Guidelines for Effective Website Design for Artists ~ Designer's World

Extreme Studios: Recommended Web Design Agency

Personal Domains & Advertising

Free Web hosting services are never really free, and sites are usually cluttered with distracting advertising/ irrelevant graphics making half of your site look like a badly managed circus. They can also give visitors the impression that you do not care sufficiently about your own art to attractively and professionally present it; do not have the funds to get your own domain, or both.

While click-through ads may offer a little extra change, advertising distracts and makes your art suffer. Ideally, avoid third party advertising completely, in particular if it is completely unrelated to your work.

How to start

First-time visitors to your Website should know at a glance:

Where they are
Who you are
What your art looks like/ is about
Why your art is worth looking at/ buying
How to find things/ pages

To prevent failure to attract/ keep visitors through lack of these basics and other errors, read on.

Presentation & Navigation

People already familiar with you/ your art will readily visit/ navigate your site. Strangers passing by, however, need a little convincing to stay. As your site is, after all, about widening your audience, make sure your presentation quickly and clearly shows who you are/ what you are about.

Confusing navigation, dead-end pages and labyrinth-like galleries frustrate visitors into leaving. Lost visitors invariably mean lost sales. Navigation subsequently must be clear, with all pages linking back to your home page, bio/ resume, main image gallery, contact and purchasing information.

A responsive site is a must for artist as this will allow users to have the best viewing possibilities regardless of the device (PC, Tablet, Smartphone) they are using.

Artist Website Design Example

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Website Text

Interminable ramblings bore the socks off visitors and cause rapid exits. Keep text (bio, medium/ technique explanations, descriptions, etc) to a concise maximum of 300 to 400 words (unless your art contains strong cognitive components).

Place more detailed information on separate pages interested parties can visit, leaving your home page/ other high traffic sections free to serve their real purpose – showing your art.

Consider accompanying each body/ series of works with an introduction/ explanation (again keeping it brief; two to three paragraphs at most), to deepen people’s understanding of your work and help search engines to find you.

How's this for an artist website?

Images & Gimmicks

Maintain fast loading speeds by keeping images reasonably small (preferably smaller than 100 to 200 k max) and prevent over-crowding by only putting your latest/ most important works/ series on display. Avoid complex visuals, audio and special effects; unnecessary plug-ins and other gimmicks, as they slow loading and are usually perceived as annoying at best.

Log-ins & Cookies

You wouldn’t expect visitors to provide identification before entering a physical studio/ outlet, so don’t expect them to provide personal details just to enter your Website, either.

While some cookies are necessary (shopping cart services; filling certain forms; tracking page performances), others are intrusive and invade visitors’ privacy. Use them sparingly and never make cookie-use acceptance a prerequisite for entering your site.

Pricing, Purchasing & Contact Information

Unless you are bound by long-term representation (gallery, etc) terms, offer your work in a wide range of prices, and price each piece individually, as people often resent having to ask for prices for fear of being obligated to buy; receiving lots of spam or getting ‘hard sell tactics’.

Provide price structure information (how pieces are priced/ why they are expensive/ inexpensive, and so on); clear, easy-to-follow how-to-buy instructions and information on:

Payment options (the more the better)
Packing/ shipping options
Lead times
Approval periods

Offer lots of contact information, including:

Physical address
Phone Number
Mobile number
E-mail address

Never make a contact form the only way of contacting you, as the appearance of being hard to communicate with can be off-putting and may lose you valuable sales. Plenty of information appears professional and makes consumers more comfortable about purchasing from you.

Internet Browsers

Finally, before going public, test your site on major browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox to prevent looking great on some browsers and terrible, or potentially completely non-functional, on others.

Social Media

Enable people to learn all about you (Social Media pages) and your art (Website) by creating links between them. Social Media is an incredibly powerful tool for increasing Website traffic, and the Website/ Social Networks combination can work wonders.

Designer's World