Understand and improve your website ranking and user experience with these tools
We all want organic bookings; clients who search for a pet photographer Google, and decide to go with you. These type of bookings often have the highest average sales and as an added bonus, the conversion process is often much easier compared to enquiries from interruption type marketing (giveaways, Facebook Ads etc) since these client are already looking for pet photography. I recently shared all about blogging, and how that can help you rank higher, but what about checking if all your efforts are actually working?
There are countless tools out there to help you to see what’s working and what might need optimising. Here are some of my favourite tools to do just that, plus some extras that I use to elevate the user experience on my website and increase my conversion rate.
Tools for understanding visitor journeys
Hotjar: Heatmaps
Wow hotter is amazing. My copywriter, recently recommended it to me and now I couldn’t be with out. Just yesterday I made a bunch of changes on my website after watching some of the recordings.
So what does it do? It provides you with a heat map of your site to see how far visitors are scrolling, where they’re clicking and how they move their mouse. You can filter by different date ranges for free, or with a paid subscription filter further based on things like country, session duration and more.
What I learned yesterday was that a lot of people were clicking on a line of text on my site that wasn’t a button or even hyperlinked, but the audience clearly thought it was.
I then watched some of the screen recordings and learned that many people after attempting to click that non-button, simply left my site. Talk about proof that a confused mind says no!
I made changes immediately.
Through those recordings I also noticed that a lot of my visitors stop at a certain section, and then go back up the page. That told me that anything underneath was being completely missed- and it contained useful information! I decided to split it onto separate pages but buttons linking them together. I’ll check Hotjar again next week to see if it’s helped!
Cost: Free
2. Google Analytics: Users Flow
Google Analytics is robust. The first time you open it you might be tempted to simply close it again due to overwhelm! But I encourage you to ignore the long list of feature options (at least for now) and go straight to Users flow. You’ll find it listed under “Audience”. From there you can set the first column to whatever you want to track; for me that’s “source”. You can then follow your audience’s journey through your site.
Without looking at your data, you are likely assuming (or hoping) that your audience lands of page X, and then moves to page Y, before contacting you. Looking at the data will either confirm that is the case, or, will show you that in fact they’re going a completely different route!
With this knowledge, you can now restructure your site if need be. Maybe you need to change some of the menu options, or add buttons to certain pages.
You can also see if the journey is different depending on the lead source. Eg. Maybe half of your Google traffic gets to your pricing page and then either enquires or leaves your site, but your Facebook traffic is going directly to your blog and then leaving your site. You can then decide if that’s okay, or if maybe you need a strong call to action on your blog posts.
p.s. Google Analytics is getting a proper upgrade for the first time in 15 years so you’ll want to set up GA4.
Cost: Free
3. Google Search Console: URL Inspect
Another robust tool by Google is their search console. I find this tool to be the most user friendly is checking simple stats for how my site is ranking.
The first thing you want to do in Google Search Console is submit your sitemap. For my Squarespace hosted site the URL to enter was my normal domain with “/sitemap.xml” added to the end.
Once submitted, you can check your pages for how many are indexed and how many aren’t. That means, how many pages Google recognises and therefore have the ability to rank. Some of my pages are deliberately not indexed (eg, a pricing page that I only send to enquiries), but otherwise I want everything to be indexed. If it’s not, I simply use the built in URL inspect tool and then “Request indexing”.
Cost: Free
4. Google Business Profile Manager: Google Maps listing & Google Reviews
SEO experts typically agree that listing your business on Google Maps will help you rank higher in search results and having Google reviews to verify that you’re active business helps too. Both of these are set up through Google Business Profile Manager.
Hint: You do need a physical address for set up, but you can opt not to list it and instead, have Google show the area that you service.
Cost: Free
Tools for improving visitor experience
5. Hubspot: Free Chat Bot
Hubspot is actually a CRM, but I just use one of the features and that’s their Chat bot. I use theirs purely because it’s free and most aren’t! It was super quick to set up, and now I have an app on my phone to get real time notifications when someone uses it. You can also connect your Facebook Messenger to it so that those messages come into the same app. Yay for streamlining.
