Photographer · Portfolio, packages & client galleries
ZM PhotographyZoë Montague Photography
A studio that runs from one screen.
Potchefstroom, South Africa · Portfolio · Packages · Client galleries · Studio admin
- Pipeline stages
- 6
- Portfolio layouts
- 14
- Client galleries
- Built in
- Subscriptions replaced
- 3+
The brief
Zoë photographs weddings, portraits, families, graduations and brands. The site had to show the work beautifully and sell the packages clearly. The admin had to replace a stack of subscriptions: a client-gallery service, an invoicing tool, a booking spreadsheet and a lot of WhatsApp scrolling.
The live site on a laptop and a phone.
What visitors get
Portfolio and packages
- Portfolio categories, each with its own SEO metadata and a hand-arranged layout
- Pricing with Personal and Business tabs, options per package and a wedding quote card
- Full-screen hero with its own set of photos for phones
- Contact form that saves to the admin, emails a notification and can start a booking
Client galleries
- Clients enter a gallery code, then a 4-digit PIN (or open a public link)
- Sneak peek and full gallery, each with an optional expiry date
- Full-screen lightbox with swipe and arrow keys
- Full-resolution downloads per photo or as one zip, every download recorded
- Right-click, drag and long-press saving blocked
Search engines
- Per-page metadata and a generated Open Graph image
- Structured data: ProfessionalService with live offer prices, Person, FAQ and breadcrumbs
- Sitemap that lists only live portfolios; admin and galleries kept out of the index
What runs behind the scenes
The dashboard, built around how this business actually runs.
An illustration of the admin. The figures and names are made up.
The working day
- Dashboard: bookings that need you, enquiries waiting, income this month and year, money still to collect, this week's shoots and galleries due
- Enquiries: reply by email from a branded composer, reply on WhatsApp, call, or add to the pipeline
- Bookings: a six-stage pipeline (Asked, Quoted, Booked, Shot, Delivered, Didn't go ahead) with payments, deposits and follow-up flags
- Eleven editable WhatsApp templates that fill themselves in, open WhatsApp, log to the client's history and move the next follow-up date
- A 07:00 morning digest email, automatic enquiry intake and a subscribable calendar feed
Delivering the work
- Galleries: create with a code, PIN and lifespan, upload full-resolution photos with progress, reorder, pick a layout, attach a zip
- Each gallery shows its progress from photos in to sent to downloaded, with a branded delivery email
- Quotes and invoices built from the booking, with a travel line, saved as snapshots, numbered separately and printed to one A4 page
- Calendar with month, week and day views and a “Next up” list
Running the studio
- Clients: one record per person, matched across differently typed phone numbers, with bookings, galleries and conversation history
- Income and expenses by month with net, received, still expected and spent, plus a wishlist that turns into expenses
- Site editor: brand colours, font pairings, every word on the site, email templates, with live previews
- Portfolio canvas editor with drag, resize, focal points and 14 one-click layouts
- Analytics: visitors, enquiries, galleries opened, top pages, sources, devices, countries and busiest hours, first-party and cookie-free
- Mobile studio preview and an Instagram grid planner
Under the hood
Next.js · Supabase · Cloudflare R2 · Vercel · Gmail SMTP · GSAP
Fast and modern, with the domain in the client’s name and the data in their own database.