Artist
Website Design
© by Carl
(CAKUart); all rights reserved
Your
artist website design and structure needs to be appealing but
not flashy.
Below
are some tips to ensure your website has the right key
components to help make it easy for your visitor to easily
navigate around your site and generally feel welcome.
Artist
Website Design Layout
In
terms of appearance... I always recommend that you keep your
artist website design layout simple.
For
example: Using a lot of white in your site design is visitor
friendly because it is visually neutral and helps to give
your art a lot of natural appeal.
Some
art websites suffer from having too many fancy effects and bad
use of fonts.
This
creates an unwanted distraction. Ultimately, you want your art
and quality content to be holding your visitors
attention.
Make sure your
art website design is simple for your visitors to move about freely without
getting frustrated and annoyed with your navigation
choices.
Keep in mind
that a frustrated visitor will leave your site very quickly if
it is not "user friendly".
In fact... in
most cases, if a visitor does not find what he or she is looking
for...they will leave your site immediately. It's nothing
personal, it's just business.
Your artist
website design should cater to suit
your target market. Create content that speaks to your
target audience on a personal level.
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!
Avoid
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. It
really is nauseating.
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 very 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).
Keep Your
Gallery Pages 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.
Test
Your Artist Website Design On
Other Web 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.
Create
Content To Pre-Sell Your Art
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.
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