Happy New Year wedding planners and future wedding planners!
Start the year right, like the wedding planner below, by creating or refreshing your website so it will help you attract many brides.
Question
I’m just putting up my website for my new wedding planning business. I’m not sure I’ve done it right. Can you take a look at it?
Answer
I get many emails asking me to review websites but it is difficult do it via email. It’s best when there is interaction and I can give personalized suggestions. However, these tips on some of the basics will give you a good idea on what direction your website should take.
First, keep in mind as you are designing your site that brides may be looking at it on-the-go or from their workplace on a mobile device. This means you need to forgo the unnecessary extras like photos that fade in and out that may not work on their smart phones and music that might play out loud and publicly let everyone around her know she’s planning her wedding when she wants to keep it private.
Home Page
The home page is where a bride gets her first impression of you. Your photos and text need to convey your brand; who you are, the types of weddings that you plan and your level of expertise and professionalism. Many brides don’t read more than the home page before leaving a site. You need to give them reasons to stay and read further to learn more about you.
Services Page
Give clear descriptions of the services you offer and the benefits of those services. In other words, don’t just put your services in a bullet-pointed list. Tell brides why those services would be important for them to have.
And, if you name your packages, make sure brides will understand their meaning. Many have no idea what the terms “signature weddings” and “bespoke weddings” are all about even though many wedding planners use them.
About Page
You want brides to connect with you so be sure you put a professional photograph of yourself on this page along with information about your relevant wedding and event planning background, skills and experience.
Contact Page
This is where you tell brides how to reach you. Many planners post a form for brides to complete and submit if they have questions or want a consultation. That’s fine, but you should also post a business phone number and an email address so brides can reach you right away. Be careful about putting your exact address on your website. If you don’t want potential clients and salespeople visiting you uninvited, don’t post it.
And, be sure to mention where you offer your services. It may seem obvious but some wedding planners forget to put this information on their websites and brides can’t tell where the wedding planner is located.
Testimonials
These help you build credibility with brides. You don’t have to have a separate page just for them, you can place them throughout your pages, especially where you discuss the benefits of your services. Make sure the testimonials are relevant to the services you offer and get permission before you use names of clients. Clean up any misspellings and grammatical errors before you post them.
Links
Have your designer create icons with links out to your social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, so brides can follow you and get to know you better.
Brides use the Internet to find their wedding vendors and learn more about the ones they are considering hiring. When they visit your site you want to stand as an expert wedding planner whom they can trust to help them have the weddings of their dreams.
And if you have a pressing question about starting or running your wedding planning business, you can send me an email at [email protected]. I will answer them on this blog or in my ezine, “Wedding Planner Tips,” which you can subscribe to here.
