At what stage to switch to a new site?

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At what stage to switch to a new site?

ricardovaste
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p.1 #1 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Hi all…

This is something I’ve long thought about myself, but I’m curious to learn how others have approached this in the past if from a similar position as me. I created a website when I first started to build a portfolio, which has seen it gradually grow over the past year or so. The site is functional at best: easy to read, navigate, access information (from what I can see, and from the feedback I’ve had)… It doesn’t look completely awful, but isn’t great, which is product of my personal limitations with html/css. Furthermore, it does rank well in my area with for SEO, so people are finding me, liking the images (supposedly) and I’m able to steadily grow.

Obviously, when I first started to put things together I couldn’t justify nor afford the cost of having a website designed professionally. The question I have is when do you look to make the jump across to a new site? When you have a large enough referral rate to not rely so much on SEO? At the moment I’m thinking at the end of 2012, but I guess it will depend upon (at that point) how many 2013 bookings I have.

How much should one expect to pay for a new html5/css3 site, with seo? (UK)

Many thanks for your time,
Richard

Feb 09, 2012 at 08:24 PM

stevez32
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p.1 #2 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Having a well designed website should only help your SEO, are you talking about switching to a different domain name? If you are ranking well, you can try to keep a similar link structure but still effectively change the look and feel to users.

Feb 09, 2012 at 08:45 PM

jprezant
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p.1 #3 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

lol. you posted this without linking your website. lol. lol.

Feb 09, 2012 at 08:56 PM

ricardovaste
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p.1 #4 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

stevez32 wrote:
Having a well designed website should only help your SEO, are you talking about switching to a different domain name? If you are ranking well, you can try to keep a similar link structure but still effectively change the look and feel to users.
I think I would probably keep the same domain. I didn't realise this, could we copy over some of the current structure to maintain the SEO... to an extent? I guess the other question is then that, if I did choose a different domain, how long does it realistically take to build its ranking back up? Silly question, I imagine that depends on country/region and how competitive it is?

Feb 09, 2012 at 09:09 PM

hardlyboring
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p.1 #5 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

I have had 3 sites now. The first site was a flash site. Did it myself. It was "the cool thing" at the time...then it sucked.
The second site is the one I have now and it has taken me through close to 3 years of business. It is a straight blogsite. It is decent but it is the best I can do myself with the limited amount of time I have to do things.
About a month ago we made the decision to go ahead with a new site done by Rawfolio. I had a vision based on where are brand is going and needed to bring someone in to execute that my vision. I am charging enough that EVERYTHING needs to be perfect to my couples. They are spending massive amounts of money and I believe they expect the best for their money.
A website is part of your brand just like a logo or how you process your photos. A brand takes time to work through, work out, and implement.
So when do you switch sites...well that depends on you really. It all depends. Their is no right or wrong answer (well the wrong answer would be doing something harmful to your business). If your brand has grown enough that you need to switch things up to make the experience better for your clients then by all means do so. Any improvements you can make are always going to be good if done right.

A new site is good for SEO but SEO can be done other ways and does not have to be "linked" to your site design. My site designer is doing my site but not SEO stuff. I have others that do that.

I would say you need to shop around and get referrals from people who you trust. I spent a HUGE chunk of time debating who to use for my site. I spent hours on the phone with my graphic designer and the different site designers and finally found someone who shared my vision for a site.

Price really has so many factors it is hard to say...
Like good photography you can pay 1000$ or 10,000$ ..... Typically the more expensive people are going to be doing a better job.

Feb 09, 2012 at 09:18 PM

ricardovaste
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p.1 #6 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

jprezant wrote:
lol. you posted this without linking your website. lol. lol.
... do I just not understand American humour here?

Feb 10, 2012 at 12:47 PM

ricardovaste
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p.1 #7 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

hardlyboring wrote:
I have had 3 sites now. The first site was a flash site. Did it myself. It was "the cool thing" at the time...then it sucked.
The second site is the one I have now and it has taken me through close to 3 years of business. It is a straight blogsite. It is decent but it is the best I can do myself with the limited amount of time I have to do things.
About a month ago we made the decision to go ahead with a new site done by Rawfolio. I had a vision based on where are brand is going and needed to bring someone in to execute that my vision. I am charging enough that EVERYTHING needs to be perfect to my couples. They are spending massive amounts of money and I believe they expect the best for their money.
A website is part of your brand just like a logo or how you process your photos. A brand takes time to work through, work out, and implement.
So when do you switch sites...well that depends on you really. It all depends. Their is no right or wrong answer (well the wrong answer would be doing something harmful to your business). If your brand has grown enough that you need to switch things up to make the experience better for your clients then by all means do so. Any improvements you can make are always going to be good if done right.

A new site is good for SEO but SEO can be done other ways and does not have to be "linked" to your site design. My site designer is doing my site but not SEO stuff. I have others that do that.

I would say you need to shop around and get referrals from people who you trust. I spent a HUGE chunk of time debating who to use for my site. I spent hours on the phone with my graphic designer and the different site designers and finally found someone who shared my vision for a site.

Price really has so many factors it is hard to say...
Like good photography you can pay 1000$ or 10,000$ ..... Typically the more expensive people are going to be doing a better job.

Thanks for your input. I think you’ve addressed some of the other thoughts quite well… with regard to how your business is doing and where you work is at and how this relates to the quality and experience your clients have with your website. I guess you just know when you reach that point…

Very true with regard to price, I’ll definitely shop around and consider it fully.

Feb 10, 2012 at 12:54 PM

hardlyboring
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p.1 #8 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Don't be afraid to ask us here as well. A lot of us have a TON of experience with this kind of stuff. Most people WAY more then me.
Jason simply is making a joke because you are asking for website info without having a link to your website. It is hard for us to give good advice without some way to see what you have now.

If you want more specific help with things please link your site so we can take a look.
You will get more responses then I think because then everyone can comment not just a few people who want to take the time to talk about their web design experiences.

Feb 10, 2012 at 01:01 PM

jprezant
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p.1 #9 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

thanks for translating doug

Feb 10, 2012 at 01:07 PM

ricardovaste
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p.1 #10 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Noted, when/if I come to that point I'll stop by here to see if anyone can share some advise on where to go, or indeed how to go about the process.

And... I think general reluctance at putting yourself at the mercy of your peers is... normal? In honesty, I wasn't looking for a website critique as I had got that from other sources, which is the genuine reason I didn't include any link. I was looking for advise on the transition, and how others have dealt with it from experience... If it would help, there it is... www.rharris-images.com

Feb 10, 2012 at 01:20 PM

jprezant
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p.1 #11 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

if we turn this into a brand critique, there are tons of things to be said on your website.

but alas, I'm about to be put under for a kick ass endoscopy. so I will check in later

Feb 10, 2012 at 01:40 PM

Marcus Watts
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p.1 #12 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Get a web host like blu host http://www.bluehost.com/

Get a prophoto blog and have them install it for you .http://www.prophotoblogs.com/buy/

Then make yourself a blog site.

What you have is not bad but not great like you have assessed for yourself. Prophoto will look better right out of the box and allow you to make changes without knowing code.

Less than $300 and you are miles ahead.

You current site is just too much information in too many places. Why have several galleries for weddings, just have one with 30-50 of your very best images. People can see individual weddings on the blog.

Don't quote famous photographers, if you are a creative then you should be seen to have developed your own philosophy rather than leaning on someone else's. Plus lots of other photographers are doing it.

Make is simple and easy to navigate. The less clicks a visitor has to make to get to the information they want the better.

Don't have blog in brackets. There is no context for it and it doesn't look cool. Other than that you could take the font over to the new site.

Good luck.

