How Would I Build a Website for the Art Gallery

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Successful Art and Artist Websites

Do's and Don'ts

How to Build a Website that Works

Related article: How to Increase Your Website Traffic
Related article: Website Tips for Artists

The mantra for a successful art or artist website has been and continues to be "Keep it fast, unproblematic, easy and organized." Navigation and content must be clear, concise, and straightforward in gild to attract visitors in the first identify and keep them on the site in one case they get at that place. Outset-time visitors to whatsoever artist website should know as rapidly as 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 around in order to become wherever they want to become. Sites that lack these basics or make other common errors won't be able to attract and concord visitors, and will probable terminate upwards lost in the vast morass of nonfunctional and confusing art websites that overpopulate the Internet.

Earlier nosotros become going here, and in the interest of anyone who thinks artist websites are outdated and no longer necessary, and that having an Instagram page or social media presence on other platforms is all yous need, the sad truth is you have no control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 charge, non you. They tin modify the rules at any time, remove posts they deem inappropriate, change their search algorithms, spam y'all with advertising, go outdated, cramp your style with all their rules, disappear off the Cyberspace, completely change management, temporarily suspend your account, or at worst, boot you off altogether.

Regardless of how fabled you call up social media is (and it's got plenty of benefits) or how large your following, YOUR WEBSITE IS THE But PLACE ONLINE WHERE YOU CONTROL THE SHOW and no one else. You and simply yous decide what to post, when to post information technology, how long it stays in that location, how to organize information technology, when to change information technology, where to put it, when to motion it or when to have information technology down. You can run a risk all you want on social media being your sole source of getting attention for your art, but always remember-- having your ain website is a certain presence that you'll never lose. It's too what comes upwardly starting time whenever anyone searches you online, not your social media pages. So in the interest of improve artist websites everywhere, here's a list of what to practise and what to avoid in order to assure yourself maximum visibility, attention, and an effective spider web presence online:

Get your ain domain name and avoid complimentary spider web hosting services. Gratuitous web hosting is never free and information technology'south ever lame. "Free" websites torture visitors with all kinds of distracting advertisements or other obtrusive text and graphics. At worst, peradventure one-half of the screen shows your fine art while the other 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 fine art looks adept nether those circumstances. Furthermore, complimentary sites give the impression that either you tin't beget your own website or domain name or worse still, that yous don't intendance enough almost your art to bother buying your own domain and paying for hosting in order to brand information technology look its best online. The adept news is that bones websites with good functionality hardly toll anything these days.

Don't use third-party advertizement on your sites, especially for goods or services unrelated to your art. Also decline whatever offers of sponsored content. Certain, you may make a little pocket change from sponsorship or click-throughs, only any form of advertising is distracting to visitors, will likely have a negative bear on on your search engine rankings, and your overall online profile will ultimately suffer for it.

Make sure your website looks the aforementioned on Cyberspace Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari. The same website can look great on ane browser and terrible on another, or worse withal, work great on i browser but be completely nonfunctional on another. Test yours on all major browsers before going public.

Regularly update your site and keep it updated. Don't think that only because your social media pages are current, you don't have to worry about your website. People will proceed to visit, and you accept to be set for that. A site that's non current gives the impression either naught much is happening with the artist's career, they're not that serious near existence artists, or that they're not making new piece of work. People visit your site to find out what's happening at present, not what happened three years ago.

Your website should navigate every bit simply, beautifully, and hands on phones every bit it 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 volition soon overtake reckoner browsing, bold it hasn't already. You desire your art and website to wait its best no matter how people admission and view information technology.

Link your website to all of your social media pages (and vice versa) so that visitors can movement freely between them as hands as possible. And when you post on social media, link over to specific images or pages on your website as often equally possible. Using social media is i of the best ways to drive traffic to your website and it only getting better, but for all the benefits, the one major drawback is that they control how you become the word out almost your art, non you. Driving traffic to your website flips that paradigm to where you lot command the show and not someone else.

