Design your way

Artist websites? What’s the deal with them?

Regardless of whether your interest leans towards art or design, there is an undeniable relationship between both of them.

Nowadays, where we have internet dominating the complete flow of information, their co-existence is more important than anything else.

If an artist wants to get their name and portfolio out there, having a good ability for utilizing their online presence is a good point to start. A well-made artist website is a crucial thing here.

Build your own artist websites

Even though many would think that you need to have some kind of great technical knowledge to build a website, nowadays this is simply not true. There are a lot of services that can help you create your own, personal website, and there are also some that are specifically designed for artists.

They will give you templates that are visual-intensive, and made for artist portfolio websites specifically.

Domain name

If you’re at the beginning, hosting modern artist websites using a free site is absolutely fine. However, once you get out there and start making a name for yourself, you will need a domain name.

You can use Godaddy or Namecheap for that. I’ve been using Godaddy since 2008 to buy domain names. I heard a lot of good things about Namecheap, so you could check it out as well.

There is a pretty big difference between yourartistname.wordpress.com, and yourartistname.com, as the second one looks more professional to begin with. Second, if your URL is short and easy to remember, that is going to be a pretty significant advantage some time later.

Check different devices and browsers

Before you publish your website, make sure it looks good on various browsers and devices. If it looks good in your Safari browser on your desktop computer, it doesn’t mean that it will look that good on a smartphone running Google Chrome.

Using a “responsive” site, where most themes tell you if the theme is responsive or not, is a good way to get ahead of this. Some of the best artist websites use responsive themes, and you should always make sure to try it yourself before publishing the website.

Why you should have a custom artist website

Many business owners would agree that an effective website is an essential tool for both marketing and customer service, as well as sales.

When you’re an artist, having a portfolio website is very important when you want to appeal to galleries, or potential clients. Some of the best artist websites make very good use of this concept.

Regardless of whether you want to sell your work on your website, or just use it as a place to share your resume and document your work, you should know that one of the first thing a new contact will do is google you. If you have your online presence sorted, you will present yourself as a professional artist.

If you want to compete with some of the best looking artist websites out there, you should know how to make a good website, and how to make an artist portfolio.

Custom designs let you completely control the design, and you can have it reflect your personal style and your style of work
A custom website gives you total control of your website, where a free package will almost always limit you in terms of functionality, layout or image uploads
Professional portfolio, or art gallery websites have no room for ads. Your work should be the center piece of attention, and you can’t be pointing people to other people’s business.
You will want the potential to grow your website, and this is best done with a custom website. Your website should expand as you do, and you will want new features down the line. A custom website gives you the full ownership and doesn’t tie you to a subscription package.
As long as you are able to invest some time in learning how to both build, and manage your website, you will be able to save a lot of time when looking down the road. Updating your website can be easily done, as compared to relying on paid platforms to take care of this.
Once you know how to make a good website, it actually gets fun. You now also have the skills to build artist websites for more types of projects, such as your next art show.

A custom website gives you a great opportunity and pushes you in a direction where you stand out from the crowd, and all your work is presented in a professional light.

What does your artist website need?

Before you get too busy with the design, you should be sure that the basics are there. There are a few core elements that all artist websites should have, because if they aren’t there, there is a pretty big chance that potential buyers will be turned away.

Your name.

Your name is your brand, and having it included in the URL if possible, is great.

That is how people find you, and it should be visible at all times, regardless of what page the visitor is on.

This can be easily done by creating a logo and putting it in the header. Keep it bold and legible, and have the design and font match the artwork. By doing this, your visitors can remember your name, as well as associate it with your work.

High quality images.

If you are actually proud of your art, you should show that. Don’t post blurry, low resolution images on your website.

Your artist website is an open studio. If you have someone in your studio, do you give them the real thing, or just a tiny, blurry image of it?

You can’t perfectly represent everything, unless you’re a digital artist, but you will be surprised at what a decent camera can do nowadays if you know how to use it.

Details for the artwork.

No, not close-up shots, even though they can sometimes be important too, but the title, dimensions, medium, year and price.

This helps your visitor get a sense of everything they need to know in case they want to purchase the artwork.

