Showit +Sites

One of my favorite features of Showit is the ability to create customized +Sites.  Not only do they “wow” your clients, they also serve as a powerful marketing tool! Below is an example of a wedding website template I designed for my photography business.  View it live at http://emilyandmatt.tiffanykelley.com.

The colors, patterns, and fonts are personalized to my clients’ overall wedding theme, and the site features photos from their engagement session, links to their gift registries, wedding event details, and more.  You can really make these sites as elaborate or a simple as you’d like.  For example, this particular couple in my example site above wanted to add a page listing suggested things for their guests to do around town and lodging options. They also opted to send out Save-the-Dates that included a link to their site where guests can RSVP online!

Below are a few of my tips for getting the most out of Showit’s wedding +Sites:

• Facebook Integration:  Create a “Guest Book” link using Showit’s Facebook commenting feature.  This is especially useful for marketing because every time someone posts a message it shows up on their Facebook wall along with a link to the site.
• Online RSVP: Unfortunately you can’t just set up a standard Showit form for this because all the submissions would end up going to your email address instead of your clients.  However, a workaround for this is to simply set up a Google form and have the link open up in an overlay box when “RSVP” is clicked.
• Link to Your Photography Site:  At the top of the site, I always include “Wedding Website Compliments of Tiffany Kelley Photography” and link to my site.
• Make it a Template:  Since you’re most likely going to offer this wedding +Site as a free add-on to your photography collections, you’re going to want to make it easy and quick to create.  The most efficient way to go about that is to set up a +Site template.  Therefore, the overall site layout remains the same, but you can personalize it by changing the background, images, colors, and text content.

Finally, don’t feel that you’re only limited to using +Sites for wedding clients.  You can also create them for seniors or perhaps as baby announcement sites.  The possibilities really are limitless!  If you’d like to start offering custom Showit +Sites to your clients but need help designing a site template, I’d love to help!  Just shoot me a message at mail@tiffanykelley.com and lets chat!