Website for photographers, with packages booked and weddings quoted
The work arrives in two shapes: somebody who has looked through the portfolio and wants a family session in October, and somebody getting married in fourteen months who needs a number before they will even speak to you. The first of those should be able to book and pay without you touching it, and the second never can.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From £49 to £199 a month, excluding VAT.
Three evenings you have already had
The photography is the part that works. It is everything either side of the shutter that eats the week.
The enquiry with no date in it
Hi, I love your work, how much do you charge. That is the whole message. No date, no location, no idea whether it is two people in a field in Northumberland or a hundred and forty in a hotel.
So you write back asking the three questions, and they reply two days later with one of the answers, and by the time you have enough to quote from you have spent forty minutes on somebody who was always going to book whoever answered first.
Explaining the same three packages again
There is a short session, a longer one, and one with an album in it, and the difference between them is obvious to you and to nobody else. Every enquiry gets the same three paragraphs typed out again, slightly differently each time, because you cannot find the last version.
Half of them go quiet after that, and you will never know whether it was the price or the fact that they had to read four hundred words to work out what they were buying.
The deposit, chased twice
The date is verbally held, the couple are lovely, and the deposit that makes the whole thing real has not arrived. You have mentioned it once, politely, and you are now composing the second message in your head while somebody else is asking about that same Saturday in June.
Until the money is in, the booking is a promise between two busy people, and the calendar has an entry in it that you cannot honestly sell to anyone else.
What changes when the site does the selling
Two routes through the same page: one for the things that have a price, one for the things that need a conversation and a document.
Packages written down once, in a shape people can compare
Each package is an entry with a name, what is in it, how long it runs and how it is priced. A portrait session at a package price, an hour of headshots at a fixed price, a wedding marked as quoted because it honestly is.
Somebody reading at half eleven at night can see the difference between your three sessions in about twenty seconds, which is roughly how long they are going to give it.
A session booked outright, with the deposit paid there
For the packages that have a price, the client picks the type, picks a date from what is genuinely open in your calendar, and pays. The booking exists because the money exists, not because an e-mail was warm.
Sessions can have different lengths, so a newborn morning and a twenty minute headshot sitting are not offered against the same gaps, and travel days you have blocked out never appear as available.
Weddings get a real quote, on a page of their own
Build it from lines: hours of coverage, a second photographer, travel, an album, prints. It goes out as a link rather than an attachment, and the couple read it, approve it with a click and pay the deposit on the same page.
Payment runs through your own Stripe account. You can see when it was opened, which is the end of wondering whether it went into a spam folder.
Codes and offers for the quiet months
February and November are thin for nearly everybody who shoots portraits. A dated offer on a mini session can be set to run for three weeks and stop by itself, without you having to remember to take it down.
A code for a couple who have sent you two other couples does what you intended without an arithmetic problem at the end of the month, and an album upsell can sit on the booking page rather than in a follow-up e-mail.
How a photographer's list is usually laid out
You write the names, decide what is in each one and set the figures. The pricing type is what stops a wedding and a headshot pretending to be the same kind of sale.
Group the list by what people are actually looking for, for instance portraits, weddings and commercial work, each with its own prices.
Questions photographers ask first
Yes. A package can be paid for in full or with a deposit at booking, and a wedding quote can carry a deposit line that is settled on the approval page. The money moves through your own Stripe account, not ours.
They go on the list as quoted. The enquiry asks for the date, the venue and how many hours you are wanted for, and you turn that into a quote with cost lines that the couple approve on a page of their own.
It should be. The pictures carry the page and the booking sits underneath them, so somebody scrolling through a gallery reaches a date picker rather than a contact form at the bottom of it.
Anything you block in the calendar is invisible to online booking, including travel days and the week after a wedding. Clients only ever see the dates you would genuinely say yes to.
No. The existing site can be imported so the text and the structure come across, and you rebuild what you want to change by clicking on the page. The images are yours and stay yours throughout.
From £49 up to £199 a month plus VAT. All four plans put the site on your own domain, with SSL, hosting, nightly backups and support. SMS is a prepaid add-on, and online payments land in your own Stripe account.
More trades
- AccountantsEnquiries that arrive with the numbers you need.
- Law firmsAn advisory meeting with a stated price.
- IT consultantsThe first meeting booked, the agreement following the quote.
- Creative agenciesA meeting booked from the portfolio.
- Landscapers and gardenersSite visits in spring, maintenance all year.
- Tree surgeonsPhotos and details in the form before the drive.
- All trades
Put the portfolio to work
Send it a description of the work you take on, or the address of the portfolio you have now, and it builds a first version with your packages, an enquiry that asks the right questions and a wedding quote template. Then you shape it by clicking on the page.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From £49 to £199 a month, excluding VAT.