Alex Vita from Romania is a top freelance designer, developer, blogger and the creator of Foreground Web, a site dedicated to improving photographer's websites. Originally a wedding and portrait photographer himself and through the struggles of finding work Alex is now committed to teaching how to build a photography website covert visitors to clients.
Although some of todays interview does get a little technical, there is a ton of information Alex shares that can be immediately implemented to improve the effectiveness of your website with some simple changes.
Here’s some more of what we cover:
What’s on Offer for Premium Members
If you’re a premium member, you should have received an email with links to your version of this episode where you can hear lots more content from where we dive deeper into some of the earlier topics plus some new ones that I pushed hard for that include:
What is your big takeaway?
Following this interview, I’d love to know what your biggest takeaway is – what is the one thing that you’d like to implement or learnt from what was shared? Let me know by leaving your thoughts in the comments below.
What you post online on the website represents the foreground of your actual work
If you have any questions that I missed, a specific question you’d like to ask Alex or if you just want to say thanks for coming on the show, feel free to add them below.
If you’d like an easy way to show Alex your thanks, and support for the show at the same time, click the link to create a tweet and automatically show you’re listening: https://photobizx.com/tweet
iTunes Reviews and Shout-outs
Each week I check for any new iTunes reviews and it's always a buzz to receive these… for a couple reasons. Firstly it's confirmation that I'm on the right track with the interviews and that they really are helping you improve your business. That's awesome!
Secondly, iTunes is the biggest search engine when it comes to podcasts and it's your reviews and ratings that help other photographers find the PhotoBizX podcast. More listeners means more interviews and ultimately a better show.
If you have left a review in the past, thank you!
If you haven't and you'd like to, head to https://photobizx.com/itunes and you can leave some honest feedback and a rating which will help both me and the show and I'll be sure to thank you on the show and add a link to your site like I have with the listeners below.
Great podcast
By Dawn Thomson Photography from New Zealand on March 4, 2015
Thanks Andrew…honest, inspiring and refreshing…Dan’s portrait work is amazing!
Links to people, places and things mentioned in this episode:
Top 30 Most Influential Photographers on the Web
Thank you!
Thank you again for listening to the show and thanks Alex for being an awesome guest!
If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about this episode, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post, and if you liked the episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post!
That’s it for me this week, hope everything is going well for you in life and business!
Thanks and speak soon
Andrew
Hi
Think I am being daft, but where has the download link gone. Used to only work on Chrome but its now disappeared (for me)
cheers
mike
Hi Mike – sorry about the hassles here, you’re definitely not going mad and my developers are working on getting this sorted.
In the meantime, you can hear the interview via iTunes or Stitcher by clicking the links in the sidebar.
Sorry about this.
Andrew
Hi Mike – the problem has finally been resolved and one guess who did the resolving?
Yep, Alex!
The guy’s a wizard and had this sorted in 5 minutes. All that after I’ve been waiting for my developers for the last week!
Have a listen if you haven’t already, Alex really knows his stuff.
When I first heard Alex say foregroundweb.com, I thought he had said “fourgrandweb.com”, as in Four Grand Web, as in my price is $4000, and I though, HA! well, that is being upfront about the price!
I do have to support Alex in his thought that photographers rationalize their wedding clients paying 4K or so for their work, but sometimes balk at paying the same for web design. Great web design is such a great investment- that’s where you get so much of your business!
Thanks for all the good tips, Alex!
Hi Amanda,
That’s funny, my strange accent is bound to mispronounce words from time to time, sorry about that 🙂
Photographers indeed talk much about the importance of hiring pro photographers, and yet they’re often first to try and go do something on their website themselves and not hire professionals in other industries.
Glad you found the interview useful.
This is looks great. Couldn’t find the link. Going to iTunes now for a listen,
Many thanks,
Sean
Hey Sean – apologies for the hassle in being able to hear this episode on the page.
The issue has since been fixed, all thanks to Alex and it’s available at the top of the page if you haven’t had a chance to hear the interview yet.
Thank you for all these tips. I couldn’t access to the i-book but am looking forward to that.
Just wondering : what is the difference between having a g-mail signature with my photo and link to my website and the coded signature you are mentioning?
🙂 Anais
Hey Anais,
You can get most of it done inside your Gmail account (it allows some basic HTML code).
What I mentioned in the podcast was about more advanced signatures with graphics, which need to be coded manually. To see what I mean, take a look at the last two email signature examples in my article here: http://www.foregroundweb.com/blog/photographers-guide-to-email-signatures/
Hey Anais – if you’re still having trouble accessing the book from Alex – check the membership area of PhotoBizX or jump over to Alex’s website and subscribe to his email list to have it sent to you.
