Do You Need a Website as an Art Curator?
Successful Art and Artist Websites
Do's and Don'ts
How to Build a Website that Works
Related commodity: How to Increment Your Website Traffic
Related article: Website Tips for Artists
The mantra for a successful art or creative person website has been and continues to be "Keep it fast, simple, easy and organized." Navigation and content must be clear, concise, and straightforward in order to attract visitors in the outset place and keep them on the site one time they get there. Commencement-time visitors to whatever creative person website should know as quickly every bit possible where they are, who the artist is, what their art looks similar, what it's about, why it's worth seeing (and hopefully worth buying), and how to move effectually in society to get wherever they want to go. Sites that lack these basics or brand other common errors won't be able to attract and concord visitors, and will likely end up lost in the vast morass of nonfunctional and confusing fine art websites that overpopulate the Internet.
Before we get going here, and in the interest of anyone who thinks artist websites are outdated and no longer necessary, and that having an Instagram folio or social media presence on other platforms is all yous need, the sad truth is you have no control over your content on social media sites because they're the ones in accuse, not you. They can modify the rules at any time, remove posts they deem inappropriate, alter their search algorithms, spam you lot with advertising, become outdated, cramp your style with all their rules, disappear off the Internet, completely change management, temporarily suspend your account, or at worst, kicking you off birthday.
Regardless of how fabulous you think social media is (and it's got enough of benefits) or how large your following, YOUR WEBSITE IS THE Simply Place ONLINE WHERE YOU CONTROL THE Testify and no one else. Y'all and only yous decide what to post, when to post information technology, how long it stays there, how to organize it, when to change it, where to put it, when to motility it or when to take it downwardly. Y'all can take chances all you lot want on social media being your sole source of getting attending for your art, but always remember-- having your own website is a sure presence that you'll never lose. It's likewise what comes upward offset whenever anyone searches you online, not your social media pages. So in the interest of better creative person websites everywhere, here'southward a list of what to do and what to avoid in order to clinch yourself maximum visibility, attention, and an constructive spider web presence online:
Become your own domain name and avert free spider web hosting services. Free web hosting is never free and it'south always lame. "Gratuitous" websites torture visitors with all kinds of distracting advertisements or other obtrusive text and graphics. At worst, possibly one-half of the screen shows your fine art while the other one-half, controlled past the host site, looks like a circus. Your art often ends up in direct competition with all kinds of commercial crap and hardly any art looks practiced under those circumstances. Furthermore, gratuitous sites give the impression that either y'all can't afford your own website or domain name or worse yet, that you don't care plenty well-nigh your art to bother buying your own domain and paying for hosting in order to make it expect its best online. The good news is that basic websites with adept functionality hardly cost anything these days.
Don't use third-party advertising on your sites, especially for goods or services unrelated to your fine art. Besides turn down any offers of sponsored content. Certain, you may make a little pocket change from sponsorship or click-throughs, but any grade of advertizement is distracting to visitors, volition likely take a negative impact on your search engine rankings, and your overall online contour volition ultimately suffer for information technology.
Make sure your website looks the same on Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari. The same website can await great on i browser and terrible on some other, or worse withal, piece of work slap-up on one browser but be completely nonfunctional on another. Test yours on all major browsers before going public.
Regularly update your site and go on it updated. Don't think that merely because your social media pages are current, you don't have to worry about your website. People will continue to visit, and you accept to be ready for that. A site that's non electric current gives the impression either cypher much is happening with the artist's career, they're not that serious virtually being artists, or that they're non making new work. People visit your site to discover out what's happening at present, not what happened iii years ago.
Your website should navigate as simply, beautifully, and hands on phones as information technology does on computers, especially the organization, presentation, and quality of your images. More and more people are browsing the web on mobile devices, and that number is steadily increasing to the point where mobile browsing will shortly overtake computer browsing, assuming information technology hasn't already. You want your fine art and website to await its best no matter how people access and view it.
Link your website to all of your social media pages (and vice versa) and then that visitors tin can move freely between them as easily as possible. And when yous postal service on social media, link over to specific images or pages on your website equally often every bit possible. Using social media is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website and information technology merely getting amend, but for all the benefits, the 1 major drawback is that they control how y'all go the word out about your art, not you. Driving traffic to your website flips that paradigm to where you control the show and not someone else.
