Websites are not optional for businesses today. People are more likely to do a quick Google search for a photo booth website than to open up a phone book when they are ready for your services. But, let’s be perfectly clear. It’s not enough to simply have a website for your photo booth business, especially if you want to attract high-paying clients. Instead, you have to have an excellent website that sets you apart from your competition.

The good news is that you can create a gorgeous website with relative ease. If you have a line item for a designer or web person, you may want to hand this off and focus your business-building energy elsewhere. However, today’s technology means that you certainly don’t have to.

Regardless of whether you DIY your photo booth website or hire someone, there are several things your website should do to help you stand out as the obvious choice. So we’re going to go through the top items in this post.

How to Design a High-Performing Photo Booth Website

Your services and packages will help you set yourself apart, but there are some critical technical and design elements that you’ll want to consider!

Start With the Basics

First things first, when you first start building your site you’ll need to set up the basics:

• Purchase a URL – you can get a reasonably priced .com extension from Namecheap. If it’s $17k look for another option!
• Purchase hosting – there are several great options out there with Siteground and Lyrical Host receiving particularly high reviews.
• Decide on a platform – WordPress and Squarespace are the most popular. However, if you’re planning on having a membership component or client portal, WordPress may be the way to go. There are plenty of free and low-cost templates (or themes) you can use to create the look you want. WordPress even have premade templates for photo booth businesses. With that said, Squarespace is more user-friendly, and you can easily customize their templates.

Once you complete these items, the next step is design. However, whether you’re hiring a designer, using a page builder plugin, or customizing a theme, you will want to explore what other websites do really well.

Elements of Today’s Best Websites

Regardless of industry or niche, when you look at the best websites today, you’ll notice some common elements. So although you will want to establish your own look and feel, you should make note of these key characteristics in order to make your site look fresh and contemporary.

After you look around, you’ll notice that today’s top sites:

• Are image-driven with a large main image that ties into their branding.
• Have concise messaging that’s deceptively simple yet direct.
• Feature lots of white space and color blocking to help focus the eye.
• Use custom photography over stock images.
• Are mobile-friendly.
• Are easy-to-navigate with simple, meaningful choices.
• Drive the user to take action by narrowing the choices.

You’ll find that most of the popular themes and templates in WordPress and Squarespace give you the ability to do all of this. However, by giving serious thought to how you’ll make your website deliver on these elements upfront, you’ll save some serious time down the road.

Your Words Matter, Too!

What you say is just as important as how you present it. The right copy, or sales and marketing language will help you show your clients why you are the best choice.

Great Sales & Marketing Language

The best copy isn’t salesy at all. It’s also not about you at all.

Instead, it speaks directly to your target market’s needs. You can certainly write your own, but often business owners find this difficult. They’re too close to it to make their copy punchy and meaningful. So if you choose to hire a writer, you’re not alone. Even the best copywriters often hire professionals to help.

Your copy should tie in nicely with the design of your photo booth website and guide your clients to make a choice or take action. If you’re not sure what that should be, maybe it’s requesting a quote or scheduling a photo booth session.

Clear Navigation

Your home page needs to make it clear to your buyer what you do and why you’re the clear choice. But the rest of your navigation has a job, too—make it easy for your clients to find additional information.

Common choices for your navigation and other pages are About, Services, Contact, and Blog or Testimonials. Simplifying the navigation makes it very easy for your potential clients to find out more about what you do.

A word to the wise, however, if you’re not planning on keeping up with a blog, it might be best not to turn this feature on right away. Although great content can drive huge amounts of traffic, you must commit to posting regularly. Instead, consider integrating a social feed or even a public events calendar.

Contact Information

Make your contact information clear and easy to find. Some successful boothers put their contact phone number and email right in the header of their website! At a minimum, you must list it on a contact page. If your potential clients can’t contact you, they will move on, and they’ll do so quickly. Tons of businesses make this mistake, so don’t fall victim to this!

Next-Level Tips for Your Photo Booth Website

We’ve explored top website features that you should consider in order to stand out above your competition. But these two tips will give you even more of a leg up!

Lead Magnets / Freebies

Lead magnets are usually a free offer that you can make available in exchange for your prospective clients’ email addresses. From there, using email marketing software like MailChimp or MailerLite, you can set up email sequences that nurture your leads into paying customers. Ideas for your lead magnet might be a free list of tips to build some entertaining props, or a list of the top events for photo booths (get creative!).

Membership Area / Client Portal

A membership area isn’t something you’d have to activate right away. However, it could be a simple way for clients to keep track of contracts, events, photo galleries, and more! So definitely keep this in mind as you plan what your website could look like down the road as well as how it will look when you launch it!

Wrapping it Up

When you build your photo booth website, you don’t need a great deal of technical or coding knowledge. You can certainly make use of existing templates to get the job done. However, in order to attract high-paying clients, your inspiration shouldn’t come from your competitors. Instead, it should come from leading websites from all over the world that take marketing to the next level. With a great website, your photo booth business will be poised to help you take your market by storm.