Hey Andrew,
SEO and user experience of our website is definitely I am working on and I can still make a lot of improvements. So thx for this interview and the interesting ebook.
I will be implementing the suggestion of adding a picture on each of my emails when contacting clients and prospects.
Thsx for sharing.
Kurt
No problem Kurt – glad you found this interview helpful.
I’ve had a great response from my clients since adding the email signatures so can definitely recommend having that done. What Alex shared on what we should include on our “About Us” page is also fantastic advice and one I’m following closely.
Also, have a look at the ebook from Alex, some solid and super helpful tips ion improving your website and it’s beautifully laid out and easy to read and follow.
Thank you so much for all of the great information you shared in the interview. I immediately went to my website and changed things like the “Get to Know Me” button back to “About Me”. I also downloaded your ebook on the 60 mistakes and went through it to correct several that I had made on my site. I’ve become a reader of your blog and am looking forward to implementing the advice that you provided! Funny, I listened to another podcast that you did and much prefered the content that you went into with Andrew. He’s got a great knack for posing questions that are important to those of us that don’t shoot weddings.
Warmly,
Amber
Hi Amber,
Thanks for the kind words, I’m glad you found the interview & my content helpful. Feedback like this is what I work hard for 🙂
I agree that Andrew is a great interviewer, he makes the conversation flow more naturally and asks the right questions.
Love how much you used from what Alex had to share Amber!
Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy when someone actually goes to work and makes changes to their business after listening to and interview.
And a big thank you for the lovely compliment… made my day 🙂
Great one. I have not commented in a bit. Great stuff every time. Loved this one. Great to hear when I am doing stuff right. Love hearing the tips to change on my site too. Thanks to you both
Thanks Joe and so good to hear you’re still listening and enjoying the podcast.
Like you, I get as much of a kick when I hear I’m doing something right in my business as discovering something new.
Hope your doing well!
Well this interview couldnt have come at a more opportune moment for me. I am in the process of moving my site from a Wix platform to building a new site on WordPress.
I had mostly designed my site when I listened to this podcast but after listening I made so many tweaks.
I am now just finishing the tedious task of filling in all meta-descriptions plus all alt tags for images.
I am now a subscriber to the Foreground Newsletter and loved the recent articles on Minimilism in website design plus the importance of ordering images.
I will now be making my way through the rest of the Foreground blog posts.
Quick question… How long after making tweaks to your site do the likes of google recognise them and update ranking??
Thanks Alex and thanks Andrew
Hi Darren,
Thanks for the message, and glad you found my content useful and have put it to good use!
Google is usually pretty quick to update its index (though it can take anywhere from one day to a couple of weeks, it depends on many factors). If you’re talking about a few main pages, it should be fast. If you’ve made site-wide changes, they will get updated gradually.
To speed up the process you should use “Crawl > Fetch as Google” feature inside the Google Webmaster Tools account (which you should have an account for, if you don’t already). That gets you very fast re-indexing of pages.
Secondly, make sure your site’s sitemap gets properly submitted to Google (you can check that inside the Webmaster Tools account as well).
Gotta love perfect timing! Maybe not so much the extra work that comes with the new knowledge though. 🙂
I see Alex is on the ball and already answered your questions.
Hi Alex & Andrew,
Best interview I have heard on Websites/SEO by far! Just a question regarding email signatures. I find my hotmail and business email accounts block almost all signatures from incoming emails making them look more worse than no signature. I therefore figured no signature would look cleaner through my clients email accounts and just list my contact details with plain text. I don’t want to create an extra click for my clients to allow their browsers to show the content. Is there a way around this?
Hi Jerome, great question!
Most email clients do indeed block images (including the ones in signatures) by default, see here which ones: https://litmus.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-email-image-blocking
I’ve also read somewhere that 43% of all Gmail users read emails without turning images on.
But even if you’re not including images, you could still use an HTML signature (to allow some formatting or colors). That won’t require users to turn images on.
Now keep in mind that some email clients like to trim/hide/collapse email signatures in repeat emails, just to minimize distractions. This applies to text-based signatures too! Here’s an article illustrating the problem and offering a solution http://www.labnol.org/internet/gmail-trimming-signature/28762/ though I’m not a fan of using such a hack. Trimming signatures is a good thing, and email clients only apply them to subsequent emails, not the first email in a thread.
Now back to images: even if many email clients block images by default, and even if signatures sometimes get trimmed/hidden/collapsed, it might still be useful to have a logo or a self-portrait. I know Andrew here also had good results with including a portrait in his own email signature. Just make sure it has an ALT tag and that it doesn’t break the signature layout if blocked (so careful with the HTML layout, floating content to the left etc.)