Julia Pelish Photography

Julia Pelish is a professional photographer in Vancouver. When she moved here from New York, she needed to build a new client base from scratch. While building up her new business in Vancouver she decided that in an increasingly competitive industry, a web presence would be helpful.

Julia's Project

When Julia started her project, she was familiar with computer software that was mainly dedicated to editing photographs but had little experience with web development or design. With a little guidance from her brother and tutorials from Lynda.com Julia learned how to use Adobe Golive for creating webpages. After three or four months of going through online tutorials, experimenting, and learning how to make websites, Julia had a website that she felt would help her display her portfolio and attract new clients.

A New Perspective

In June of 2005 Julia learned about eBusiness Connection and decided to go for a one-on-one consultation with Christina Baumgartner, an eBC consultant. Julia came out of the consultation with several ideas on how to improve her website. She then began an overhaul of her website which concluded in October of 2005 with a general goal of improved usability and consistency.

Lessons to be Learned

Julia has learned a lot while developing a website for her business and has some advice she would like to share with other small business owners. First of all, do your research! When it comes to choosing a service provider, such as a hosting company, it is important to shop around and make an educated decision. She encourages you to take into account a company's record of customer service and not just price. Working with a company that provides decent and timely answers to your questions is essential to anyone who is learning while they develop their website.

Second, be patient when it comes to developing your skills. You are not going to be able to produce a professional looking website over a couple of weekends. It will take a few months of experimenting during the limited time that you have for this project until you come up with something passable.

Finally, learn from your mistakes! Like most small business owners, Julia has made her fair share of mistakes. As in anything else, mistakes can be the best lessons in the world of website development.

Success?

Julia's website had been up and running for a little over a year and a half when eBC caught up to her for an interview. And she says it has been a worthwhile endeavour.

Breaking into the Vancouver market after relocating from New York was difficult, and Julia attributes some of her success to her website. Potential clients want to see her previous work before hiring her and her website provides easy access to her portfolio. Whether referrals come from past clients or from giving out her business card, people always go to her website to check her out before contacting her for business.

In an industry where all of her competition is also going online, her website establishes legitimacy. Any large business worth a grain of salt has a website and consumers are beginning to expect that kind of accessibility from all legitimate businesses. Julia also uses the internet to check out her competition, research future sites for photo shoots, and learn about new trends in the industry.

To analyze traffic on her website, Julia uses her website server logs. These statistics give Julia an idea of how many people are viewing her portfolio, what particular services are generating the most interest and what areas her clients are coming from.

When eBC last spoke with Julia, her schedule was packed with 8 upcoming weddings, four of which found her through her website!