It will also make your website more easily searchable, whether it is through Google, or other search engines.

Can I buy this?

You don’t have to keep your posts to available artwork, but any piece of art should be clearly marked whether it is available for sale or not.

Your CV and biography.

When you want to use your website as a portfolio, this is especially important. This will help a lot when you want to apply to a gallery, competition or commission.

Your artist statement.

This speaks for you, when you aren’t there to lead the conversation. You should always have it written in first person, as it is different from your biography.

Contact information.

Last, but not least, you can’t sell anything if people don’t know how to reach you. Make sure your contact information is easy to find.

Organizing your website

A good portfolio website is like a gallery, and you can’t have your artwork stacked up. In a website, this translates into not shoving everything in one page. Every item, regardless of whether it is artwork or text, should have room to breathe.

The best way to do this is having pages on your website. And here’s a little secret – every page should have a single purpose. If you put too many things on a single page, you will be losing interest with your visitors.

This isn’t just the clearest way to organize the website when you’re looking into how to make an artist portfolio, but it also helps with search engine optimization.

When your website is focused and differentiated, the search engine’s “crawlers” will know exactly what your website is, and give it a boost in the search results. So, what are the pages you need?

Landing page, or home page.

This is the face of your website, and it should have three main elements: the title, visual, and a map.

The title tells your visitor what the website is.

For example, “Art by {your name here}” is a good, fool-proof way to start. Don’t make things too complicated, you want the title to be easily translatable to any language.

The visual should be a single artwork, or a slideshow or collage.

Don’t put everything on a single page, that is what your artwork pages are for. Use this to give your visitor a sense of who you are and what you’re doing. If you have two or three distinct styles of artwork, you can go with one example of each, but if you’re working with fairly uniform art, don’t go with more than one image.

An easy to understand navigation menu.

It should specify, pretty clearly, which pages are available on your website.

Don’t hide the menu, but make it bold. Keep it either on the top, or the left-hand of the page, where visitors can immediately see it.

Artwork albums.

Your artwork, just like the overall website, should be broken up into smaller parts.

You shouldn’t have more than 20 or 30 images in a single album, otherwise your users will get bored and start skipping.

You can sort your artwork in a plenty of ways, from style, medium, series, year, you name it. You can even have an abstract album that is sorted by mood, or a landscape album sorted by a season. Just don’t split things too much, make sure you have at least 10 images in an album.

Just remember to keep things clear on which artwork is available for purchase, and which isn’t. This can either be indicated within the albums, or just create on album for available or sold artwork. However, if you have more than 25 to 35 pieces that fall into either category, you should avoid this.

About me.

You can have your statement, CV, and biography here, but make sure to have visual elements to help break things up.

You can either achieve this by delineating each section with a background in a different color, or by choosing to go with images or icons that separate the text blocks. Put your headshot, an image of you working in your studio.

Do you still keep the first crayon drawing you made as a child? These things add personality and a human element to modern artist websites.

Contact page.

Even though some choose to put this either in the footer, or the header, of their website, if you have a full page dedicated to sales and contact, that will remind your visitors that you’re available.

You can also put a contact form if you’d rather keep your e-mail address private, but make sure you check your messages often enough. Missing out on a big sale isn’t something you want to do.

What you should NOT have on your website?

Music. Having music auto play on a website isn’t a good thing. If a visitor wants to listen to music, they are most likely already doing that.

Music is both annoying, and distracting, and if a visitor has to listen to music against his will, he will most likely exit your website immediately.

If you want to put music on your website and can’t help it, put something that won’t pierce your visitors eardrums. Some have headphones on.

Ads. They are a downside of some “free” website hosts, so before you commit, make sure to check if they will be putting ads on your website. An ad can be very distracting from your artwork, and they never look professional.

Work from other artists. Even if it is something that has inspired you earlier, if a visitor sees artwork that isn’t yours, they will most likely be confused. It will make them wonder if that other piece of art is yours, and your authenticity will be put to the test.

Maintain your website

Regular updates are important. The least you can get away with is new art once a year. However, more updates make things better.

That shows your visitors that you are active, and you’re still alive. If your most recent post is from three years ago, visitors will start wondering if you have up. If you have new artwork more often, make sure to update equally often.

