Websites for wedding photographers that win the work.

Couples book a wedding photographer early - often a year or more ahead, and straight after the venue - so the first question is always "are you free on our date". Discovery runs through venue supplier lists, Instagram, Pinterest, wedding directories and search, very often in the form "wedding photographer" plus a venue or county. Couples shortlist on style: documentary or posed, light and airy or moody, and they have usually decided which they like before they arrive. They then want to see complete weddings, not a best-of grid, to be sure you deliver consistently through a dark church, a rainy drinks reception and a dancefloor. Price is the next filter, and most couples are working to a total budget. Finally they want to feel they will get on with you, which is why an about page with a real face and a relaxed call booking matter more here than in most trades.

When demand peaks. Enquiries peak between Christmas and March, after the proposal season and wedding fairs. The shooting season runs mainly from late spring to early autumn.

Wedding photography websites are heavy by nature, and many are painfully slow on a phone - large galleries with full-size files, autoplay slideshows and heavy templates. A couple flicking between five tabs will not wait. The second failure is "get in touch for pricing": couples on a fixed budget skip sites that hide it and enquire with those that show a starting price. The third is showing only highlights: without full wedding galleries or blog posts, couples cannot judge consistency, and a site with nothing written about named venues misses the searches couples make most. Finally, many enquiry forms ask for too little (no date, no venue) or far too much, and the date check that should take a minute becomes a week of emails.