The date is booked. The family wants portraits before the baby arrives. A shop needs clean product shots for the new season. Someone searches for a photographer near them, opens your site, and decides in a few seconds whether they can enquire without guessing. Soft stock couples and a contact form buried under three menus do not count. They open the next studio that already shows the work and says what to do next.
A photographer website is not a brochure for people who already know your name. It is the front desk when the shoot has a date — or when the brief cannot wait another week.
That first screen has to answer:
- What you shoot — weddings, portraits, products, events, or brands — in the first sentence.
- The area you work in, named towns or regions, not “we travel everywhere”.
- How to enquire: a number that works on a phone, a short form, or an email you actually answer.
- A few real galleries with plain captions — type of shoot, place, year — so nobody mistakes your style for someone else’s.
- A little proof you are real — your name, the town, a frame from a recent job, not a stock handshake.
You do not need a long essay about every lens. You need a page that lets someone with a date or a brief finish the first enquiry without hunting.
If your current site still makes them hunt for that, write to hello@merkwell.com. Say what a first enquiry must answer on the first screen. We can put the desk where they can find it.