Think of your website as a museum and yourself as the curator
The key to any successful artist website is to keep it simple and organized! Your navigation and content must be concise, straightforward, and clear to attract visitors in the first place, keep them on the site once they are there, and make sure they come back.
A first-time visitor to any website should know as quickly as possible where they are, who the artist is, what their art looks like, what it's about, why it's worth seeing (and hopefully worth buying), and how to move around to get wherever they want to go. Sites that lack these basics or make other common errors won't be able to attract and hold visitors, and will likely end up lost in the vast morass of nonfunctional and frustrating art websites. Below we break down how your website should be set up and the important information you should include.
Make your site easy to navigate (The Main Menu options)
Keep it simple.
Some artist websites have so many menu options that visitors have no idea where to start or where to go and are overwhelmed with choices almost before they even start clicking. A website with too many menu options confuses people and gives them a perfect excuse to leave. The most important main menu categories are:
Gallery or Portfolio
Here, you can include dropdown options to individual series or bodies of work as necessary. Make sure to include insitu photographs so people can visualize how your works look within a space. If you are an independent artist, here is where you can create a shop for people to purchase directly from you. Organize your art into groups or a series of related works. If you show too many different kinds of art on the same gallery page, you'll only end up confusing people. The "something for everyone" approach often backfires and instead becomes more like "nothing for anyone."
When creating a shop here are some things to consider;
If you have no consistent long-term gallery representation, price every piece of art on your website for sale, assuming you have no conflicts with galleries or others who periodically represent or sell your art.
Offer approval, return and refund policies.
Offer art in a variety of price ranges.
Don't mix art that's already sold with art that's for sale.
Don't show every work of art you've ever created.
About the Artist
Here, include your Artist’s Statement, Bio, and CV. Present yourself and your art in ways that anyone can understand but keep the text to a minimum. Your website is all about introducing your art to new audiences. Make sure you have a current artist statement (tips for writing one here) along with your bio/cv (tips on how to format it here).
Being brief with words gets people into your galleries to see your art as quickly as possible (that's why they're here). Overwhelm visitors with heavy text 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's a strong cognitive component to your art).
Press
Have press mentions? Flaunt them! Let them know how desirable your work is.
Contact
Provide adequate contact information. Don't give potential buyers the impression that you're hard to communicate with by showing nothing or just a form, and not even telling them what part of the country you live in. Way too many artist websites provide absolutely no contact information whatsoever, but rather have comments forms that you fill out and submit. By opening yourself up contact-wise, it will open you up to more commissions, and sales!
If you are represented by a gallery, you can include their details on that page.
The Widgets
Connect your website and your social media accounts. Link your website to all of your social media pages (and vice versa) so that visitors can move freely between them as efficiently as possible. And when you post on social media, link over to specific images or pages on your website as often as possible. Using social media is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website. Another great advantage of social media is that in addition to getting the word out about your art, it's also an excellent way to present yourself on a personal level, engage with your audience, and offer a glimpse into the artist behind the art. The more people can connect with you as a person, the more they'll connect with your art. Give them a sense of who you are, what you stand for, how you are to interact with, and what your artistic life is is about, and you'll increase their interest in heading on over to your website to find out more.
Some other general things to keep in mind
Get your own domain name and avoid free web hosting services. We suggest using Squarespace or Wix to use a pre-made template, or if you savy enough, tweak it to make it your own. With a personalized domain name, it will be highly beneficial in your SEO rankings!
Don't use third-party advertising on your sites, especially for goods or services unrelated to your art. Any form of advertising that is distracting to visitors will likely have a negative impact on your search engine rankings, and your overall online profile will ultimately suffer for it.
Make sure your website looks the same on Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. The same website can look great on one browser and terrible on another, or worse yet, work great on one browser but be completely nonfunctional on another. Test yours on all major browsers before going public.
Regularly update your site and keep it updated. Just because your Instagram is up to date doesn't mean you don't have to worry about your website. As surprising as this may be, some people don't have Instagram. I know, shocking, but you would be doing yourself a disservice having your works easily accessible to that demographic. A site that's not current gives the impression either nothing much is happening or that they're not creating new work. People visit your site to find out what's happening now, not what happened several years ago.
Your website should navigate as simply, beautifully, and easily on phones as it does on computers, especially the organization, presentation, and quality of your images. While you may think that Instagram or any other social platform is all you need, we would suggest otherwise. With various social media platforms, you have little to no control over your content. While it is important to utilize the 'free' advertising Instagram and other social media platforms offer, your website is the only place online where you control everything.
Keep image sizes reasonable and don't put too many images on a single page.
NEVER require visitors to join, register, get passwords or fill out any forms of any kind in order to see your site.
Don't overuse "cookies" (small files that attach to computer hard drives, track people's movements around your site, and collect personal data).
Avoid plug-ins, special effects, audio, complex visuals, and similar gimmicks that have nothing to do with your art. Websites that use these often take longer to load, require special software, or, at worst, crash visitors' computers.
A website can elevate your career and open your art to a new audience! Do you need help with your site? Or are you looking for someone to help design it? We offer both services to artists along with website consults where we are available to go over yours, make specific recommendations on ways to improve it and increase traffic and engagement with visitors. Email us info@contemporarycreatives.com or call +1 (540) 210-1958 if you have any questions or are interested in making an appointment.
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