You’ve got your portfolio on Instagram. Your prices are in a highlight. Couples can DM you. So what would a website add? Another thing to maintain, for a start. It needs to earn its place.
Look at what happens after someone likes your work. Can they find what they need to decide whether to enquire, or does every useful detail require a message?
If Instagram is bringing you the enquiries you want and your booking process works, you don’t need to panic-buy a website. But if every conversation starts with the same five questions, there may be a better way to use your time.
Instagram can start the conversation
A couple might spot your flowers in a venue’s tagged photos, save a makeup look, or send your photography reel to each other. That’s a lovely introduction to your work.
Keep doing the things that help people find you there. A website doesn’t mean abandoning Instagram or posting less of the work you enjoy.
The next question is what happens when someone wants to look beyond the picture.
Your best information shouldn’t be a treasure hunt
Imagine a bride likes your makeup work and wants to know whether you travel to her venue, what a bridal booking includes, and how to ask about her date.
You might have answered all of that already. But if the answers are scattered across captions, highlights and an old price graphic, she has to piece them together.
A website gives you a place to organise that information in a useful order. Show the work, explain the service, answer the obvious questions, and make the enquiry step easy to find.
That’s the job I’d give it before worrying about animations or how many pages it has.
Try this before you decide
Open your profile on your phone as if you’ve never heard of your business. Better still, ask someone who doesn’t know your packages to have a look.
Can they quickly tell you:
- What you offer and which areas you cover?
- What your work looks like across a full wedding or a range of clients?
- What’s included, and what budget they should have in mind?
- What previous clients have said about working with you?
- How to enquire, and what happens after they do?
If they keep asking you where to find things, write those questions down. You’ve just started your website brief.
If the answers are already easy to find and you’re happy with your enquiries, a website may be a later priority. You can still improve the information you share now.
A one-page website can be enough
You don’t need an empty blog, six service pages and a fancy client portal to have a useful website.
For a wedding supplier with one main service, a well-planned page can cover:
- A short introduction explaining what you do and where.
- A selection of work that represents the bookings you want.
- Your service or package details, including a useful price guide.
- A little about you and how you work.
- Reviews you have permission to share.
- Common questions and an enquiry form.
The important part is choosing what belongs there. Ten similar photographs won’t necessarily help more than five carefully chosen ones. A long introduction won’t help if it still doesn’t say where you travel.
If you offer very different services, or have detailed galleries and information people need to explore separately, more pages may make sense. Let the content decide.
When your website needs to catch up with your work
Sometimes the issue isn’t that you have no website. It’s that you’ve moved on and the website hasn’t.
That was part of the brief for Aga Rocks Makeup. Aga was updating her photographs and wanted her online presence to reflect where her business was going. The website needed to support that change and sit comfortably alongside the makeup artists she admired.
The design decisions followed that goal: give her work room, make her services easier to understand, and help a bride find the information she needs before getting in touch. Those decisions are part of what you’re paying a designer to help with: choosing what belongs on the page and making the information work together.
See the project: Read the Aga Rocks Makeup case study.
Will a website bring enquiries from Google?
It gives you pages that search engines can discover, but publishing a site doesn’t guarantee that people will find it or enquire.
Start with specific, accurate information about your service and the places you work. Then add useful content where you have something helpful to say. A florist explaining what affects the cost of wedding flowers has a better starting point than a blog written only because someone said you should post every week.
Google’s guidance also puts the reader first: the content should help someone achieve their goal. That’s a sensible test for your website whether they arrive from Google, Instagram or a venue recommendation.
Further reading: Google’s guide to helpful content.
So, what would I do first?
If you’re just starting out, make your offer and enquiry process easy to understand wherever you share your work. Collect good photographs and permission to use client reviews. Notice the questions people keep asking.
If you’re already booking weddings but your online presence feels behind your work, use those questions to plan a website that supports the business you have now.
You don’t have to choose between a website and Instagram. You need a useful next step for the person who likes what they’ve seen and wants to know more.
If those pieces feel scattered, I’ll help you turn them into a website that explains your offer and gives people a clear next step. See Ovia’s website services, or tell me what you need on a free discovery call. You don’t need to arrive with a finished website brief.
Tagged: