Do Brides even read your website text?

Hi All,

I just worked on a re-write of my wedding page, and I thought to post it here to see if you all think my wording is what would lure a bride or groom to contact me.

Then I got to thinking, do brides even read these pages?? I assume they probably just skim through and somehow arbitrarily decide who to email...

Favor to ask: Would you pretend you are shopping for a wedding photographer and take a look at my site, skim through the page and click on where you think they would and post back your experience? Did you quickly find out what you would want to know? Were you put off by all the text?

Here's my site: Wedding Photography Wichita

I have some ideas and thoughts but If I divulge them now it will mess up this experiment on what you think. I'll wait for a couple posts then share some more thoughts.

Thanks so much for your help!

First thing I did was try to get to the pricing page, when I lingered over Weddings I got a 3 cluster drop down with pricing as an option, but when I tried to move to pricing "button" the options went away. I then left the site as that was the first thing my wife always wanted to know. Is the photographer even in our budget.

Same problem here. Javascript weirdness, IE9. The front page image gallery took a while to load (spinning circle).

I just attended a usability conference and my big take away was that nobody reads anything.

tandemhearts wrote in post #16819055
nobody reads anything.

Yup, when shopping, we first went for price, if we could not find it easy, or had to contact the photographer we moved onto the next on our first round of searching. If the photographer was in our price range the next stop was the gallery. Then to the contact us page for an email address.

Thanks guys! Littlejon- when you were searching, was a 'prices start at' good enough or did you want all the prices out there or you would move on?

Thanks for the heads up on that javascript error, I thought that was fixed but apparently not in IE!

robots4joey wrote in post #16819349
Thanks guys! Littlejon- when you were searching, was a 'prices start at' good enough or did you want all the prices out there or you would move on?

Thanks for the heads up on that javascript error, I thought that was fixed but apparently not in IE!

We prefered to see a full price list, but a starting at with details what that starting price got us worked as well. Nothing worse then a starting price in your budget you spend the time to look at their images and email the photographer to have them tell you thats for our 1.5 hour 10 image pre wedding shoot. A full wedding is 10X that starting price.

Oh, something interesting just happened.

I clicked on your link, and the first image I saw was of the bride and groom's hands: the one with the groom who bites his finger nails. I hit the back button. Maybe you should remove that photo.

robots4joey wrote in post #16818714
Then I got to thinking, do brides even read these pages?? I assume they probably just skim through and somehow arbitrarily decide who to email

Yes they do read these pages. Having the right textual content is a great way of pre-filtering enquiries. Personally I work on the basis of answering as many potential questions as possible via my website so I don't have to answer them at an enquiry stage.

memoriesoftomorrow wrote in post #16819645
Yes they do read these pages. Having the right textual content is a great way of pre-filtering enquiries. Personally I work on the basis of answering as many potential questions as possible via my website so I don't have to answer them at an enquiry stage.

My wife, the bride, didn't read squat. I, on the other hand, read quite a bit and then contacted the photog if I wanted to go forward or if I had questions. There were a couple amazingly talented photogs who had information I was looking for missing from their site but when I called they acted annoyed that I questioned them. Fair enough. I'll keep my $5K.

That being said, in Chrome the mouse-overs on your headings were very annoying.
I don't have a problem with "pricing starting at" statements
I don't like having to scroll down to get to the actual information on each page. I look up a lot of stuff on my phone or tablet and it becomes a pain.
Go through your portfolio and only include the best. There are several shots that don't do much to support your premise that your photography is in the $1500+ range. Primarily with underexposed indoor or environmental shots.

Fernando wrote in post #16819675
My wife, the bride, didn't read squat. I, on the other hand, read quite a bit and then contacted the photog if I wanted to go forward or if I had questions. There were a couple amazingly talented photogs who had information I was looking for missing from their site but when I called they acted annoyed that I questioned them. Fair enough. I'll keep my $5K.

I work on the basis that if a question needs to be asked after someone has visited my website, my website is falling short of doing what it should be doing.

FWIW I've had very good feedback from clients and potential clients about the information that is made available to them.

memoriesoftomorrow wrote in post #16819692
I work on the basis that if a question needs to be asked after someone has visited my website, my website is falling short of doing what it should be doing.

FWIW I've had very good feedback from clients and potential clients about the information that is made available to them.

A quick look at your site shows a very usable layout. Clear headers on each topic. Short, pointed answers.

The arrows over your menu are a great way to explain the life stage sequence.

I REALLY hope you take this in the spirit in which it's offered, and that I'm responding to what I hope was a sincere request for C&C:

Based on your website alone I would likely not follow-up with you for the following reasons:

As @Fernando mentioned, a number of the photos on your page are either average snapshots or are improperly exposed/processed

There is WAY too much information in your "About Us" section. As a prospective customer most of that information does nothing to build confidence. In my opinion, the information should start where you discuss the process of being unsatisfied with the available offerings when planning your own wedding. I felt that THAT was a good foundation for your sales pitch. The pictures of you and your wife promote the perception that you are "kids" when in fact you're young adults. It also suggests that with so many pictures of you and your wife on the page, it's because you don't have enough client photos to create content.

You get points for a fairly straightforward pricing breakdown.

As mentioned, I'd maybe look at @Memoriesoftomorrow's web page. THAT page sold me, even though his price is more than double yours.

As a guy, I really didn't care about the wedding ceremony, it's really the bride's day. To HER, everything has to be perfect. However, when we were planning ours, I was in charge of handling "technical details" while she handled the stuff that mattered to HER. So I handled catering, photog, and music, while she dealt with location, flowers, colors, whatever. I knew that if any of my areas of responsibility were screwed up, that she was going to kill ME right after she killed the offending party. There are no do-overs in wedding photography. I selected based on my belief that the guy I hired wasn't going to screw up.

Your site needs to convince me that "you've got this" and I'm not going to be dealing with an angry (new) wife once she sees the wedding pictures.

As I said in the beginning, I REALLY hope you don't think I'm trashing you, I'm not. I was a chef for years, and I MUCH preferred when a customer gave me honest feedback on a dish they didn't like rather than say everything was fine and never come back.

It's not apparent that the picture you have on your wedding page is actually a slide show. Maybe you can show a counter or controls that I can use to go back and forward in the slide show.

Some things I noticed about your website.

• Why do you have so much on your Home page, and then have so much on your About page?
  
• You want to make your pages shorter. You complain about people not reading text and then go overboard with text. With tablet viewing and people's short attention span, avoid making web pages that requires the reader to scroll down. Both your Home and About pages require that
  
• I find it awkward to have so many photos of you on your About page, and including a wedding photo of you on it seems even more out of place
  
• my bad you sent us right to your Weddings page - which has all the text and not your Home page
  

Thanks again for your comments and critiques everyone! I really do appreciate it as I want to improve.

I'll definitely get going on making some changes, I need to figure out what non-snapshot images are apparently, I don't have too many weddings under my belt, but I'm surprised these are considered snapshotty... I guess I need to take some wild impact shots next wedding?

I didn't realize the about us page is another place to sell ourselves, I was trying to sound like a nice person and show a peek into our everyday lives, not really trying to sell us like I was on our weddings page. More thought needed here I suppose.