The Best Website Platforms for Commercial Photographers
There are a lot of options out there for photographers to put websites together, and depending on whether you are primarily advertising and editorial, branding and commercial, or consumer retail, your website is going to have different needs and requirements.
I’m going to outline the key features needed for a commercial photography website, what the best options are out there, and their pros and cons.
Key Requirements for Commercial Photography Websites
BIG IMAGES — This is pretty self-explanatory. Whereas consumer photography is more about creating an emotional state in your client and capturing that, commercial photography is all about creating and displaying key visuals to sell goods or services. Advertising photography campaigns can easily get into the six-figure ballpark for a job, so art buyers want to see big stunning images, in detail, if there’s that much money on the line. If they recommend you for a project, it’s their reputation and job on the line.
EASY TO NAVIGATE — If you listen to art buyers, their biggest pet peeve about photography websites is poor navigation. When creating a commercial photography website, you want to make sure that it is easy for viewers to move and scroll through galleries with their mouse, keyboard, and, nowadays, fingers.
BLOG — Commercial photography websites need to have good blogs. Not every commercial photographer is going to need a blog or want a blog. You don’t have to have one, even though I highly recommend it. Blogs give your viewers an in-depth look at projects and allow you to show a greater number of images from a single assignment than you might to show in a genre portfolio or overview portfolio. Sure, you could do this on Behance, but if you’re posting projects to Behance, you might as well also post them to your own website. Why send someone away from your primary marketing tool to a website where a lot of your competition also has their work on display? Don’t do that.
So, with those key factors in mind, these are the platforms I recommend for commercial photographers…
Best Commercial Photography Website Platforms
PHOTOFOLIO — The industry gold standard commercial photography website platform for a long time for one major reason, art buyers, art producers, and photo editors, can sort through your portfolios, select images, and create a downloadable PDF to show their clients, use in their mood boards. However, PhotoFolio has a really high price point with its $1000 USD one-time fee to get an account. I suspect that’s to limit it to serious professionals, but once you get outside of the USA and start converting that fee to other currencies, that cost seems excessive, prohibitive, and just not worth it for someone to be able to create PDFs.
FORMAT — Format is very similar to PhotoFolio without the initial one-time fee. I find the kind of photographers that tend to flock to Format are artists whose work exhibits in galleries. Format is a great website for commercial photographers with dozens of templates, supports video to show off your motion work, has built-in blogging and mobile apps to update your website on-the-go, and even has plugins for Lightroom and Capture One so you can update and publish to your galleries right from your sessions and catalogues. It’s an excellent option for commercial photographers.
SQUARESPACE — I think it’s no secret that I have a real affinity for Squarespace. All of my websites are currently on Squarespace, I’ve been developing Squarespace websites for clients for years, and their new 7.1 version is a single universal template that is the most flexible hosted Content Management System out there. Squarespace allows you to have multiple gallery types on the same page, you can display your work in pages, project portfolios, or blogs, and there are no limitations on image numbers, pages, or anything. It’s awesome. I know a number of people who have said Squarespace isn’t professional but I simply point them to the websites of Tim Tadder and Jill Greenberg, who both have amazing Squarespace websites and stunning work.
PHOTOSHELTER, ZENFOLIO & SMUGMUG — While a lot of photographers like PhotoShelter, Zenfolio and SmugMug, personally, I find their template selections are limited and haven’t been updated in years. The reason people tend to use these websites is that they have client proofing galleries built-in to their system. But for client proofing, You could get a free Pixieset account or, better yet, start using Sprout Studio, which has proofing galleries built right into your client invoicing. If I were to pick any of these three, I would use PhotoShelter hands down simply because its interface on the back-end is the most user friendly.
ADOBE PORTFOLIO — If you’re just getting started, or have a really restrictive budget, Adobe Portfolio is actually a really great option to get up and running with a simple website quickly. It’s included free with every Creative Cloud subscription, including the photography $10/month photography plan which every serious photographer needs. It doesn’t have a blog but you can add text to projects and import your projects directly from Behance, which is owned by Adobe. It’s easy to update, style and customize and the sites look great and professional.
Ultimately, my money goes to Squarespace, but I highly recommend doing your research and checking the full show notes at studiobuilder.co/36 for links to all of these platforms so you can check them out and make a decision for yourself.
What Platforms to Avoid
WIX — Wix can be a good website platform for consumer photographers, but even then I would not only not recommend it, but I recommend against it. For commercial photography, it’s an easy hard pass from me.
WORDPRESS — WordPress websites can be very robust and full featured. Commercial photography websites demand simplicity and WordPress websites are not simple.
In Wix and WordPress you can spend a lot of time fussing and futzing with small details that should just work and that you don’t need to bother yourself with. Why even go through the hassle when platforms like Format and Squarespace exist? It’s just not worth the headaches.
Summary
If you’re serious about being a commercial photographer, you need to be deadly serious about your website. It’s the most important marketing tool for your photography business. Make sure it does exactly what you need it to without unnecessary distractions, for you or your visitors.
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