4 tactics to get client feedback if you are a photographer

The way to make a first search for a photographer’s services is usually through the Internet and having a wide selection of customer reviews on your website can help you to generate more confidence among people who are hesitant to book a photo shoot with you.

Including client reviews on your photography website can be a very good strategy to help you demonstrate the quality of your work and the satisfaction of the people who have worked with you. But the truth is that not everything goes when it comes to including testimonials on a website. In order for your customer reviews to really help other people to make a decision, it is important that you learn how to ask for them correctly and this is exactly what we are going to explain to you today in this article on how to collect good customer reviews.

If you manage to collect more quality customer reviews on your website, visitors will be one step closer to becoming new customers.

Why are customer reviews important for users interested in your services?

Customer reviews on the web are a very good social proof for other users, it generates a lot of trust and credibility for them to trust a photography professional they don’t know yet. But customer reviews not only serve to improve the credibility of your photography business, they can also serve to:

• Improve the positioning of your photography website. Search engines value customer reviews positively and if you include testimonials on your website, they can help you to improve your ranking on the Internet.
• Increase conversions on your website. Conversions are the number of users who visit your website and end up taking an action, for example, contacting you for a photo shoot. It is proven that adding testimonials to a website helps to improve the conversion rate of the page.

• Help you understand your customers. On a personal level, it can be very useful for you to hear from your customers how you work and how they feel about the way you treat them.
• Differentiate yourself from your competitors. On occasions, customer opinions may include aspects of your business that they value and that you have not highlighted, such as: your close relationship with your customers, the advice and recommendations you give them, etc.
• Etc.

As you can see, adding customer reviews to your website only has benefits, but do you really know how to collect good customer reviews? Here we are going to give you some tips that you can follow to make these testimonials a success.

4 strategies for getting the best customer reviews

To get a good amount of feedback from your customers, you have several options, such as: requesting them individually from each of the people who pass through your studio, sharing your company profile on Google so that they can leave their comments or having a tool that allows you to collect and display your customers’ testimonials directly on your website.

If you choose the first option, we advise you to plan the moment when you are going to ask for the review in advance so that the evaluation received by your customers is as good as possible. Below we are going to share with you a series of previous steps that can help you to better plan the request for recommendations.

1# Write several short questions to get a good rating

Whether you are going to ask for reviews in your own studio or your clients will have the option of emailing you their reviews, leaving a few simple questions about your service can help both you and your clients to get a better assessment of your work. Here are some of the questions you can ask them:

• How did you hear about us? This first question, rather than serving as a testimonial, will help you to find out through which channel more clients come to you and it is also a very good way to break the ice.

• What did you like most about working with us? This is where your clients will be able to explain what they liked most about you.

• And what’s the least? It is always good to know what the weak point of our work is and even if you don’t include this part in the testimonial itself, it will help you to improve as a photographer.

• Would you recommend us to others and why? This is another question that, if you get a positive answer, you can use it as a review and if it is negative, it will also help you to measure what you are not doing well in your photography business strategy.

As you can see, with these 4 simple questions you can get acceptable customer reviews and very useful for future undecided customers.

2# Choose the most appropriate time to ask for the review

If you are a photographer, the time to ask for a client’s feedback is very clear. Ideally, you should do this after clients have viewed the images from their shoot, although depending on the type of shoot you do and the way you work, this timing may be slightly modified.

If, for example, you are a wedding photographer and in addition to giving them all the photos of the day of the ceremony a month after the wedding date, you surprise them with a small advance with the 20 best photos before they leave for their honeymoon. The most ideal moment for you might be when you give them those first 20 photos. Just at that moment the couple will still be very excited about their wedding and seeing the first images will impact them much more than when some time has passed and they visualise the rest of the photos.

If you do studio shoots, even if you later send your clients the photos of their reportage through a client gallery, you can take advantage of having them in person at the studio to show them a small part of the work and encourage them to give you their testimonial at that moment.

And if your style is more artistic and the post-production process is essential for them to understand your way of working, the best time to ask for client feedback is when they have finished viewing their edited images in their private gallery.

If you are in the business of selling images over the Internet, where customer contact is almost non-existent, you may want to encourage customers to leave a rating right after they receive the notice that they can download the pictures.

3# Implement a tool to collect testimonials in your strategy

When sending this short list of questions to the client, you can also use various methods. Here are some ideas:

• The quickest and least time-consuming option for you is to send a Word document to the client with the list of questions. This option, although quick, is a little more informal than the others.

• If you want to make this process a little more professional, you can use free tools that you can find on the Internet that will allow you to conduct online surveys, such as encuesta.com, but there are many more. To use this option you will have to spend a little more time learning how to create the survey and if you limit yourself to the free service, you will not be able to use many options but the end result is worth it.

• If you use an email sending service, such as MailChimp, you can also create a form that will be sent automatically to a specific list of clients. This type of alternative is very good for photographers who have their subscriber lists well organised, if this is not your case, it is better to use another option.

• Through your Arcadina website, you can create a landing page (hidden page in your main menu) and add a form with the questions already written, so that when you consider it appropriate, you can send the customer in question the URL address of your landing page to collect their testimony.

In the following help article we explain exactly how to create a Landing Page.

>> Arcadina Help. How to create a Landing Page

4# Encourage your customers to leave you a good review

To begin with, the vast majority of your customers are not going to be very willing to give you their opinion even if they have been really satisfied with your service. You have to “catch them in the heat of the moment” to encourage them to share their experience working with you in writing.