If you have a contact form, make sure you check your messages. If you happen to change your phone number, or your e-mail address, update it on your website, everywhere it appears. Missing a sale because the buyer inquired on the wrong e-mail is a bad thing to happen to you.

What do you need to make your own artist website?

Having a custom website is always great. People all over the world will be looking at your art, and people will want to buy it when they like it.

Having a website doesn’t mean you need to have a web designer, nor that you have to be a computer genius.

Basic design is very easy to learn if you’re comfortable with computers. Your knowledge will develop along with your website, and you can always change things on your website when you find a better way to do something.

Where do you begin?

Forget about HTML and JavaScript and CSS, and focus on something else, for starters. Your most important starting point is the pencil, a piece of paper, and your imagination. Give your website’s look a good thought. Do you want different galleries for different subjects? Do you want a links page to your favorite websites?

Write down the things you’d like. Once you have your initial list, filter it down to the basics, no more than four or five things. This is what you need to begin with, and you can do everything else later on.

Next, draw a square on that piece of paper. This is now your homepage, or landing page. This is the front door to your website, and your visitors will need to find their way around it in an easy way. Write the title at the top, and sketch in the elements you need here, such as the visual mentioned earlier. Add navigation buttons as well.

For every navigation button, connect another square, to represent the page that is linked to that button. Put a rough sketch of the content here as well. Do this for every page, until you have your complete website. Now, you can go ahead and reach for your computer, and make things happen.

How long does it take?

If you have everything ready, such as the sketches, images on your computer, and the software you need, you can have it ready in less than a day. However, when you put your website on the internet, those links should lead somewhere.

Make sure you test everything in your browser before you upload it. Most web-building software will come with a link checker, but doing this manually is always better.

It might seem like a tough or boring thing to do, but when something doesn’t work, it greatly reduces the chances of someone re-visiting the website.

So, with a little patience, your site should be running smoothly on your computer. You can also try out some new ideas if you have spare time.

A few tips and tricks for the design

There are a few things that you should know before you begin, which you should use in addition to what you read earlier. You will find that if you only read these things after you’re done, you would’ve appreciated knowing about them earlier.

Keep things simple on artist websites

Overcrowding your website with content isn’t all that good.

Dancing animations and flashing banners may look fancy, but if someone accesses your website with a slow connection, it will take a lifetime to load. They will most likely get tired of waiting and head to another website. Make sure you do a good compromise here.

Keep it small

Images should be kept in .jpg. This is a compressed file type, which you can make even smaller.

This ensures they load even faster. Larger files take longer to load. If anything is in megabytes, it will take a long time to load, and you should get them down to kilobytes using an image editing program.

Don’t use a splash screen on artist websites

A splash screen is a page that simply says “Click to enter” in one way or another. This is nothing more than a barrier in front of your website. If someone is visiting your website, they want to see your work, and not have additional obstacles in the way of getting there.

The more clicks they need to get where they want to, the more likely it is they will simply give up and go to another site. Every page should be at most a few clicks away from your homepage. This is why designing everything on paper first is important.

Get a domain

As said earlier, having your own domain and distinct name is very helpful.

Your site now has an entity in its own right, and you’re the only person who has this name. You can even get a certificate that proves you’re the rightful owner.

When you’re doing this, it’s best that you use the same company that is hosting your site, to avoid additional fees.

Name your pages

When you’re saving your pages on your computer, give them names such as “gallery.html” or “photos.html”.

Otherwise, they will be named “untitled1.html” or “untitled2.html”, and that will show in your URL. And, avoid spaces, as they show much differently in the address bar than they do on your computer.

Wrapping things up on artist websites

Even though the website itself may not get your artwork in some top art galleries, it is an essential step nowadays if you want to progress as an artist. These examples and guidelines will hopefully help you in creating your website, and you will see that it can be both simple and complex, either a platform, or a piece of art itself.

The most important thing is to make sure everything conveys the right message.

If you liked this article about artist websites, you should check out these articles as well:

The post Artist Websites: Their Online Portfolios and How to Design Them appeared first on Design your way.

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