Best wedding Videographer/Photographer website

[Andrew Maclaurin]

I think it's time for me to upgrade my website and I've been looking at how other wedding videographers and photographers present their work on their websites.
I'd be interested to know everyone's thoughts.
Which websites are the best in the industry in your eyes?
I'm not talking about the work but the website, how everthing is presented, graphics, texts, ideas, layout etc
Is less more? Blogs?
Please let me know your thoughts!

[Arthur Gannis]

That's a tough one. No, actually not. Zillions of video/photog sites out there. Just look/browse and see what they do and how their presentation is. No one can tell you what works best for you. You have to see for yourself which ones are appealing/interesting eye catchers.
I myself don't have a site but I see a lot of variations but they all follow a certain pattern of presentation, if you know what I mean. Click here for this, here for that, client feedback/reviews, gallery, photo galleries, slide shows etc. Background music and variety of recent wedding is a must. I would make it simple and not too cluttered. Content must pop and hold the viewer's attention. Take your time and make a stunning site. Keep it updated regularly. Good luck.

[Noa Put]

I"m in favor of a clean website with a white background and just the bare essentials, the best work on the frontpage, one page with reactions from clients, a page with your packages/price and a contact page. There are some that have a blog but a possible client isn't going to sit through more then an hour of watching trailers that date back a few years, I find it much more effective to only post your best work, like I have only 6 films on my site and every year I refresh them with equally good or better work, never with something that's less good. If I have a really good trailer that might stay on the website 2 or more years, as long as it is representative for the way I currently shoot then I leave it on there.

[Andrew Maclaurin]

I think you have both made good points.
I'm thinking along the same lines as Noa, only show the best stuff and keep it clean, simple but attractive.

[Noa Put]

Also very important, make sure it's mobile friendly, google also takes that into account.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Arthur Gannis

Background music and variety of recent wedding is a must.

Do you mean music that plays in the background when you open a website or music used in trailers?

[Andrew Maclaurin]

I think mobile friendly is very important. My present site is a Wordpress site that is pretty clumsy on a mobile.

[Arthur Gannis]

Music when you open the site and page/topic navigation. About me/us/ contact info/ main gallery/trailer choice page.

[Chris Harding]

99% of brides have their phones seemingly glued to their hand 24/7 so a mobile friendly site is critical I think. We use Mobirise which is free too and in the editor it shows you how your site looks on a computer, tablet and smart phone ...very useful and easy to use!!

[David Barnett]

Alot of the DIY web builders from the web hosts have pretty fluid layouts & themes now. They're safe, supported, and less glitchy & support needed for them, which can be a pain when it's an anciallary branding & marketing portion of what we do. "Set it and forget it"

Wordpress is great, but challenging to build some of the slicker themes (Parallax, Scrolling) and miss a few updates and plugins seems to get hacked into.

I think a large image on the Home page is wanted. I agree alot of brides are probably on their phone.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Arthur Gannis

Music when you open the site and page/topic navigation. About me/us/ contact info/ main gallery/trailer choice page.

Yuk, that's so 90's like, that is on top of my most annoying things list ever when I open a website, a music piece that repeats it self every time I revisit or when I open a new page. Not even websites that sell music do this and if they did, I might understand because that's their business but for anything else you just would scare away your visitors.

[Arthur Gannis]

So you mean to say that music added/inserted is too 90'ish ?Then what do you put as the audio track to the presentation ? Seems the only original audio are the vows, if shown. Anything else is inserted audio gotten from elsewhere. So, music is fine when inserted over the predominant slo mo clips and the rest of the show but is preferably muted on page topic selection. Music doesn't have to repeat itself, just as a different low volume tune, perhaps Mozart or Vivaldi. Nah, too old fashioned.

[Noa Put]

Just that we don't misunderstand eachother, you actually do mean music that starts to play when you open a website?

If you do mean this I could not disagree more with you, I have seen a lot of weddingvideographers websites, no-one is using music that plays in the background, that was probably hot more then 10 years ago but it is not done today.

I found this already 9 year old article: Why You Should Avoid Background Music On Your Website - Doodlekit which you should read as it's still mostly up to date for todays standards.

[Arthur Gannis]

Right. Mr. Huffman says so and presto it is considered gospel.
let's start with number 1 on his list of why not's.

1-" People aren't visiting your website to listen to music"
If that's the case, then why put music with the sample clips ?
2-"super slow to load and 'choppy' to visitors with slower connections"
Does that connection really does get faster when viewing sample clips WITH VIDEO ?
I imagine it would slow down instead.
3-"15-20 second long song segment loop a thousand times."
15 to 20 seconds to make a topic/page choice ? really ?
4-"What songs you like, others may detest"
So the songs in the sample clips they won't detest ?
5-"Nothing fun about trying to listen to two tracks at the same time"
Right on, they still have to choose which one to mute. Muting the website music will also mute the
sample clips audio.
6-"hitting a website that all of a sudden starts blaring"
I do think as professionals as we are that we are perfectly capable to solving that "blaring" opening
page ear shattering volume level.
7-"legal right to broadcast the song"
What about all the other songs that are embedded with the sample video clips, are they all royalty free ? paid for? or perhaps
unique scores written by the videographer ?
8-"Not every browser is capable of playing every type of music file"
Is that an excuse or a real reason? Article was written 9 years ago. Then how come it will read the sample clips audio ?
All web sites I visited way before 9 years ago read opening page fine.

Now, my question is what is the real reason music does not/isn't recommended/ shunned on the opening site page.?
I think I know the answer and in my opinion is not any or all that's on the list.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Arthur

I guess this all stems from the videographer moving away from documentary style wedding video to the so called creative/cinematic style of "film" which essentially needs music set to the vision. All the clips I have seen on sites is certainly not royalty free so it's not legal..the bride wants "a thousand years" as her walk in song and instructs you to use it on the highlight/trailer too. I remember back in the 90's we used to have a midi file playing on each page and was the "in thing" - Facebook seem to disable audio on all video clips by default which is annoying and they autoplay their videos but mute the sound so you need to enable it and by then the video has already started so you need to go back to the start...annoying!!