Another peachy advantage of social media is that in addition to getting the give-and-take out nigh your art, it'south as well an first-class way to present yourself on a personal level, appoint with your audience, and offering a glimpse into the artist behind the art. The more people can connect with you lot as a person, the more they'll connect with your art. Give them a sense of who you lot are, what you stand for, how you are to collaborate with, and what your artistic life is is well-nigh, and you'll increase their interest in heading on over to your website to find out more.
Present yourself and your art in ways that anyone tin can understand. Brand sure your art is organized in ways that are easy to appreciate and access. People who already know yous have no problem getting wherever they want to go; they're all taken care of. It'southward the complete strangers you should pay the most attention to, those who are introduced to your art for the offset time, like what they run across, and decide they want to see more. This includes anyone who lands on your site by take a chance or accident. Your website is all nearly exposing your art to new audiences, welcoming them, convincing them your work is worth paying attention to, and ultimately converting them into fans. So whenever someone new visits your website, brand sure yous get them where they want to become with as fiddling endeavour as possible.
Make your site easy to navigate. Some website formats are far besides confusing, accept dead-end pages, or take gallery sections that seem more like medieval mazes. Visitors get lost, and lost visitors hateful lost sales. Make sure every page on your site is linked dorsum to major pages like your homepage, gallery or portfolio, bio, resume, and contact and purchasing data.
Continue your main carte du jour options to a minimum. Some creative person websites have so many menu options that visitors have no thought where to start or where to go and are overwhelmed with choices virtually before they even first clicking. A website with too many carte options confuses people and gives them a perfect alibi to leave. The most important main menu categories are:
i. Your Gallery or Portfolio link (with dropdown options to private series or bodies of work as necessary).
2. Your Artist Statement or "Well-nigh the Art" link.
3. Your Bio or "Nigh the Artist" link.
four. A link to your Resume or CV.
5. Buy or Buy link containing complete ordering, shipping and payment information for potential buyers.
6. Your Contact Information.
Text explanations and introductions to your art are extremely important, just proceed the word count to a minimum. This includes your statement, bio, descriptions of bodies of work or mediums or techniques, and and so on. Being brief with words gets people into your galleries to come across your art as quickly as possible (that's why they're here). Overwhelm visitors with words and you'll bore them right off your site. Quick concise introductions and descriptions are best; anything over 150-300 words can get tedious (unless there'south a strong cerebral component to your art). The fewer words you can use, the improve.
If you lot can say it in a couple of sentences or paragraphs, that'southward bang-up. If yous desire to provide detailed information about either yourself or your art, link to pages where people can read more in that location, rather than putting boatloads of text on loftier-traffic areas like your homepage, statement or bio. People who want to know more volition click over to the text pages; those who don't can click right over to your fine art without getting bogged downwardly by oceans of verbiage. Always remember-- people visit your website to encounter your art, not to read your life story.
Organize your art into groups or series of related works. If you testify as well many different kinds of art on the aforementioned gallery page, y'all'll simply finish up confusing people. The "something for anybody" arroyo oftentimes backfires and instead becomes more similar "nothing for anyone."
Think of your website as a museum and yourself every bit the curator. Just like in a museum, make sure that similar works of art are all on display together, each group in its own gallery.
Back-trail each series or trunk of your work with its own introductory caption. Keep it short-- perhaps two or three paragraphs at most, preferably less. Briefly welcoming people to different bodies of piece of work will deepen their understanding and experience of what they're almost to run across. Besides go on in mind that Google and other search engines cannot search images, but they can search text. Providing textual explanations of your fine art, either accompanying groups, serial, or fifty-fifty of individual pieces, increases the chances that images will come up in online searches, be seen, and hopefully clicked over to. To echo-- image pages with no text will not come up in online searches.
Make sure each and every every image of your art, is searchable on Google and other search engines (aka is accompanied by text). The more chances people have to state on your website as a effect of online searches, the amend. For every piece of work of art, include the title, medium, dimensions, a brief clarification (only if relevant or necessary), and whatsoever other relevant details.
