and focus on driving more of the right traffic.

Where is my traffic coming from? You can use the dashboard to understand traffic sources – as in, the percent coming from direct traffic, referring sites, and search engines. Direct traffic comes from visitors who know your URL and/or bookmarked it. You have actively created awareness through an external marketing effort. If your outbound marketing efforts are strong, this will likely be a larger number. Users who click on links to your Web site elsewhere online generate referring traffic. Backlinks are the most important factor in building SEO, so you want to make sure to build this number. You can actually use Google Analytics to determine which individual Web site are generating the best referral traffic to you. When a visitor clicks a search result via a search engine, this generates search traffic. A well optimized website shows up in search engines. This is a critical metric in measuring your SEO efforts. You want this number to be high because it’s indicative of your ability to generate unsolicited (free) traffic.

Is my traffic high-quality, and is it likely to result in revenue? The Google Analytics Visitors Overview can tell you some key stats, like bounce rate, time on site, and pages-per-visit. A bounce is a user who visits a single page on your Web site, then leaves. It’s a good indication that the content didn’t match the user’s expectation. A low time on site is another indication that the content didn’t match the user’s expectation. Pages-per-visit measures visitor engagement. Hopefully you can learn fairly quickly what draws the most click-thrus and stick with those images or types of images.

Does my Web site come up in search engine results for the right keywords? The Google Analytics Keywords Report can give you a wealth of information here. A large number of visits across a wide variety of keywords indicates good Search Engine Optimization. You might be surprised by the keywords driving visitors to your website. You can further investigate which keywords result in visitors completing your desired goal – like purchasing a print, licensing an image, or registering for your newsletter.

Which images/galleries are the most popular and effective? This can be the deciding factor in what images you lead with – and the Google Analytics Top Content report should give you the hard answers. This helps you get past your own opinions and shows you what your visitors like or don’t like. The top content report and site usage metrics can help you understand what content is truly sticky and effective on your Web site.

 

That’s just scratching the surface, and should provide an introduction to the power of Google Analytics Again, you can add Google Analytics to your Web site for free and start running immediately. Please ... make your marketing decisions based on facts, not hunches.

To chat some more about this critical topic, please join us Wednesday, December 9, for the third webinar in the PhotoShelter/NPPA Virtual Short Course series, “Analyze This! Analytics for Photography Websites." Registration is required.

 

* Sponsored by PhotoShelter

 

NPPA Marketplace

Insure Your Equipment
You go where the action is….so should your insurance! Hays delivers comprehensive insurance for your gear - covering cameras, computers, editing equipment and rental.
Join the NPPA
NPPA members receive a wide range of benefits, from educational opportunities to mentoring, exclusive discounts, insurance options, business tips, and much more.