Disclaimer: Even though it works well, I am about to trial a different platform for my chatbot and that’s EBI.ai. I’m looking at that specifically because it’s free for the low number of enquiries I receive per month and it has some new AI functions, one of which they tell me will be able to read my availability from my Google Calendar and reply to the enquiry with date options! I’m yet to find the time to test it though so.. stay tuned!
Cost: Free
6. Smartslides: Embed slideshows
I initially subscribed to Smartslides many moons ago to create my client slideshows. They’re quick and easy to make, the photos don’t get distorted, and they have royalty free music built in. I still start my ordering appointments with those slideshows, but now I also embed the slideshow into my blog posts! (If the clients are happy for a blog feature). What I love is that it’s so efficient. I literally click a button and I have code to embed, which I simply paste into my blog and ta-da.. done! Website visitors can now see a real client gallery.
Embedding your galleries is included with your subscription.
Cost: From $8 per month
7. Mailerlite: Lead magnets
Website traffic is great, but the reality is that most people are actually not ready to book their pet photoshoot at the time of landing on your site. A lead magnet enables you to capture their details and then convert those visitors via an email nurture series, or at least stay top of mind via your e-newsletter. In exchange for giving you their details, you will provide something of value such as a free guide or your price list. Mailerlite is an email management platform which makes all of this really easy. It’s free until you have more than 1000 subscribers, and the pricing after that is the most competitive I know of.
I have my lead magnet as a pop-up on my site as well as an embedded form to collect email addresses, both of which I created with Mailerlite. When someone uses it, their details are automatically stored in Mailerlite, and some automations begin such as putting these contacts into an appropriate group, sending a thank you email and then a series of other emails. They’ll also automatically receive all future newsletters which are created in the platform. Once you’ve sent emails through Mailerlite, they also make it really easy to review stats like open and click rates and locations.
Cost: Free
BONUS: Use this link for $20 credit to be applied to your account for when you are ready to upgrade: https://www.mailerlite.com/invite?friend=6caa2c7fd0e26
8. Studio Ninja: Contact forms and booking calendar
The point of your website is to convert enquiries into bookings. To make that happen you either need your website visitors to enquire via your chatbot or contact form, book a call or meeting, or go straight to booking their photoshoot.
Studio Ninja is a CRM (and in my experience, the best for most pet photographers). Part of their system allows you to embed a contact form into your website so that when someone enquires, they automatically become leads within Studio Ninja. You can then have the system automatically assign a particular workflow to each lead based on the type of job they’ve enquired about, so that things like follow up emails are sent automatically. When they are ready to book, you can use the questionnaire, contract and invoice templates to quickly convert these leads to paid bookings.
If you want clients to be able to book and pay for a photoshoot time online, this can also be done with StudioNinja now. Just add a button to your website and link it to the booking page.
Cost: From US$20 per month
DISCOUNT: If you want to try it out, I have a discount code which will give you your first year half price- that makes it about $10 a month! Unbelievable for the amount of hours I save through this software.
The code is: PPPI50
Clearly I’m a massive nerd with these things, but it truly does pay to have a website that works for you and sees you ranking highly and converting even higher! Do you love some other tools that I haven’t listed yet? Share them in the Members Facebook group, or shoot me an email!
Author
Kirstie McConnell |
Founder
The Pet Photographers Club
When Kirstie launched her pet photography business in Australia in 2012, the genre was barely a thing. She spent the next years at the forefront of this niche, marketing not just her own business, but the concept of pet photography. Each year she photographed around 100 dogs, cats and horses per year to create wall art and albums for pet-parents.
Now based in Italy, she continues to offer pet photography to her clients back in Australia on return trips, but otherwise spends her energy helping other pet photographers build a business which will allow them to follow their dreams.
Internationally recognized as a leader in the industry, she hosts the podcast, workshops, courses and business events for The Pet Photographers Club which she co-founded.
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