Most of these case studies come from emails my readers send me. With their permission, I share them with the names changed. I do this so that others can learn from what worked and what didn't. Have a story of your own? Share it with me.
- 9more bookings in 8 weeks
- 3price emails a week, down from 14
- 5pages, down from 11
“How much is it?” “Do you do toddlers?” “What should we wear?”
Those were the three questions in Kelsey’s inbox every week.
All three answers were already on her site. Kelsey’s story shows why nobody found them, and how a family photographer website can fix that.
Kelsey’s whole studio is Kelsey, in Boise, Idaho. In eight weeks, four rewritten pages brought her nine more booked families.
The problem
Kelsey’s photos were lovely, and parents said so. Her website still wasn’t doing its job.
It had eleven pages, including a blog she hadn’t touched in a year. The menu used words like Portfolio, Investment and Experience.
A parent had to guess where the price lived. Many gave up and sent an email instead.
Kelsey answered the same questions fourteen times a week, usually at night. She started to dread her inbox.
She also worried that parents thought she was hiding something.
In truth, she just hadn’t had time to fix a site she built three years ago.
Before the cleanup, the site added up like this.
| Measure | Before |
|---|---|
| Pages on the site | 11 |
| Inquiries a month | 7 |
| Bookings in 8 weeks | 5 |
| “How much?” emails a week | 14 |
| Hours on repeat replies a week | 4 |
Why couldn’t parents find answers?
The home page opened with a slideshow and the words “Capturing Your Story.” It sounded pretty and said nothing.
Her session page was a set of photos with no prices. The About page opened with her college degree.
Nothing was wrong with her work. The words just didn’t answer a tired parent’s questions.
The solution
Kelsey decided to stop adding to the site and start cutting. Her new goal was a site a parent could finish in three minutes.
She wrote down the seven questions parents asked most. Then she checked which page answered each one.
Most answers lived nowhere. A few lived on pages nobody visited.
So she cut the site to five pages and gave each one a single job.
She also gave every page a plain name, since descriptive and concise page titles help parents and search engines alike.
She didn’t change a single photo. She only changed words and order.
It was a strange feeling. She was used to fixing photos, not sentences. By Sunday afternoon, it felt like tidying a kitchen drawer.
What did she skip?
Plenty. No new theme, no new photos and no paid tools.
She also skipped the blog. It could wait until the five pages felt finished.
The process that worked
She did the work over three weekends, one page at a time.
Home page, the first screen
She replaced the slideshow with one laughing family photo and three short lines.
“Relaxed family photos in Boise. Games, snack breaks and no stiff poses. Sessions at parks and at your home.”
Under it sat one orange button that said “Check open dates.”
She read the three lines aloud to her sister, who has two toddlers. Her sister said, “That’s me.”
Sessions page, with a price
She named three sessions and listed what each one included. Then she added a starting price to each.
She also added one friendly line right under the page title, “Wiggly kids welcome.”
Putting a price online felt scary for an hour. Then the price emails slowed down, and the fear faded.
About page, minus the degree
She cut the college story and wrote five warm lines instead.
They said why she loves photographing families and how she handles shy kids.
She added one human detail. She keeps a bag of bubbles and a pocketful of stickers in her car.
Contact page, with a kind reply
She shortened the form to a name, an email, a date and the kids’ ages.
She also wrote an automatic reply. It promised an answer within one business day and linked to a free what-to-wear guide.
Where Kelsey’s family photographer website landed
By week four, the price emails fell from fourteen a week to five. By week eight, they were down to three.
Parents began writing things like, “I saw your prices and your bubbles, and I’m in.”
After eight weeks, the numbers had moved.
| Measure | After |
|---|---|
| Pages on the site | 5 |
| Inquiries a month | 13 |
| Bookings in 8 weeks | 14 |
| “How much?” emails a week | 3 |
| Hours on repeat replies a week | 1 |
What we learned from here
Kelsey’s family photographer website worked because she wrote for one tired parent, not for every visitor.
Parents don’t need more pages. They need clear answers in the places they’d look.
Her five pages follow the plan of a clear family photographer website, with one job per page.
A price on the page also helped the right families find her.
Fewer people asked about a budget she couldn’t meet, and those who wrote were ready to book.
The biggest surprise was how small the changes were. Each page took about two hours, and none needed a tool she didn’t already own.
She also learned to wait. The first two weeks showed little, and she almost changed everything again.
Kelsey now ranks the fixes by what mattered most.
| Fix first | Fix later |
|---|---|
| The first screen and its button | A blog and a long FAQ |
| A starting price on the sessions page | A fancy gallery layout |
| A warm About page | A new logo |
| A kind contact reply | A video on every page |
| Plain page names | A new theme |
A few slips slowed her down.
Her first price line was too vague, so parents still asked what was included. She added a short list, and those questions stopped.
She also forgot her Google profile, which still linked to the old page names. A friend caught it in week three.
One week she changed three things at once, so she couldn’t tell what worked. She went back to one change at a time.
Her inbox changed too. Fewer messages asked about prices, and more asked about dates, which is a much happier kind of question.
She also showed the new pages to two friends who are parents. Both found the session prices in under ten seconds. Before the rewrite, one of them gave up looking.
That little test is now part of every update she makes. It takes five minutes and one cup of coffee.
Her sister still tests every update. She reads the first screen for ten seconds, then says whether she would tap the button.
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