Feb 10, 2012 at 02:11 PM

ricardovaste
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p.1 #13 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

“Don't quote famous photographers, if you are a creative then you should be seen to have developed your own philosophy rather than leaning on someone else's. Plus lots of other photographers are doing it.”
In honesty I only changed that two days ago. Before it was my own “quote”, a philosophy if you will. However, that had long felt a bit pretentious to me, perhaps I was wrong to think that though.
“Don't have blog in brackets. There is no context for it and it doesn't look cool. Other than that you could take the font over to the new site.”
I don’t understand what you mean by “brackets”, do you mean different tabs? If you could elaborate that would be useful. The blog I use is blogger, there isn’t a lot of flexibility, but perhaps I could change something.
“Prophoto will look better right out of the box and allow you to make changes without knowing code.

Less than $300 and you are miles ahead.”
Thanks for the recommendation. They do look quite nice, but given the time it will take to get everything working, loaded up and then for my seo to be knocked down for several months… at this point in time I don’t think it would be worth it. Perhaps at the end of 2012 I can look at this though, depending upon how 2013 looks.
“You current site is just too much information in too many places. Why have several galleries for weddings, just have one with 30-50 of your very best images. People can see individual weddings on the blog.”
Okay, I will try and cut back the information. I think the right tab on the homepage probably isn’t necessary, as it just duplicates a blog timeline to an extent. I’m unsure on how to display galleries – some show 2 or 3 weddings, some show one gallery with the best from many weddings. Personally, I prefer to show individual weddings as I find this more honest to an extent, but I do agree that I should cut this back to show the better images… I don’t like the thumbnails for that reason either, but the other options with smugmug aren’t a lot better.

Feb 10, 2012 at 04:19 PM

Marcus Watts
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p.1 #14 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

It would not take much to set up and as for seo just re do your current page into a splash page linking to your new site and blog. It won't take long for the new blog to get picked up then remove the splash page.

Feb 10, 2012 at 04:29 PM

dowright82
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p.1 #15 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

As a photographer/web designer - I'd be happy to help any of you build new websites - just FYI

two of my sites as samples:

www.dwdweddings.com

www.donwrightphoto.com

We're happy to help install/customize/edit themes and templates as well - and work within any budget - work is simply billed hourly.

Feb 10, 2012 at 06:50 PM

Marcus Watts
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p.1 #16 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

He might be better with what he already has.

Feb 10, 2012 at 06:59 PM

TomHarmon
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p.1 #17 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

If you want a new domain, use a 301 redirect from your old site. You shouldn't lose too much ranking juice, and with a little effort, you should be back where you were in no time.

Feb 10, 2012 at 07:27 PM

sherijohnson
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p.1 #18 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

one thing you could risk with making a new site is losing the SEO you have built up till now, proceed with a lot of research and caution to not damage the SEO you already have.

Feb 10, 2012 at 07:38 PM

Marcus Watts
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p.1 #19 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

As is pointed out he won't need to lose any seo advantage.

Feb 10, 2012 at 08:12 PM

Nic Cleave
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p.1 #20 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Richard,

We were in the same position as you a year ago. Our old html site was approaching 10 years of age and had evolved from a poor template site, to a site that clients said they liked, but which we felt was limited in terms of professionalism and did not quite show the brand or styling we wanted for our work.

Over the years I'd learned small bits of html coding and with trial and error got most things to work the way I wanted. I even got to grips with the basics of Dreamweaver (not a very intuitive package in my opinion,) but always felt there was something missing.

Long story short, we started using wordpress for our blog...purchased prophoto as a theme for the blog...then decided that we wanted to use WP and Prophoto for the whole site...Last Feb this was born: www.niccleave.com

Now I know that many people now see Prophoto as an 'over-used' template by photographers, with many leaving the default settings and making minimal customisations, but we have found that it's easy to use, and even easier to personalise to our own branding and style.

It's certainly cheaper than having a web design company do it for us, but that wasn't the reason for the choice, as we were ready to spend serious money on a new site. More important to us is that it looks right, and we can update/change any part of it whenever we want to.

Better still, it's now almost our only source of advertising and marketing, and in the 12 months since we launched the new site, business has started to pick up again, with many, many positive comments from old, current and past clients that they like the simplicity, ease of navigation and emphasis on imagery that the site now provides.

Good luck my friend. It's a decision that you won't regret you made, come Feb 2013.

Regards,

Nic

Feb 11, 2012 at 07:52 AM


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