Another great reward of social media is that in addition to getting the discussion out about your art, information technology'due south as well an excellent way to present yourself on a personal level, appoint with your audience, and offering a glimpse into the artist behind the art. The more than people can connect with you lot every bit a person, the more they'll connect with your art. Give them a sense of who you lot are, what you represent, how you are to interact with, and what your creative life is is about, and you'll increase their involvement in heading on over to your website to observe out more.

Nowadays yourself and your art in ways that anyone tin understand. Brand sure your fine art is organized in ways that are piece of cake to appreciate and access. People who already know you have no problem getting wherever they want to go; they're all taken care of. It's the complete strangers you should pay the most attending to, those who are introduced to your art for the first time, like what they see, and decide they want to encounter more. This includes anyone who lands on your site past chance or accident. Your website is all about exposing your art to new audiences, welcoming them, convincing them your work is worth paying attending to, and ultimately converting them into fans. So whenever someone new visits your website, brand sure you get them where they want to go with every bit little effort as possible.

Make your site like shooting fish in a barrel to navigate. Some website formats are far too disruptive, have dead-finish pages, or accept gallery sections that seem more than similar medieval mazes. Visitors get lost, and lost visitors mean lost sales. Make sure every page on your site is linked dorsum to major pages similar your homepage, gallery or portfolio, bio, resume, and contact and purchasing data.

Go on your primary menu options to a minimum. 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 virtually before they even kickoff clicking. A website with likewise many menu options confuses people and gives them a perfect excuse to leave. The most important main menu categories are:
one. Your Gallery or Portfolio link (with dropdown options to private series or bodies of work as necessary).
2. Your Artist Statement or "About the Art" link.
3. Your Bio or "Virtually the Artist" link.
4. A link to your Resume or CV.
5. Purchase or Buy link containing consummate ordering, shipping and payment information for potential buyers.
half-dozen. Your Contact Information.

Text explanations and introductions to your art are extremely of import, just keep the give-and-take count to a minimum. This includes your statement, bio, descriptions of bodies of work or mediums or techniques, so on. Being cursory with words gets people into your galleries to see your art as quickly as possible (that'due south 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 tin get deadening (unless there's a strong cognitive component to your fine art). The fewer words yous tin can employ, the better.

If yous can say information technology in a couple of sentences or paragraphs, that's great. If you want to provide detailed information about either yourself or your art, link to pages where people can read more there, rather than putting boatloads of text on high-traffic areas like your homepage, argument or bio. People who want to know more will click over to the text pages; those who don't can click right over to your art without getting bogged down past oceans of verbiage. Always recall-- people visit your website to come across your art, not to read your life story.

Organize your art into groups or series of related works. If yous show likewise many different kinds of art on the same gallery folio, you'll only end up confusing people. The "something for everyone" approach often backfires and instead becomes more like "naught for anyone."

Think of your website as a museum and yourself as the curator. Only similar in a museum, make sure that similar works of art are all on display together, each group in its own gallery.

Back-trail each serial or body of your work with its own introductory explanation. 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 about to see. Also proceed in heed that Google and other search engines cannot search images, but they tin can search text. Providing textual explanations of your art, either accompanying groups, serial, or fifty-fifty of individual pieces, increases the chances that images volition come up in online searches, be seen, and hopefully clicked over to. To repeat-- image pages with no text will non come up 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 land on your website every bit a result of online searches, the better. For every work of fine art, include the championship, medium, dimensions, a brief description (but if relevant or necessary), and whatever other relevant details.

Use informative page-specific championship lines. The title line consists of keywords that accurately and specifically describe a folio's content, similar a news story headline tells what yous're near to read. Many artist websites completely waste matter title line opportunities using the exact same line on every page of the site, like "Mike Miller fine art" or "Judy Smith creative person." The title line, in case you don't know, usually appears at or near the tiptop of your browser window but outside the folio, usually on alphabetize tabs or tab confined, not in the content of the page itself. Information technology'southward ane of the most of import 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 individual image if your site is designed that way-- should be unique, specific and descriptive of the contents on that page. This mode, each page will have a slightly dissimilar appearance on search engines, meaning more matchable keywords, and more than opportunities for your website to announced in search results, which will hopefully translate to more visitors to your site.