Use informative folio-specific championship lines. The title line consists of keywords that accurately and specifically describe a page's content, like a news story headline tells what you're virtually to read. Many artist websites completely waste championship line opportunities using the verbal same line on every page of the site, like "Mike Miller art" or "Judy Smith creative person." The title line, in case you don't know, usually appears at or almost the top of your browser window merely outside the page, ordinarily on alphabetize tabs or tab bars, non in the content of the page itself. Information technology'southward i of the most important lines on a webpage and often the line that appears in search results. Each title line on each individual page of your website-- and on each private paradigm if your site is designed that way-- should be unique, specific and descriptive of the contents on that page. This way, each folio will have a slightly unlike appearance on search engines, meaning more matchable keywords, and more than opportunities for your website to appear in search results, which will hopefully translate to more visitors to your site.
Keep epitome sizes reasonable and don't put besides many images on a single page. Big detailed images of your fine art may expect great as they download over loftier-speed connections, only call up that many people notwithstanding have slower connections. Long downloads frustrate visitors and force them off your site, so use images no larger than 100K-250K, preferably smaller. Photoshop and other image editing programs take formatting options to reduce epitome sizes without significantly compromising their quality. Acquire how to utilize them. The same holds true for image pages. Too many images on a unmarried folio can take a long time to download, longer than some people are willing to wait.
Don't put links to other websites on your site. Some artists call back that links pages are a proficient idea, and put links to their favorite artists or galleries or art pages, etc. What this does is give visitors excuses to leave your site and explore other sites that they might terminate up liking amend. Once people land on your website, you lot want to do everything in your power to keep them in that location, not invite them to leave and go elsewhere.
NEVER require visitors to join, annals, get passwords or fill up out any forms of any kind in guild to see your site. Forcing people to identify themselves before they can see your art is a horrible idea. Imagine if people had to evidence their driver's licenses or other forms of ID in lodge to visit bricks-and-mortar galleries or artist studios. If it doesn't happen in existent life, it shouldn't happen online.
Don't overuse "cookies" (minor files that attach to estimator hard drives, rails people's movements around your site, and collect personal data). Cookies are occasionally necessary when filling out sure forms, when buying art using "shopping cart" services, or for purposes like tracking visitors around your website to see which pages they visit the most. Once more, if people want to contact you, they will. Don't overdo efforts to excerpt personal information without their knowing information technology.
Avoid plug-ins, special effects, audio, complex visuals, and like gimmicks that take nothing to do with your art. Websites that use these frequently take longer to load, crave special software or, at worst, crash visitors' computers. Unless your website is designed to be a work of art or a performance piece in and of itself, and exists primarily for amusement purposes, avoid the fancy stuff. Web designers may push for special effects, only when y'all get correct down to it, they're totally unnecessary, counterproductive to your ends, and mainly about them showing off their technical skills rather than effectively presenting your art. Recall-- people visit your website to run across your art and run into it fast, not to sit through your spider web designer's fantasies.
Provide adequate contact information. The more you tell people about yourself such as your jail cell phone number, email address or other details like your studio accost, the more accessible you appear. Don't requite potential buyers the impression that yous're difficult to communicate with by showing nothing or just just a course, and not even telling them what part of the state you live in. Style besides many artist websites provide absolutely no contact information whatsoever, but rather have these awful feedback or comments forms that you fill out and submit. People who fill them out take no thought where they become, who gets them, if they fifty-fifty get anywhere at all or whether they'll ever get replies. The questions that always go through my mind on these sites are, "What is this creative person trying to hide?" or "Why are they making themselves and then inaccessible?" The overwhelming bulk of people who buy contemporary art appreciate a sense of knowing who they're buying it from. So don't be a stranger; anonymity is not a selling betoken.
If yous accept no consistent long-term gallery representation, price every piece of art on your website for sale, assuming y'all have no conflicts with galleries or others who periodically represent or sell your art. If yous have representation, ask whether they'll allow you to put prices on your website, or at least on fine art they're not representing. If they don't want prices, don't price (hopefully they're selling enough of your art to make up for non wanting you to sell it on your own).
For those of you who are independent or who have no representation, non pricing your art on-site, just rather asking people to email or otherwise contact you for prices, is always a big fault. Many buyers and collectors are not comfy asking, and y'all don't want to miss out on sales to them. You don't have to put a price next to every single piece of your art, past the way; exercise like the galleries practice. On the "Buy" or "Purchase" page, have a toll list available where people tin easily meet how much everything costs. Or if you lot price co-ordinate to size or subject matter, have all of that explained along with respective prices. You'll only lose potential sales if you lot don't price your fine art... guaranteed.
