A website chatbot for photographers and studios

A photographer's enquiry has one question inside it that matters more than the rest: the date. Everything else - coverage, albums, usage, delivery - follows from whether you are free. An Allinaa assistant on your website collects the date and the brief, answers the questions people compare photographers on, and does not pretend to know your diary.

The date, and the honest limit

Ask for the date in the first or second turn, because an enquiry without it cannot be answered by anybody. Then be straight about what happens next: the assistant cannot see your calendar, cannot say you are free and cannot hold a date. Write the sentence it uses instead - that you confirm availability yourself, usually within your stated response time - and the enquiry arrives with the date on it, ready for a one-line answer.

For studios with several photographers the same applies: the assistant should collect the date and the type of shoot rather than guess at who is available. Nothing erodes trust faster than being told a date is free and then losing it.

What people actually compare

• "How many hours of coverage, and when does the clock start?"
• "How many edited images do we get, and when?"
• "Do we get the raw files?"
• "Can we print them ourselves, and can we post them?"
• "Do you travel, and what do you charge for it?"
• "What happens if you are ill?"
• "Do you have insurance, and can you send it to the venue?"

Write each in your own words. The raw-files and usage questions are worth stating precisely, because they are the ones that produce a difficult conversation after the shoot. So is the illness question: venues and clients both ask it, and a clear answer about your cover arrangements reads as professionalism rather than as pessimism.

Packages and the price question

If your prices are published, the assistant quotes them exactly as published - it quotes only what is written in your knowledge. If they are not, configure it not to estimate: a wedding, a commercial day rate and a family session are different trades, and a guessed figure either loses the enquiry or binds you to it. Write your own wording for the gap:

One website, several different shoots

Weddings, portraits, commercial product work, property, events and headshots each need different questions, and a single generic form serves none of them. Write a short path for each type you take: for a wedding, the venue and the number of guests; for product work, how many items and whether they are being sent to you; for property, the number of rooms and whether a floor plan or a drone shot is wanted; for headshots, how many people and whether it is at your studio or their office. The assistant asks the ones that belong to the type the visitor named.

Reference images, before the call

On Premium a visitor can send photographs - the venue, the product, the room, a style reference they like - and they are checked for viruses and stored privately against the enquiry. For a photographer that is the single most useful thing a web form has ever been unable to do. See files customers send.

What happens to the enquiry

The assistant offers the inquiry form once it has the date, the type and the place. The visitor confirms their own contact details and agrees to be contacted, you get an e-mail, and the enquiry waits in your inbox with a status, private notes and CSV export - so an enquiry that arrives while you are shooting is still there, complete, at nine that evening. Most photography enquiries arrive in the evening and at the weekend, which is exactly when a photographer is working. See after-hours answers and the launch checklist.