What is the UX or user experience on a photography website?
UX or user experience is a term that, at first, may sound a bit abstract and more related to the work of web designers or marketing experts, but nothing could be further from the truth.
If you are a photographer and you have a photography website, it is important that you take into account the user experience of your visitors so that their visit is much more satisfactory and Google rewards you for it.
The UX is one of those elements that photographers often overlook, but the truth is that it is something to take into account for anyone who has a website. That’s why in today’s article we’re going to tell you everything you need to know about it.
Learn all the tricks to improve the UX of your photography website.
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What is the UX or user experience on a photography website?
You may be wondering what is the meaning of UX, this term comes from the acronym “User Experience”, which is the same as user experience in English. It is one of the pillars on which web design is based, and it is fundamental for the people or customers who visit your website. In addition to being a factor to take into account for your users, it can also benefit you enormously in terms of improving your positioning in search engines if you know how to use it to your advantage.
Considering the user experience on a photography website is essential in order to provide your visitors with an engaging and satisfying experience when exploring and enjoying the visual content you offer on your website. UX focuses on designing a smooth and pleasant interaction between the user and the website, taking into account factors such as usability, accessibility and aesthetics. Here are some of the key aspects to consider for your photography website:
Intuitive design of your photography website
Web design is something like the foundations of our website and thanks to them you will be able to establish the way in which users interact with your website. Perhaps you have never paid much attention to web design, but the structure of the pages or the menu is a certain way, it will help users or customers to navigate more easily or leave your site sooner. Therefore, to improve the user experience you have to put yourself in their shoes and work on the web design based on it. Remember that clear, concise and simple information will be much easier to process and will keep the customer’s attention. If your website has thousands of pages of different services without order or difficult to access, it is possible that the visitor will not find what he was looking for and will leave early.
Therefore, when configuring your photography website, it is important that you opt for a very clear and easy to understand navigation structure so that users can navigate through the different content, such as galleries, service pages, biography or your blog articles in a simple and intuitive way. As a recommendation, you can include visual elements that guide users through the content in a natural way, such as shortcut buttons, links or a customised contact form for each type of service you offer.
Accessibility of your photography website
Accessibility is an important aspect of UX that is often overlooked. A photography website should be accessible to all users, including those with visual or hearing disabilities. It is therefore highly recommended that you use alt tags on images to describe their visual content and ensure that the website is compatible with assistive technologies such as screen readers.
This type of alt tags in images are also highly valued by Google, which currently does not know how to interpret images.
Image galleries specialising in the photographic sector
It goes without saying that photographs are a central component of your website, so it is very important that you display your images in a way that appeals to your customers. This means using a design that highlights the photographs, with an appropriate size, optimal image quality and fast loading.
Functionality and performance of your website
Your website should be functional and error-free, so it is important that you carry out a series of checks on a more or less regular basis to avoid errors of this kind:
- Both internal and external links that do not lead to any content.
- Contact forms that do not work properly or where the information is not clear.
- Shortcut buttons to other pages that are not well redirected.
- Etc.
In addition, the performance of your website is also essential, as users expect fast loading times to access images without having to wait, and at Arcadina we take this very much into account. Because we know that no potential customer today has time to wait more than 4 seconds for a page to open, don’t we?
The following article can be of great help to you in locating broken links on your website.
>> Broken links on your photography website? Learn how to fix it
Interaction and feedback on your photo website
The ideal way to provide seamless communication with visitors is for users to be able to interact with your photography website. This can include commenting on your photography blog, writing their choices on your testimonial page, etc.
Feedback is also an important aspect to take into account. Sending a series of messages after filling in a form or sharing an image is essential to make users feel very well informed.
Experience in the mobile version of your site
It goes without saying that more and more users are accessing the internet from their mobile devices, whether it’s during their leisure time, on their way to work or in between tasks. Therefore, it is also essential for improving the UX that your photography website is compatible with mobile devices and offers an optimal experience on smaller screens such as mobile phones and tablets. This means using a responsive design that automatically adapts to the size of the screen, ensuring that images and interactive elements are displayed correctly on different devices.
Relationship between SEO and UX positioning
Improving the user experience will not only help you to show a better design of your website so that visitors end up happy and satisfied with their visit, but it will also allow you to improve the SEO of your website and vice versa.
Next we are going to see which are the points in which SEO can help to improve the user experience of your visitors.
- Content. A good way to improve the experience of users who visit your website is to offer them quality content that provides them with relevant information. Because quality information will make the user find all the answers for which they entered your photography website, and above all, it is possible that if they have had a good experience, they will come back. Giving them valuable content, well written and taking into account your keywords, will be a perfect strategy to keep the customer on your website.
- Branding. It may seem irrelevant, but a photographer’s branding is also very important. Maintaining your brand voice and not sounding like a robot will increase the trust of your future clients, and is an aspect of the user experience. In addition to this, if you start to see that your users are complaining about some aspect of the website, don’t hesitate to change it! Don’t assume they “don’t know” and try to fix it as soon as possible.
- Conversion. If you do a good job, all the above steps should lead to a conversion, i.e. a sale. This happens when the user enters your website looking for something, finds it and decides to contact you.
Recommendations for improving the UX on your photography website
Here we are going to give you some extra tips that can help you to improve the UX of your website.
- On each page of your website, think of an objective thinking about what you want the user to do, for example, on the services page it could be to contact you, in the biography to present your work in a different way, in the online shop to buy photographs or to make a reservation, etc.
- Find the right balance between your texts and your images. Create galleries that are specific to each type of work and when explaining services, don’t forget to include several photographs that are representative of each subject.
- Use the keywords and main ideas you want to convey on each page so that users can find you on the web and if you also highlight them on your website in bold or italics you will help users find the information much better.
- Your communications are part of your brand and in addition to being consistent in all your communications, they also have to be adapted to the type of customer you have.
- The more information you provide on your website, the more work you will get out of your way and the more satisfied your visitors will be when they come to your website looking for answers to their questions.
- Listen and respond to comments from your customers and users either through comments on the blog or on the feedback page, it is important to respond to all comments made to you through these means.
What are you waiting for to improve the UX of your photography website?
It is very important that you take care of the UX on your photography website in order to gain the loyalty of users who find you on the Internet and to improve your positioning in search engines. If you are one of those who already have a photography website created with Arcadina, you are already halfway there, since we have a series of fully customisable responsive templates, a professional blog adapted to web design in which you can create specialised and relevant content, image galleries specially prepared for photographers to show off their latest sessions and many more business solutions for photographers.
And if you are one of those who have not yet tried what our websites look like on the inside, you can now do so for 14 days completely free of charge.
If you want to know more keys to improve the positioning of your website, in the following post you will find a series of tips that will be of great help.
>> 5 keys to improve the positioning of a photography website
To conclude this article on user experience, we are going to share with you the testimony of photographer Francisco Ruano.
>> Interview with Francisco Ruano, nature photographer
And finally, here’s our question: Before reading this article, were you already taking care of the user experience on your website? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.
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