Guide 5 of 5 · 8 min read

Photography website builder: an honest guide for photographers

By the ContentMetric team · Checked on 17 October 2026

Photographers have an unusual problem: the website has to show large, beautiful images and still load fast on a phone. And it has to get you hired, which takes words as well as pictures. This guide covers the pages, the prompts to use on ContentMetric, the Google listing, and a frank look at where a general builder like ours falls short of a photographer-specific one.

The pages a photographer needs

1. Home

Your strongest single image, one sentence on what you shoot and where ("Wedding and family photography in [city]"), a small set of your best work, and an Enquire button. Resist adding everything. Ten great images beat a hundred good ones.

2. Portfolio, split by type

One page per kind of work: weddings, portraits, commercial, events. A visitor looking for newborn photography should not scroll past street photography. Put 12 to 25 images on each page, add a caption or short story to some of them, and give every image a plain-text description (alt text) for accessibility and search.

3. Services and pricing

What each package includes: hours, number of edited images, delivery time, usage rights, travel. Show starting prices. If you keep prices private, say how people can get them, and how quickly you reply.

4. About

A photo of you, your style in a sentence, years of experience, kit if it matters to your clients, and why you do this work.

5. Enquire

A short form: name, email, phone, type of shoot, date, location, budget range and a message. Say when they will hear back. This is the page that earns money, so make it hard to miss.

6. Optional: Journal

Full stories from real shoots, with a few images and a paragraph about the day. These pages help you show up for searches such as "[venue name] wedding photographer".

Image-heavy sites: what to know first

• Upload web-sized images, not originals. Our help page says to use a good quality version at roughly the size it will be shown, and that very large files make a page slower. Export at about 2000 pixels on the long edge, in JPEG, before you upload.
• Know your limits. ContentMetric includes 10 GB of storage on Free and 50 GB on Pro, and 50 GB of bandwidth a month on Free and 500 GB on Pro. That suits a portfolio. It is not a place to keep full-size archives.
• Fewer images per page. A page with 200 photos is slow and tiring to scroll, whatever the platform.
• Do not rely on dragging in 500 images and asking AI to "make a gallery". Pick the images, then ask for a layout. Check the result on your phone.
• Protect your work. Photos can be copied from any public website. Use modest sizes, add a licence line and consider a small watermark on the portfolio.

Build it with Claude on ContentMetric

Use the AI assistant in the editor, or Claude once connected to your site (Pro and above). Upload your exported images to the Media library first. Changes go to your draft until you press Publish. Fill in the square brackets.

First build:

Portfolio pages:

Services:

Enquiry and search:

Later: "Add a Journal page and a new entry for the [venue] wedding with these five images". Always check the draft on desktop and phone.

What ContentMetric does not do for photographers

Our help pages do not describe private client galleries, password-protected proofing, favourites lists, full-resolution downloads, or selling prints and digital downloads from a gallery. A form can carry an upload, but it is for enquiries, not for delivering a wedding to 200 guests. The online shop is on the Business plan, with pickup or bank-transfer payment, and card payments through your own Stripe coming soon. It is not a print lab. If delivery and sales are central to your work, run a gallery service alongside your site and link to it from your Services page.

Google Business Profile tips for photographers

Clients often search "photographer near me" or the name of a place. More in how to get your business on Google.

• Studio or service area. If you go to your clients, Google says to remove your address and set service areas, up to 20, by city or postal code rather than a radius. If clients visit a studio, show it.
• Photos are your advantage. Google asks for JPG or PNG between 10 KB and 5 MB, in focus, well lit and not heavily filtered. Add a logo, a cover photo and a spread of your best shots. Uploads can take 24 to 48 hours to show.
• Keep details the same everywhere. Name, phone and website should match your site exactly.
• Collect reviews. Send each happy client a review link after delivery. Google says more reviews and good ratings can help local ranking.
• Link to your Enquire page as your appointment link.

ContentMetric, photographer tools and the big builders

Our view: if you deliver galleries, take print orders, or run a studio workflow, Format, Pixieset and Squarespace are built for it and we are not. If you want a fast, simple site that wins enquiries and is easy to change by typing, ContentMetric is a good fit, and on Pro a specialist can design and update it. Many photographers use both: a ContentMetric site for the brand and a gallery service for delivery. Compare more in our AI website builder guide.

A first week

• Day 1: choose your best 40 images across your types of work. Export them at web size.
• Day 2: build the draft and write real captions.
• Day 3: check it on your phone, test the form and publish.
• Day 4: update your Google profile and add a link from your gallery service if you use one.

See also interior designers, who also lead with photography, and salons.

Common questions