Keep epitome sizes reasonable and don't put likewise many images on a single page. Large detailed images of your art may await nifty as they download over loftier-speed connections, but remember that many people all the same take slower connections. Long downloads frustrate visitors and strength them off your site, so employ images no larger than 100K-250K, preferably smaller. Photoshop and other image editing programs have formatting options to reduce image sizes without significantly compromising their quality. Learn how to use them. The same holds true for prototype pages. Too many images on a single page can take a long time to download, longer than some people are willing to expect.

Don't put links to other websites on your site. Some artists think that links pages are a practiced idea, and put links to their favorite artists or galleries or art pages, etc. What this does is give visitors excuses to go out your site and explore other sites that they might end up liking improve. In one case people land on your website, you want to do everything in your power to go along them there, not invite them to leave and go elsewhere.

NEVER require visitors to join, register, get passwords or make full out any forms of any kind in order to see your site. Forcing people to identify themselves before they can see your fine art is a horrible idea. Imagine if people had to bear witness their commuter's licenses or other forms of ID in order 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" (small files that adhere to reckoner hard drives, rails people'south movements around your site, and collect personal data). Cookies are occasionally necessary when filling out certain forms, when ownership art using "shopping cart" services, or for purposes similar tracking visitors effectually your website to see which pages they visit the virtually. Over again, if people desire to contact you, they will. Don't overdo efforts to extract personal information without their knowing it.

Avoid plug-ins, special effects, sound, complex visuals, and similar gimmicks that accept zippo to do with your art. Websites that use these frequently take longer to load, require 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 entertainment purposes, avoid the fancy stuff. Spider web designers may push for special furnishings, only when you get right downward to it, they're totally unnecessary, counterproductive to your ends, and mainly about them showing off their technical skills rather than effectively presenting your fine art. Remember-- people visit your website to meet your art and run into it fast, not to sit down through your web designer'south fantasies.

Provide adequate contact information. The more than y'all tell people most yourself such as your cell phone number, electronic mail address or other details like your studio address, the more accessible you appear. Don't requite potential buyers the impression that you're hard to communicate with past showing zilch or only just a class, and not even telling them what part of the country you live in. Way also many artist websites provide absolutely no contact data whatsoever, simply rather have these atrocious feedback or comments forms that y'all fill out and submit. People who fill up them out have no idea where they go, who gets them, if they even get anywhere at all or whether they'll always get replies. The questions that always become through my mind on these sites are, "What is this creative person trying to hide?" or "Why are they making themselves so inaccessible?" The overwhelming majority of people who buy contemporary art appreciate a sense of knowing who they're buying it from. And then don't be a stranger; anonymity is not a selling point.

If yous have no consistent long-term gallery representation, price every slice of fine art on your website for sale, assuming you accept no conflicts with galleries or others who periodically represent or sell your art. If you have representation, ask whether they'll allow you to put prices on your website, or at least on art they're non representing. If they don't want prices, don't price (hopefully they're selling enough of your fine art to make upwards for not wanting y'all to sell information technology on your own).

For those of you who are independent or who have no representation, not pricing your art on-site, but rather asking people to email or otherwise contact you lot for prices, is always a big fault. Many buyers and collectors are non comfortable request, and you don't want to miss out on sales to them. You don't have to put a toll adjacent to every single slice of your fine art, by the way; do similar the galleries practice. On the "Purchase" or "Buy" page, have a toll list bachelor where people tin can easily see how much everything costs. Or if you price according to size or discipline thing, take all of that explained along with corresponding prices. You'll simply lose potential sales if y'all don't price your art... guaranteed.

