Maternity Photographer Website Example, 6 Easy Menu Words

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.

5 to 13inquiries a month
3 to 8in 10 forms completed
9 to 21maternity sessions in a quarter

Tamsin’s website had a page called Investment. Almost nobody clicked it.

That odd little menu word is where the fix for Tamsin’s maternity photographer website, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, begins.

Tamsin photographs maternity sessions along the river trails in summer and in a converted barn studio in winter.

Her photos are soft and warm.

Her website looked lovely too. It just didn’t answer the questions pregnant visitors arrived with.

Over one winter, she rebuilt the words and pages around the three visits most clients make before booking.

The problem

The site was one long scrolling home page with a menu of four fancy words. Experience, Portfolio, Investment and Inquire.

There was no page about gowns, no word about timing and no prices until the very bottom of the Investment page.

Pretty, but quiet

Visitors came, looked at a few photos and left. Her analytics showed most people stayed under a minute and viewed one page.

The ones who did write in asked the same three things. What do I wear? When should we book? How much is it?

A form that felt like paperwork

Her contact form had 12 required fields, including exact due date, hospital, budget range and how they heard about her.

Several women started it and never finished. A friend admitted she gave up at “hospital.”

Others filled it in but left the budget field at zero, which told Tamsin nothing and felt awkward to answer.

Measure	Before
Average time on site	52 seconds
Pages viewed per visit	1.4
Form starts that were completed	3 in 10
Inquiries per month	About 5

The solution

Tamsin stopped thinking about her site as a portfolio. She started thinking about it as three short conversations.

Visit one would answer “Does this feel like me?”

Visit two, “What do I get, and for how much?” Visit three, “Can I trust her, and how do I book?”

She made a list of the pages each visit needed and the plain words a pregnant visitor would use to find them.

Maternity. Gowns. When to Book. Reviews. About. Check Your Week.

Those six words became her new menu, in that order, with the last one styled as an orange button.

The process that worked

She worked on one page each weekend for six weekends.

“Experience” became “Maternity”

The home page got a new first screen. One photo of a client laughing by the river, a plain headline and one line.

Relaxed maternity photos in Grand Rapids. Gowns to borrow, breaks anytime, partners who actually enjoy it.

The button said “See how it works.” It led to a services page with three named packages and a starting price under each.

The old Investment page simply became Prices, on the same page as the packages.

A new page called Gowns

She photographed all 18 gowns on hangers and on clients, with sizes and a short note for each.

Within a month, it was her second most visited page.

She linked to it from her Instagram bio, her flyers and every first reply email. It did the outfit talking so she didn’t have to.

A when-to-book page

One line answered the timing question. Most families shoot between weeks 28 and 34, and book around weeks 20 to 26.

A small table and a note for late planners filled the rest of the page.

This page started showing up in Google for searches like “when to book maternity photos Grand Rapids” within about six weeks.

“Inquire” became “Check Your Week”

The 12-field form shrank to five. First name, email, due month, studio or outdoors, and an optional note.

An automatic reply thanked her and linked to the gown page while she waited.

Tamsin still asked for the exact due date later, in her first email, once the client already felt comfortable.

Faster pages

She ran each page through PageSpeed Insights and shrank her photos.

The home page went from loading in about seven seconds on a phone to under three.

How Tamsin’s maternity photographer website paid off

She compared the three months after the rebuild with the same three months a year earlier.

Measure	Before	After 3 months
Average time on site	52 seconds	2 minutes 40 seconds
Pages viewed per visit	1.4	3.6
Form starts that were completed	3 in 10	8 in 10
Inquiries per month	About 5	About 13

She booked 21 maternity sessions that quarter, compared with 9 the year before.

What we learned from here

Tamsin’s rebuild shows that words and order matter as much as photos.

The photos never changed much. What changed was that every visit now had a page waiting for it, with a plain name in the menu.

The gown page surprised her most.

Women shared it with friends, came back to it on visit two and mentioned favorite dresses in their first message.

The shorter form was the quickest win. Asking for due month instead of exact due date, and nothing about hospitals, made it feel safe.

The optional note box turned out to be useful too. Women used it to share worries, which helped Tamsin write warmer first replies.

Speed mattered more than she expected. Several clients mentioned how easy the site was to use on their phones, late at night.

She now plans every change to her maternity photographer website by asking which of the three visits it helps.

Here’s how her pages compared.

Kept her reading	Sent her back to Google
A menu of plain words like Gowns and When to Book	Experience, Portfolio, Investment
One calm first screen with one button	A long scroll of 60 photos
Captions with week, place and gown	Photos with no words at all
A five-field form with due month	Twelve fields, including hospital
Pages that load in under three seconds	A home page that took seven

One change didn’t help. She added a live chat bubble, hoping for quick questions.

Almost no one used it, and it covered the booking button on phones, so she removed it.

Next she plans location pages for her three favorite trails, each with parking, benches and the best time of day.