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Choose The Right Domain Name:
In your case, being an artist, you would try to
purchase your own name. Also buy your name with a
dash “-“ in between your first name and your surname
and then have that domain forwarded to your primary website domain.
Why
buy a domain with a hyphen? Ideally you'll want to
claim your piece of online real estate as best you
can before someone else does.
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Country Code Domain: If you want to target
your local audience consider getting country code
domain (i.e. .com.au or .com.uk). Remember that you
have to be a resident of the country you choose the
code for. However, if you are going all out for
global domination, a .com should be all you need
(wink).
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Artist Website Design & Hosting:
Compare feature by feature then dollar for dollar
when researching for a hosting solution. It only
makes sense to know what you are getting and what
you are paying for. Even check to see if they have something
like a
free trial to reduce your risk of getting
caught up in paying hosting fees too early. That way
you can take it for test run.
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Avoid Free Hosting: Avoid going with
any offers that claim to provide you with a free
website. A lot of free website platforms have
intrusive advertising that you have no control over.
Besides, you want to brand yourself properly, so pay
for a good service. Tip: You don't get much for free.
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Artist Website Design Blueprint: Build your
website as you would a house. Create some plans.
Have a map to work from and an end result in mind
BEFORE you begin. This will eliminate a lot of guess
work and keep your site super organised.
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Artist Website Design Layout: Your artist website design
and layout should be simple. Avoid bells and whistle
attention grabbing techniques, strolling text,
animations (flashing lights) and music. Avoid making
your site look like a "sleazy bastard".
Music is nauseating because not everyone has the
same taste in music as you do.
Some sites don't even allow you to control the music
in order to turn it down or even to stop it
altogether. Your artwork will be the last thing on
your visitors mind if they arrive to your site only
to have Achy Breaky Heart blaring from their speakers
unexpectedly. Keep it simple. No
gimmicks. No music.
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Graphic Optimisation: Use JPEGs and GIF
image formats. JPEGS are the best. GIF's sometimes
struggle with large blocks of solid colour.
Edit your images in your favourite editing software.
The best rule of thumb is to keep your image size
under 100k. The reason for this is so your images
are not too big, which reduces the download time (so
your site visitor doesn't have to wait so long for
the image to appear).
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Avoid Pop-Up's: I'm not sure about you, but
"pop up's" annoy me. I would advise not to use
them, even if it's just because you know I am coming to
visit your site (wink). But seriously, if you have
respect for your audience, don't install pop ups
into your website in order to grab your visitors
attention when they try to exit your site. If they
want to go, let them go peacefully.
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Simple, Easy To Read Text: Let your artwork be
the stand out component on your website and keep
your text and font really simple and easy to read.
Avoid this type of thing in your artist website
design:
|
This type of thing really makes it hard to
read. It makes me wonder why people use this
type of colour background on their website,
because not only is it truly nauseating, it
screams, "I don't really care about your
eyesight, dude!" |
Use a lot of white space. It makes
your site look more professional and enhances
readability. Use simple, easy to read text like
Verdana or Arial, with either a font size of 2
(10pt) or 3 (12pt). Just remember: it is your
sites content that matters the most. So you don't
need clutter or over-impress.
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Quit
Busting My
Balls!!!: In other words,
avoid using too many exclamation points in your
artist website design. Some folk may think you're a
screaming maniac, and wonder if you are just trying
to artificially hype up your profile as an artist.
Others may simply view it as "I need a sale for
crying out loud!!! Buy a painting darn it!!".
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Will You Link With Me (wink): Linking with
websites that don't link back to you, or worse,
linking to websites that are totally incompatible to
your websites theme/topic is counterproductive.
You should only ever link to other sites if they are
of real value to your subject matter. You want to
avoid having unnecessary links on your site that
your website visitors can click on; because once
they do, they are gone. And if the link you
recommended was a waste of time, they wont bother
coming back to your website to let you know. Just
sayin'.
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Good Navigation: The structure
of your navigation needs to be organised in order of
importance, it should be consistent and categorised in a simple
format. I realise we are talking about artist
website design here, so it kind of makes sense that
your site wont be too complicated anyway.
