Nikki told me about a phone call she’d had with a potential client. The woman said, “I can’t work out how much it costs.” Nikki explained the session fee. The woman asked if that included images. It didn’t.
And there it is. Nikki has 25+ years of experience, a gorgeous warehouse studio in Sydney’s inner west, and a list of photography awards most people would frame on their wall. But her website was making people work too hard to book a session.
The starting point
Nikki runs Lion & Cub Photography out of Tortuga Studios in St Peters. She photographs families, maternity, newborns, pets, personal branding, corporate events, and runs photography workshops. She won the 2021 Ausmumpreneur Award for NSW Creative Entrepreneur and has been a finalist in the Australian Small Business Champion Awards.
Her old site had accumulated years of cruft. Landing pages for services she no longer offered (daycare photography, AFL photos). A Google Maps embed on the contact page that was searching for “Lion” instead of pinning her actual studio address, so visitors in different locations saw random businesses. An offshore SEO company had been building spammy backlinks, one of which pointed to a porn site. And her previous web person (a childhood friend who also handled hosting) felt offended when she hired me, which made the hosting transition slower than it needed to be.
The site itself wasn’t terrible. It had decent bones. But it was text-heavy, the service pages jumped straight into process logistics before giving visitors any emotional reason to trust Nikki, and the pricing was genuinely confusing. Different packages for different services, a separate session fee that didn’t include any deliverables, and no clear way to just book and pay online.
In Sydney’s inner west, where cost of living is steep, families treat portrait photography as a considered purchase. They want to know what they’re spending before they commit. The old site wasn’t giving them that clarity.
Before screenshots:Â
One decision that shaped everything
The biggest single decision in this project was moving to unified 3-tier pricing across all services. One set of three packages (Cub, Lion, and VIP) that covers families, maternity, newborns, pets, personal branding, everything. Instead of separate pricing structures per service, clients see three clear options and can book directly through Studio Ninja.
This sounds simple. It wasn’t.
It meant rethinking the entire navigation structure. We organized services under three main dropdowns: Family (with sub-pages for family portraits, maternity, baby, and pets), Business (personal branding, corporate events), and Workshops (student tutoring, adult workshops, school holiday programs). Clean groupings instead of a flat list of eight services in the nav bar.
It meant changing the CTA strategy. Instead of “download my pricing guide” (which added friction and required follow-up emails), we moved to direct booking. “Book Your Session” sits front and center on the homepage, and service pages link straight to pricing and availability.
It also meant rewriting the service page copy entirely. The old pages dove straight into process details: step 1, step 2, step 3. Functional, sure. But family photography is intimate. Parents want to feel that you get their family before they care about your 5-step process. So we restructured every service page to lead with emotional benefits first, talk about the experience second, and only then get into logistics and FAQs.
What we rebuilt
Homepage. The old homepage had a set of black-and-white portraits at the top, some descriptive text, testimonials at the bottom, and a Google Maps embed (pointing to the wrong place). The new homepage opens with an image carousel showing the range of Nikki’s work (families, corporate, pets, weddings, creative portraits), overlaid with “Award-winning Sydney Portrait Photographer” and a prominent booking button. Below that: a brief intro about Nikki, client testimonials, featured services with clear category links, the studio gallery, Nikki’s bio section, latest blog articles, a contact/booking form embedded via Studio Ninja, and a full FAQ section. Everything you need to decide and book, on one page.
Service pages. Each one now follows the same structure: emotional hook at the top, what the experience is like, what makes it different, information about packages, and a service-specific FAQ section. Those FAQs pull double duty. They help visitors who are on the fence, sure, but they also feed Google and AI search tools. When someone asks ChatGPT “best family photographer in Sydney’s inner west,” detailed Q&A content is exactly the kind of thing that gets surfaced.
Contact page. Replaced the broken Google Maps embed with a clean layout: Nikki’s photo, a booking/inquiry form, and a mini-FAQ addressing the questions people have when they’re on the fence (pricing, availability, what to expect). Award badges are now displayed prominently instead of buried in the footer.
About page. The old version was a basic bio with a list of awards. The new one tells more of Nikki’s story. Multiple photos (including her signature pink heart shot), an awards timeline with context, her studio space on full display, and a closing line I liked: “If there’s a story, I can capture it.”
Technical cleanup. 301 redirects for all the old landing pages that were being deleted (daycare, AFL, other discontinued services), so any existing backlinks or bookmarks still land somewhere useful instead of a 404 page. Cleaned up the spammy SEO work from the previous vendor. Proper security and performance settings once the site went live.
The site is LOOKING AMAZING! What an overhaul. It is like going from a drab kitchen with daggy appliances to something super slick like my new kitchen with Bosch appliances and stone kitchen benchtops. This year is the year of upgrade for me! – Nikki McLennan
The trust thread
This project took about 9 months, from July 2025 to April 2026. That’s longer than a typical custom build. A good chunk of that was content preparation (Nikki worked with a copywriter, Babelfish Consulting, for parts of it) and life getting in the way.
At one point, Nikki had to pause the project. She was caring for an elderly parent, managing a teaching job, and had just bought a house. I sent her an email saying to take care of her family first, and we’d pick up whenever she was ready.
She brought that up months later on a call: “You sent me the most lovely email, simply like take care, you know, family first, things will resume when you can. And I was like, that’s what a kind person would do.”
Context helps here. Nikki had been burned before. The offshore SEO company hadn’t just been ineffective. They’d built spammy links, been aggressive when she tried to cancel, and one of their backlinks literally pointed to a porn site. When we discussed it on a call, she said: “I’m so glad I’m working with you because at least then I can trust you.”
A few days before launch, a social media designer told Nikki the colour palette was “very beige/brown” and made her feel the site looked outdated. She spiraled a bit, then wrote me this: “I went down a wormhole with colours… You are the expert and I trust you. I have looked at your example projects and see that the minimal colour approach lets the images sing.”
She figured it out on her own. The warm, neutral palette is intentional. A photographer’s website is a frame. If the frame is louder than the work, you’ve got a problem.
What photographers can take from this
Simplify your pricing. If you offer multiple services, try unified packages that work across all of them. Your clients shouldn’t need to compare separate price lists for family vs. maternity vs. pets. Three clear tiers that cover everything, with add-ons for extras, reduces confusion and admin overhead.
Lead with emotion on service pages. Before you explain your 4-step process or your shooting style, give visitors a reason to feel something. Family photography is personal. Parents aren’t shopping for 10 digital files. They want a moment with their kids they can hang on their wall.
Add FAQ sections to every service page. I mentioned this above, but it’s worth repeating. A homepage FAQ covers generic questions (location, hours, qualifications). Service-page FAQs cover niche-specific questions (when should I book my maternity session? What do I do if my toddler won’t cooperate?). Google and AI search tools both eat this stuff up.
Bundle your session fee with deliverables. The old model of charging a separate session fee and then surprising clients with product pricing at a viewing appointment is losing ground, especially in expensive markets. Clients want to know the total cost upfront. Bundle a session fee with a minimum number of digital files. It reduces friction and feels fairer.
Don’t delete old pages, redirect them. Removing services during a redesign? Set up 301 redirects to a relevant page instead of just deleting them. Those old URLs might have backlinks, bookmarks, or Google indexing that you don’t want to lose.