Just similar in existent life, many people adopt to store for art quietly by themselves, make up one's mind whether they can beget it, and so make contact. People are reluctant to ask prices when they're not posted for a number of reasons-- they recall that doing then might obligate them in some way, that they'll get a hard sell, that they'll get a barrage of emails, that they'll exist embarrassed if they find out the art costs much more than they can afford, that artists will quote as high a price every bit possible just to run across how much they can sell information technology for, and so on. When yous're out shopping, practice you like having to ask how much something costs or do you prefer to see the asking toll in advance? Practise unto others...
Be able to justify or explain your selling prices if someone asks. Everyone likes to experience they're spending their money wisely-- especially these days-- then either provide bones information almost how you price your fine art on your site, or be prepared to field questions about value if people call or email you. People who don't sympathize how you set your prices or why they're as loftier or equally depression as they are will be more reluctant to buy than people who exercise sympathise. So make your pricing piece of cake to sympathise.
Offering blessing, return and refund policies. Online fine art shoppers may desire to see art on blessing first and be able to return it for consummate refunds (less aircraft costs) if information technology doesn't look similar they thought information technology did when they saw it online. No approval, return or refund policies mean fewer sales. The more than willing yous are to work with buyers, the greater your chances of selling fine art. FYI, in conversations that I've had with people who sell art online, very few people ever return it once they purchase.
Provide articulate concise instructions on how to buy. Tell people what payment methods you accept (accept as many equally possible), how you lot pack, how you ship, how long they have to view the art on approval, and so on. The more professional you announced, the more than comfortable people feel almost buying from you.
Offer fine art in a diversity of toll ranges. Online shoppers tend to outset slowly, tend to purchase less expensive pieces from artists they don't already know, and will likely get discouraged if every slice they see costs thousands of dollars or more. This is especially true of people who visit your site for the showtime time and like what they see. Offer art at a variety of price points gives all of your fans a chance to ain something no matter what their budgets or how familiar they are with you lot. And so make certain pretty much anyone who likes your art plenty to want to own it will be able to afford something.
Don't mix art that's already sold with art that'due south for auction. Some artists recall showing numerous sold works of art on their sites alongside fine art for sale makes them look good and will incite some kind of buying frenzy, or requite people the impression that they meliorate purchase at present "before information technology'south besides late"-- but the effect is often the contrary. Potential buyers instead get the impression that the all-time pieces are already sold and all that's left are the crumbs. They get frustrated when the selection is limited or when all the "proficient stuff" is gone or when their favorite piece is already sold. It's kind of like going to a garage sale at the end of the 24-hour interval and picking through the leftovers.
You tin can still show sold works if y'all want, just put them nether a separate category in your "Gallery" or "Portfolio" link titled "Select Past Works" or something similar. Here you show the best of the best-- fine art that's won prizes or has been exhibited at established juried shows; fine art that'southward in individual, corporate or institutional collections; fine art that'southward been featured in reviews or pictured on websites or blogs or in hard-re-create publications, and so on. Showing past works in this way acts as sort of a pictorial resume and speaks to your experience, success and credibility every bit an creative person.
Don't show every work of fine art yous've e'er created. Nobody needs to see experimental pieces that didn't quite work, one-offs that you don't intend to follow upwards on with additional related works, older pieces that have trivial or no bearing on what y'all're doing now, educatee works, and so on. As well much art and likewise much multifariousness is confusing to visitors because they tin't get a sense of who you are, what your art represents, or is intended to signify or communicate. Remember-- people rarely buy from artists whose art they tin can't empathise. Continue information technology simple; go along it current; go along it related.
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One of the best ways for you to get the word out almost your art is through your website. Brand certain yours is working on your behalf and that anyone anywhere who lands on it-- whether on purpose or by accident, whether they know you lot or not-- can get upwards to speed most where they are, what they're about to run into and experience, and exist able to click on over to your galleries as quickly and effortlessly as possible. A welcoming website pays dividends in all kinds of ways.
Do yous need help with your site? Would you like more traffic? Do you wonder whether it can be meliorate than information technology is at present? I exercise website consults with artists all the fourth dimension. I'm always bachelor to go over yours, make specific recommendations on ways to improve it, and increase traffic and engagement with visitors. Email alanbamberger@me.com or call 415.931.7875 if yous take whatever questions or are interested in making an appointment.
(fine art by Ara Peterson)
Source: https://www.artbusiness.com/weberrors.html
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