Simply like in existent life, many people prefer to shop for art quietly by themselves, make up one's mind whether they can afford it, and then brand contact. People are reluctant to ask prices when they're not posted for a number of reasons-- they think that doing and then might obligate them in some way, that they'll become a hard sell, that they'll get a barrage of emails, that they'll be embarrassed if they find out the art costs much more they can afford, that artists will quote as high a cost equally possible just to see how much they tin sell it for, and so on. When you're out shopping, do y'all like having to enquire how much something costs or practise y'all prefer to run across the asking price in advance? Practise unto others...

Be able to justify or explain your selling prices if someone asks. Anybody likes to feel they're spending their coin wisely-- specially these days-- then either provide basic information nearly how you price your art on your site, or be prepared to field questions nigh value if people call or email you. People who don't understand how y'all set your prices or why they're as high or as low as they are will be more reluctant to buy than people who practise sympathise. So make your pricing easy to understand.

Offer approving, return and refund policies. Online fine art shoppers may desire to see art on blessing first and be able to return information technology for complete refunds (less shipping costs) if information technology doesn't look like they thought information technology did when they saw it online. No approval, return or refund policies mean fewer sales. The more willing y'all are to work with buyers, the greater your chances of selling art. FYI, in conversations that I've had with people who sell art online, very few people always return it once they buy.

Provide articulate curtailed instructions on how to buy. Tell people what payment methods you accept (accept every bit many every bit possible), how you pack, how you ship, how long they accept to view the art on approval, then on. The more than professional person you announced, the more comfortable people feel about buying from you lot.

Offer fine art in a variety of cost ranges. Online shoppers tend to first slowly, tend to buy less expensive pieces from artists they don't already know, and will likely go discouraged if every piece they encounter costs thousands of dollars or more. This is particularly true of people who visit your site for the first time and like what they see. Offering art at a multifariousness of price points gives all of your fans a hazard to own something no matter what their budgets or how familiar they are with yous. Then make sure pretty much anyone who likes your fine art enough to want to own information technology will exist able to afford something.

Don't mix art that'south already sold with fine art that's for auction. Some artists think showing numerous sold works of fine art on their sites alongside art for sale makes them look good and will incite some kind of buying frenzy, or give people the impression that they better buy now "before it'south too late"-- merely the effect is frequently the opposite. 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 pick is limited or when all the "adept stuff" is gone or when their favorite piece is already sold. It'southward kind of similar going to a garage sale at the end of the 24-hour interval and picking through the leftovers.

You can even so prove sold works if yous want, only put them under a separate category in your "Gallery" or "Portfolio" link titled "Select Past Works" or something like. Here you show the best of the all-time-- art that's won prizes or has been exhibited at established juried shows; art that's in private, corporate or institutional collections; art that's been featured in reviews or pictured on websites or blogs or in hard-re-create publications, and and then on. Showing past works in this style acts equally sort of a pictorial resume and speaks to your feel, success and brownie as an artist.

Don't show every work of art you've ever created. Nobody needs to see experimental pieces that didn't quite work, ane-offs that you don't intend to follow up on with additional related works, older pieces that have trivial or no bearing on what yous're doing now, student works, and and so on. Besides much art and too much diversity is confusing to visitors because they can't get a sense of who you are, what your fine art represents, or is intended to signify or communicate. Think-- people rarely buy from artists whose fine art they tin can't understand. Keep it simple; keep it electric current; go on it related.

***

One of the best ways for you lot to get the word out about your art is through your website. Make sure yours is working on your behalf and that anyone anywhere who lands on it-- whether on purpose or by blow, whether they know yous or not-- tin can become up to speed about where they are, what they're about to encounter and experience, and be able to click on over to your galleries equally speedily and effortlessly as possible. A welcoming website pays dividends in all kinds of ways.

Do you need assistance with your site? Would you like more traffic? Exercise you wonder whether it can exist meliorate than information technology is now? I do website consults with artists all the time. I'm e'er available to get over yours, brand specific recommendations on ways to meliorate it, and increase traffic and engagement with visitors. Email alanbamberger@me.com or call 415.931.7875 if you lot take any questions or are interested in making an appointment.

(fine art past Ara Peterson)

cannonthatuagaild.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.artbusiness.com/weberrors.html

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