Website Refresh: Picture-Minded Weddings
I am pleased to announce (and have completed (yes!!!)) my new and improved wedding website (www.picturemindedweddings.com) using WIX. I devoted the month of August to this new site where I aimed to create a place for clients and visitors to have a deeper look and understanding of Picture-Minded Weddings. Throughout the process I was able to see why my new adjustments and improvements are working better than my previous site.
THE DIRECTION: My previous site had much less information and featured visual content. My challenge this time was to provide much much more content but in the most intuitive and simplest way possible. To do this I did a lot of research on how I wanted my new site to look / read. Once I was certain I had a fairly clear vision I was then able to dive into the creation page by page. Though I want my viewers to read all of my content, I also don’t want to over provide information. Therefore I leaned toward providing good positioning and creating a site that was intuitive. This also allowed me to keep a cleaner look and not over bombard the viewer with written content, which I find especially important since my images should really be the focus.
OLD SITE LANDING
NEW SITE LANDING
THE ENTRANCE: I have always thought that a full bleed landing page worked well for my wedding photography site, and kept this format but added a series of full bleed images that change every couple seconds and chose to make them all black and whites. I found the size, orientation, and color of the images reads well in terms of tones and creating a strong entrance. I also included a short statement below the landing images to give a little intro / written content, and a feel for Picture-Minded.
THE WHO (Bio/ About) : I don't love to draw attention to myself but I found that having an about section on the homepage, just below my landing images was important to introduce myself/ picture minded. I actually had this on my previous site as well but I revamped it with a new statement, photo, and a link to my info section which provides more information on Picture-Minded.
THE MEAT (Portfolio/ Galleries): As a photographer choosing how to present your visual content in a way that reads well to the viewer is a task that can be become more massive and massive as your portfolio grows. Over the past year and half since I first launched Picture-Minded Weddings the amount of content I have created has grown significantly and creating new galleries for a number of featured clients was no small undertaking. I look forward to adding these as I complete each wedding to my new website so that I don’t need to create dozens at once (never again!!!) / lesson learned;)
Also to note I think it is very important to group images very strategically with purpose. As a photographer who not only shoots weddings but wants share my other forms of photography I have a separate site (www.pictureminded.com). To link both my wedding website and my other website I created a landing page on my www.pictureminded.com site which directs the visitor to either my weddings or everything else.
THE INFO (New Written Content/ information): When I first kicked off Picture-Minded Weddings I was so anxious to have a visually sound website where future clients and visitors could quickly see a decent representation of my work. My new site has aimed to provide a much more thorough platform for people to understand Picture-Minded Weddings and get a better sense of what they will receive. I was able to this by incorporating: an info section where I describe the Picture-Minded experience, investment, and address FAQ’s. My contact form has also been updated to have clients input more directed information that can be super useful and helpful.
THE LAST LEG (Mobile) I was so engrossed with creating the bones of this new site that I did not even look at the way it viewed on my cell phone till I had everything in place. Using WIX it was fairly easy to navigate and rearrange for mobile, but certainly time consuming. Perhaps next time I will address this as I design the site.