However, I have seen some artist websites that have
too much going on, which makes it hard to navigate
around their site; and this is made worse because
their navigation system is inconsistent.
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Be Real:
There is
nothing worse that landing on somebody's site and seeing they
have done every thing they can to impress their visitor.
Personalise
your site and be real.
Ultimately,
what people want to see is that you are human and you have some
kind of personal presence on your site. Your website visitors
don't want to be impressed; they want to feel welcomed. Most
importantly, they want to find what they have been looking for.
If your home
page has not been set up to cater for your target market, your
target market will never know they are in the right place. As a
result they will leave within seconds.
Just take my
word for it… it's ok if you are not perfect. It's ok if you
are not a well-known artist. It's ok that you don't know
everything and it's totally ok if you haven't sold much of your
work. It's totally ok if you have never sold a piece of your
work.
Just be real,
honest and provide what your target market is looking for. This
should be the core principal of your artist website design - be
real!
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Speaking In The 3rd
Person: One
page your website or blog needs is a standard "about
me" page. Try not to write your about me page
in the third person.
I
am surprised at how many people do it.
The only time talking about yourself in the third
person really seems suitable is if you are putting
together a press release, or if you are apart of a
team (and/or selling your work on an online gallery
network) where you all require your individual
descriptions.
Apart from that, you should speak in a personal tone
on your own website (blog). Talk to your visitor as
I am talking to you now.
If you are not sure what I am referring to, simply
head over to
my
about me page and note how my tone is
conversational.
My artist
website design is simple in many respects,
but it is effective, because I focus my content
discussions on one person and not a group.
Just like I am talking you and no-one else right now
(wink).
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Short and Sweet:
I can
appreciate there is a tendency for many artists to upload all of their painting images onto their
sites gallery
pages. But try to avoid this urge. Just focus on uploading some
of your best pieces.
You don't
need any more than 10 pieces of your work on show.
Concentrate on less is more - this will help give the
work you do have in your gallery some significance.
Ever wonder
why a
gallery uses a whole wall for just one painting? Galleries do
that to portray prestige or importance.
So just
remember that less is more.
If you
do want to upload more of your work, do what I do and scatter
them throughout your article pages.
Create effective page
content that will appeal to both human visitors and search
engines by giving your additional art images an ALT (alternative
text description) and TITLE attributes.
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Test Your Artist
Website Design on Other Browsers:
I can speak
from experience when it comes to testing your artist website
design on other web browsers.
In the early
days of putting the CAKUart site together, I was only using
windows explorer. I never had any problems with explorer. Each
page I built and uploaded looked great, live on the web.
Then one day
I was telling a friend to go and have a look at a new painting I
had just uploaded into my online gallery. His reply stunned me.
He said that the painting was great, but I should consider
getting a Webmaster to look after my site, because it was
obvious I didn't know what I was doing.
I was
absolutely confused... because it looked fine from my end. I asked
my friend to take a screen picture from his end and email it to
me so I could see what was wrong with my site from his end.
When I
received the picture I was horrified. My site was all bent,
buckled and had text everywhere.
It turned out
my friend was using a Firefox web browser. It was obvious that
Firefox was interpreting my site completely differently to
windows explorer.
I now knew
why I was not getting much of a response from a lot of my
traffic. The reason was my site simply looked
"weird" and unprofessional.
So I am a
strong advocate for making sure you test your site on other web
browsers. Make sure there is a consistent design on each browser
you try and
everything is where you want it to be on each of your web pages.
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Create Pre-Sell Content: Ok so you
have some of your work on your site, you have a contact page, an
"about me" page, some media articles and social media
links. Great...you've done a excellent job with your artist
website design.
But... don't
stop there. Keep creating content on your website.
The search engines will pick you up and rank you,
based on
your level of content (and inbound links). Additionally, having
a constant flow of content on your site will help to inform your
potential buyers why they should buy your art.
Content is
what ultimately pre-sells your work – particularly to the
people who do not know who you are.
If you are
using a blog platform (wordpress or blogger) keep adding regular
posts every day or at least every second day.
If your
visitors can see that you are active online, they are more
susceptible to visiting your blog or site more often to check on
your updates.
Lastly, a friendly reminder; keep your artist website design
simple.
