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What are the best photography website designs?

Female photographer in front of waterfall - Iceland thinking of the best photography website designs

Designing a website for a photography business can be an exciting process; there are so many options in terms of layout, design and types of content that you could include. 

Building the right website for your business can be difficult, and with so many options you may fall into some bad web design habits, such as creating an overcrowded website. However, at Go SiteBuilder our ready made templates are designed to guide you every step of the way to help you create a professional and stylish website.

In a creative industry such as photography, showing creativity and flair in your web design is incredibly important. Without a well-conceived web design visitors may be discouraged from using your services or browsing through your work. Creating a website that displays your photographs beautifully and gives the visitors all the relevant information is vital. 

Key aspects to consider:

Web design can be confusing and overwhelming, especially if this is the first website you have designed. When designing a website, there are some key elements which you must think about before designing your website. The best photography businesses carefully consider these key components when designing their websites:

  • Web design – does your web design really reflect your business and your aesthetic?
  • Layout – is your website easy to use and navigate?
  • Portraying your business model – does your website show what kind of photography you offer?
  • Showing your work – what type of gallery layout do you want? For more inspiration read our blog on how to create a photo gallery.

For more information on what to include in your website check out our blog on what features you should include in your photography website. Below we are going to give some examples of the best examples of photography websites in different styles to help you design the best website for your business. 

Landscape Photography Website: Colin Prior Photography

Source: Colin Prior

This website is a stunning example of how great web design can show your photographs in their best light. The large header photograph is part of a slideshow that changes between equally beautiful landscape pictures. The layout is simple yet effective, with a clean minimalist aesthetic allowing the photographs to shine. 

Portrait Photography: Joe McNally

Source: Joe McNally Photography

This photography website clearly shows the type of photography that the company specialises in. There is a range of photographs on the homepage, immediately exposing visitors to the photographers style. The sidebar menu shows the various styles of photography that they specialise in. Although this layout may not be an option with many website builders, there are more simple ways to achieve the same look. For example using a collection of photographs in a gallery on your homepage will give a similar effect. 

Fashion Photography: The Fashion Camera

Source: The Fashion Camera

This fashion photographer has taken a slightly different approach to her website, by focusing on her personal connection to her work. This creates a connection between the visitor and the website owner. Certainly not a strategy every business may want to use but for this type of photography using your point of view can be useful. The muted colours and font create a stylish website with an effective design and layout. 

Art/Concept Photography: Shaw and Shaw

Source: Shaw and Shaw Photography

Shaw and Shaw’s photography website is a great example of how colours and unique design can elevate a website. This is particularly effective in this photography style of art or concept work, where aesthetic is so important. The multicolored menu draws the eye but doesn’t detract from the photograph above. The website mostly operates on a slideshow with a page of information at the end. Although not the most informative, the unique elements of this website make it memorable and successful. 

Wedding Photography: Holly Rose Weddings

wedding photography site homepage with married couple

Source: Holly Rose Weddings

The design for this wedding photography website is very effective. The colour scheme is muted and the design is minimalist. These soft design decisions create a beautiful wedding website which ties in with the photo shoot chosen as the header. The menu is simple and easy to navigate as a header menu. 

If you’re ready to build an amazing website for your photography business, then look no further than Go Sitebuilder. With a wide range of features, including multiple gallery options our simple website builder design means you can have a professional looking website up and running in minutes. Try our 14-day free trial today!

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How do I make images load faster on my website?

A male and a female business owners stood in a shop looking at a tablet device. Both are wearing aprons and smiling

Everyone hates a slow website – according to an Akamai Technologies survey, 47% of customers expect a page to load in less than two seconds. When it comes to the internet, we’re used to getting results quickly, and we don’t like to be kept waiting. If the images on your site don’t load quickly, it’s likely that traffic to your site will simply click off, potentially preventing you from making a sale. 

Not only is this bad for business, but it is also bad for SEO – if high numbers of people are clicking off your site, Google will pick up on your bounce rate and deem your content to be of low value, consequently lowering your ranking on its search engines. Don’t worry – speeding up the load time of your images isn’t as complicated as it seems. We’ve broken down some of the best ways to make your images load faster when building your site.

1. Remove unnecessary images 

According to a report from the HTTP Archive, a typical website should request between 28 to 32 images when it loads the page. Of course, some images are necessary, as if you have an ecommerce site you’ll want to display the products you’re selling. However, if you have multiple images of the same product, or added in unnecessary images simply for web design purposes, you might want to consider removing these. 

When considering what images you want to keep on your website, ask yourself the following to help you form a criteria of what to keep and what to remove:

  • Does my image send out a message?
  • Does it evoke any feelings?
  • Will it help sell my products?
  • Does it emphasise a point?
  • Does it add to my brand?

Pictures of text, or stock images, should be on the first of your list to remove: even if you think they really add something to your site, the likelihood is that they are of little value, and actually lower the impact of your images by slowing down their load time.

2. Size matters

When building your site, you need to be conscious of the size of the image file you’re uploading into your website builder. Whilst an image might seem relatively small on your website, it could have an unnecessarily large file size, meaning it can slow down not only the load time of the image, but also your website’s. 

Compressing your images is a good way to save bandwidth and improve site speed: running your image through a free image compressor, such as compressor.io, reduces the file size and is a good way to speed up the load time of your page.

3. Don’t focus too much on image resolution

OK – so you don’t want to be uploading pixelated, blurry images onto your page when you’re building your site. Clear, good-quality images are important as they add to your web design, and also show site visitors that you’re a highly professional business. 

Nevertheless, you don’t want to overcompensate on image resolution: most computer monitors display a maximum of 72 dots per inch (DPI- a measurement of an image’s quality). Anything over this and your image is taking up unnecessary space without really making a difference to the quality of your image, consequently slowing down the speed of your site. 

To check the resolution of your image on Windows, we’ve broken down the steps you need to take to ensure your image resolution isn’t higher than it needs to be.

4. Build a website for all devices 

When building your website, you’ll need to make sure your site is responsive so that users can access it from any device. Considering that 57% of site traffic is now from smartphones and tablets, you’ll want to make sure that your images are responsive: even if it looks great on a desktop, if it isn’t responsive then the image can be slow and of low-quality on a mobile device. 

If you aren’t using a website builder, or your website builder doesn’t include a responsive web design in its bundle, you can make your images responsive yourself. If you’re a whiz at coding, you can provide the browser with a list of variants for a single image and you can tell it which image size to use for different screens. The browser will then load the right image size for  a particular device, based on the layout and device dimensions you’ve provided it with. 

However, if you don’t have the time or the intricate knowledge needed for coding, you might want to consider using a website builder that offers a responsive site. Go Sitebuilder provides ready to go sites which are already responsive on any device, meaning you don’t have to worry about your images loading slowly on different screens.

Our website builder offers fully optimised sites, meaning you don’t have to do all the hard work in ensuring your site loads quickly. Our free 14-day trial lets you experience just how easy-to-use our website builder is – try it today!