Therefore, if you want to increase the number of customers who finally leave you a review, it is important that you motivate them to do so. And a very good way to do this is to offer them something in return. This little trick works really well.

You can offer them a small discount for their next photo session, give them an extra photo as a gift or surprise them with an enlargement of the photo of their choice. We assure you that if there is a reward involved, the number of opinions you will receive from your clients will be much higher.

Another recommendation we give you is that when you tell them that you want them to tell you about their experience working with you, make them see that their testimony is important to you and that with a small gesture they can help you to improve your business and the services you offer.

How can you use customer testimonials on your photography website?

Once customers have already sent you their feedback, it is important that you know how and where to use it to get the most out of it. The first thing to do before you do anything else is to respond to your customers by thanking them for their cooperation. And if a review is negative, try to see why they were not happy and if you can, try to rectify it.

It is always advisable to show customer reviews as they are sent to you, without editing, but sometimes it is necessary to make some small adjustments such as: correcting spelling mistakes, eliminating badly worded expressions or phrases that are repeated too many times.

Once you have your testimonials ready, you can use them in different parts of your website, for example:

– Services page. If you do several photo shoots, ideally, after explaining each one, you should add several testimonials from clients who have hired that very service.

– Bio. If you get some reviews that focus on your good manner or your way of being, you can add them to your “about me” page.

– Emails. If a client asks you for more information about a photo shoot and you reply to them via email, you can include reviews from satisfied clients before you say goodbye and after you have answered their questions.

– Dossier. The same goes for your dossiers, once you have shown them your rates and services, you can add several testimonials from your clients.

– Etc.

Collect customer reviews directly on your photography website

demobangkok.arcadina.com

In case you didn’t know, in Arcadina you have an opinion page available where you can collect your customers’ reviews. It is a section that you can display both on your website and in the business section (customer area and online shop) if you wish, where anyone who wants to can write a review about your service or your photographs.

And to prevent unwanted comments from being published on your website, once the customer has written and submitted their comment, you will receive a private message informing you that you have a new comment pending publication.

To publish it you just have to go to your management panel in the General / Opinions section and decide whether to publish it or not.

As a final recommendation, it is very positive that once you have published a review you write a public response in this same section to publicly thank your customers for their words.

5 Examples of photographers using reviews on their websites to attract new clients

Below we are going to share with you a small sample of our clients’ websites that use this feedback section to collect testimonials from their customers.

1# Francisco Ruano

franciscoruano.com

We begin this small compilation of photographers who have customer reviews on their website with Francisco Ruano, a nature and landscape photographer who shows a large gallery of images on his website and tells his story of how he became interested in this type of photography.

On his website, as well as showing some of his images, telling his story and presenting some of the exhibitions in which he has participated, Francisco has set up a section called Guestbook where a large number of followers have written some very good reviews of this photographer.

2# El Creador de Recuerdos

elcreadorderecuerdos.com

Pablo is the Sevillian photographer behind El Creador de Recuerdos and is dedicated to wedding sessions, children’s reportage and portraits in his photography studio.

On his website, Pablo has incorporated an Experiences page where he encourages clients to share their experiences working with him. If you look at some of the comments there is a link to the photo report of each client. A very good way to reinforce the words of his clients.

3# Caminante de Montes

caminantedemontes.com

Caminante de Montes is a website dedicated to landscape photography, especially in the high mountains, where you can see some impressive images and find out about upcoming photographic outings and related photography workshops.

On this website, as well as being able to visit a spectacular portfolio, consult a series of workshops, photographic outings and projects, you will also be able to take a look at the large number of testimonials left by clients and enthusiasts of this type of photography from all over the world on the Opinions page.

4# CL Fotógrafos

clfotographers.co.uk

The CL Fotógrafos team is dedicated to do mainly wedding photography and also children’s sessions (communion, children, newborn, sweet waiting, young people) in Madrid.

On their website you will be able to find a lot of information in their galleries, services pages, news and the About Us section. And also, if you want to know first-hand what many of the clients who have passed through their lens have to say, just go to the Client Opinions section.

5# Óscar Barea Fotografía

oscarbareafotografia.com

Óscar is a multifaceted photographer who takes all kinds of reportages: dance, books, portraits, editorial, sensual, pregnancy, weddings, corporate, gastronomic, sports photography, etc.

On his photography website, as well as being able to visit his extensive and carefully selected image gallery and find out a little about his professional career, visitors will also be able to get an idea of the degree of satisfaction of his clients if they visit the Reviews section, where they will find countless testimonials from truly satisfied clients.

Thanks to customer reviews your work will be more visible on the Internet

Using customer reviews on the web is always a very good decision, either by asking your customers personally for a review or by encouraging them to write on your review page. This type of feedback will give other visitors a better image of your way of working and professionalism.

At Arcadina we offer you all kinds of business solutions that will make your day-to-day life easier. Would you like to try them for free for 14 days?

This time we are going to share with you the interview with Maru Serra, a great photographer and friend of Arcadina.

>> “The best option for photographers who want to move forward”, Maru Serra

If you want to read the testimonials of some colleagues who have left us about our service, in the following link you will be able to see some of them.

>> Arcadina customer reviews

And if you would like to leave us a review of our service, you can do so by clicking here.

Finally, we would like to know what method do you use to solicit customer reviews? We’d love to read your ideas in the comments.

 

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Arcadina is much more than a website, it is business solutions for photographers.

If you have any queries, our Customer Service Team is always ready to help you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We listen to you.