Photography Brand Identity: Website Design Goals [Part 1 of 4]
After going through a logo redesign with Brian Hoff, the next rebranding step was to redo our website. As photographers, an online presence is our number one marketing piece and displays our work to the world. We would be foolish not to invest heavily in professional web design!
GOALS
I started our site redesign by accepting proposals for an entire website built on WordPress. Although it’s known primarily as a blogging platform, WordPress has a lot more capabilities, is open source, and functions beautifully as a content management system. Here are a few goals I had in mind and reasons for going the WordPress route.
- Easy to use – Clients shouldn’t have to guess how to navigate the site.
- A home page that has a magazine style with highlights from galleries, the blog, social media links, and our current promotion. This page should draw the user into the site and encourage them to explore our work.
- Other pages include: About, Contact, Portfolio, Info, Testimonials
- Improved SEO – It doesn’t get any better than WordPress for Search Engine Optimization
- Blog/Site Integration – With no difference in layout or feel between the sections, users are free to jump back and forth between the site and blog with no disruption
- No Flash dependency – Site built on PHP, CSS, other technologies to avoid Flash issues
BUDGET & DESIGN NEEDS
While not cheap, designing with WordPress is often more cost effective than having a designer come up with a content management system for your site. Costs vary widely, depending on whether it’s a company or freelancer. It’s expensive, but not as expensive as losing business because of a poorly designed site. (After getting bids back, it was harder to remember this. “It’s an investment, it’s an investment” I kept telling myself.)
There are two main difficulties when looking for WordPress designers. First, most good graphic artists are not good WordPress developers. Second, most good WordPress developers are not good graphic artists. Finding one person who is talented in both areas is very difficult. I eventually narrowed it down to 2 freelancers and 2 studios. Here is who I considered.
Maquina Studio – This was ultimately my choice for designer. Maquina is a single man operation, but Cristian is very knowledgeable and easy to talk to. He offers good, clean design and is very capable in WordPress. This proved to be a great decision.
Rusty George – I loved the design & attitude of this studio. We would have worked very well together and I enjoyed talking with their staff. My hesitation came because I would pay for a full design studio staff but they would end up contracting out the WordPress development.
Doejo – Cost was an issue, although they tried negotiating on this. They called within 5 minutes of my online inquiry submission, which was quite impressive. Doejo is a younger, modern group of designers and coders and could have been a great fit, but not with our smaller budget.
Prototype Syndicate – Raul does amazing work and I was very impressed by his WordPress skills. Greg from Science of Fiction highly recommended him but I just couldn’t quite get a feel for his graphic design style.
Another consideration in selecting a designer was finding someone whose style would fit our target demographics. While we often focus heavily on senior pictures, we also do portrait, commercial, and kids photography locally in Eugene and Salem as well as other portions of Oregon and the country. Any design needed to be modern, so as to appeal to teenagers, yet professional and not alienate our other clients.
In Part 2, Website Design Planning, I’ll get into detail about the work that went on behind the scenes laying out the Ten18 site and making sure we got exactly what we wanted.
Share this post:
