Tell me if this sounds familiar. You decide you want to start filming weddings. You build out a website with info about you, examples of your work, and a contact form… but it’s been a while now and no one is actually reaching out to book you.
What the heck is wrong?
My name is Matt Johnson, I’ve been filming weddings for over 15 years now, and I’ve been teaching a lot of people how to do it too. In this post, I want to share three reasons why your website isn’t booking clients and give you some extremely practical things you can do to improve it right now.
Mistake #1: Treating Your Website Like a Portfolio Instead of a Sales Page
The first mistake I see so many wedding videographers make is that they treat their website like a portfolio page, not a sales page.
When I got started filming weddings about a decade and a half ago, my thinking was: I filmed a wedding, I better put that wedding video on my website. No thought whatsoever about how many wedding videos a couple was actually going to want to sit and watch.
This sounds like a good idea on the surface. You’re keeping your website updated with new content! But the problem is that it can actually hurt your sales. You’ve essentially turned your site into a museum. A couple could come and look at every single video you’ve ever made, five videos, ten videos, hundreds of videos, keep scrolling forever, maybe watch one or two, and then leave without booking you because there is just too much to sift through. And let’s be honest, not every one of those wedding videos is going to be your best work.
I knew a guy who had every single wedding he had ever filmed on a video page that felt like it scrolled forever. He had gotten better over the years, which meant some of those videos were from his first year of filming, and the quality was dramatically worse than his recent stuff. That is not what you want couples seeing.
The goal of your website is not to be a portfolio where people can watch all your work. The point of your website is for people to visit it, identify with you as a filmmaker, and then want to hire you because they can picture you filming their wedding. The entire goal of your website is for it to be a sales page, not a portfolio.
So instead of having 10 or 20 wedding videos on your site, start curating. Cut it down to three, maybe six if they’re all dramatically different from each other. Your goal is to show a very limited selection of your best work so that a couple won’t be overwhelmed and will actually want to book you.
If you’re building your wedding filmmaking business from the ground up and want to know how much you should charge to shoot a wedding film, I’ve got a post on that too.
Mistake #2: Having Too Many Pages on Your Website
This one may seem slightly counterintuitive, but once I explain the psychology behind it, you’re going to be like… oh, that makes total sense.
The second mistake many filmmakers make is having too many pages on their website and not embracing the power of a one-page layout.
When you first start building a website, it’s easy to want a homepage, a videos page, an about page, a pricing page, and a contact page. The problem with that setup, even if you have a very clear menu at the top, is that a multi-page website ignores everything we’ve learned about how people interact with websites over the last 30 years.
The statistics are clear: the vast majority of people who visit a website never click away from the page they originally landed on. If someone clicks through to your homepage, only a small fraction of them will ever navigate to another page. If they come from Google and land on your about page, the odds are they are never going to click anywhere else on your site.
Why? I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s just human psychology and how we don’t like clicking on things if we don’t have to. But here’s what I do know: while the vast majority of people won’t click to a different page, if you put a lot of information on one page and all they have to do is scroll, people will keep scrolling basically forever.
Scrolling: good. Clicking: bad. Think about TikTok or Instagram Reels. What are those systems built around? Not clicking. Not tapping to navigate somewhere new. A simple swipe, a scrolling motion where you’re moving through content with zero friction.
I’m not telling you why it works. I’m just telling you that it works. And what it means for you as a filmmaker is that if you want to maximize bookings, you need to seriously consider moving away from the old multi-page website idea and instead embrace a one-page, sales-oriented layout.
The top of the page looks like a homepage. Scroll down a bit and there are your example videos. Keep scrolling and there’s information about you and your packages. And at the very bottom, as the natural conclusion of this journey you’ve taken the couple on, there’s a contact form where they can reach out.
You’re guiding them along a path. Introducing yourself, forming a connection, and then booking you at the bottom. Trust me. It works.
And if you’re groaning right now because you’ve already built a big multi-page website, don’t think of it like that. Just take your homepage and copy and paste all the contents from your other pages onto that one page. You’ll be turning your website into a booking machine faster than you think.
Mistake #3: A Contact Form That’s Way Too Long
The third mistake I see so many wedding filmmakers make is completely dropping the ball when it comes to their contact form.
For a while, there was this push in the wedding industry for you to “vet” your clients, basically to have them prove they were serious about hiring you. This resulted in contact forms that ballooned to 10 or 15 questions. Not just basic info like your name and email, but also things like: describe your entire wedding day, list all your other vendors, tell me exactly why you want to hire me… and on and on.
Here’s the reality: you’re going to annoy a ton of potential clients. When they get to the point of wanting to reach out to you, the odds are they’ll get halfway through your monster form, say forget it, and go to the next website they’ve already got pulled up, where that filmmaker is just asking for a name, phone number, and wedding date and the whole thing takes 30 seconds to fill out.
Who do you think they’re booking?
Look at your contact form and ask yourself: how can I make it as easy as possible for a couple to reach out to me?
Personally, I’ve always kept mine very simple: the couple’s names, email, phone number, wedding date and location, and an open-ended text box where they can tell me about themselves and their wedding with no requirement for what they need to write there. This gives them flexibility. If they just want to ask about pricing, they can do that. If they want to write me a whole book about their relationship, they’re welcome to do that too. And because the rest of the page has already built a real connection with them by the time they get to the form, a lot of them will end up telling me more without me ever requiring it.
Bonus Tips: Make It Easy for Couples to Reach You
Two bonus tips that are absolutely worth implementing.
First, include a regular email address typed out on your website that people can click or type directly into their email client, no form required. This is especially helpful for anyone who just hates filling out forms.
Second, and this is a big one: put your phone number on your website and tell people they can text you. You will be amazed at how many younger couples are going to text you because they hate email. And you would be shocked by the number of mothers of the bride who are going to actually call you, asking you to film their daughter’s wedding. There is a certain age group that still wants to make phone calls, and if you want bookings, you need to be ready to answer the phone for them.
Putting It All Together
If you can do all of these things, shift your website from a portfolio to a sales page, make it one page long, slim down your contact form, and make your phone number and email easily accessible, you are going to be amazed at how many more inquiries and bookings you start getting.
And while you’re working on getting more couples to your website, make sure the films you’re delivering are as good as they can be. My free guide Edit Videos Like a Pro will help you do exactly that. Check it out, it’s completely free.
Thanks so much for reading, and have a great day!