20 tips to make your website good.
Designing a good website seems to require an endless checklist of chores: organize and
select the materials, photograph the artwork, write a bio, an artist statement and an
updated resume. You need to decide how to display the materials, what color scheme
will look best with your art, what fonts will compliment your work. and more!
Don't give up! I have compiled 20 important points that Artists should keep in mind when
designing their website. Keep these guidelines as checkpoints during your site creation,
or to check and improve an existing site. 1. Keep it simple 2. Keep your file size low 3. Keep your navigation simple 4. Have your own domain name 5. No under construction page 6. Prominent contact info 7. Label all artwork 8. Include a brief Art statement and resume 9. Keep your text simple 10. Avoid underlined text 11. Keep your color scheme subdued 12. Avoid background image 13. Avoid background music 14. No cutesy mouse animation 15. Don't disable back button 16. Refrain from using frames and flash 17. Make sure your site is compatible in all browsers 18. Check that all your links work 19. Open all external links in new window 20. Keep an honest relation with your galleryGalleries cannot prevent you from
selling work on the internet
Don't try and put every piece of information about your career or
display every single piece of artwork you ever created. Choose relevant
information that will keep the site simple and elegant. Try and include materials
that reinforce your site's purpose (is it to sell work? Attract new collectors? Or
present a portfolio to galleries?).
People viewing your site don't necessarily have a high
speed connection to the internet, so be aware that too many images or too many
large files can slow a site down significantly. Remember that a lot of people will
not wait for a site to download! Keep your jpgs at 72 dpi, and try not to have
images over 540 pixels in any direction. You can also try and minimize the
number of large files (music and video are typically very large) in any one page.
Do not try and have too many categories or too
many layers in your navigation system. Keep the placement of the navigation
buttons consistent: if you choose to have your links on the left side, keep them
there throughout the site and don't scramble the order of your buttons from page
to page!
If your aim is to impress galleries and collectors,
make sure they know you take your art seriously: your own domain name looks
more professional, can be easier to remember, and can be more search-engine
friendly! Registering a domain has become quite affordable: typically between
$10 and $15 a year with hosting costs between $5 and $15 a month.
If you are not done building a page, don't link it to
your site. People's time is precious: don't waste it by announcing a category.
then have that category be blank!
Your site is a marketing tool: you can get potential
collectors and galleries to discover your work. Make sure they know how to reach
you when they fall in love with your art!
Images on the internet give no sense of scale or medium; it is
therefore extremely important to label each piece of artwork with dimensions and
materials used to make the work. Labeling your pieces with their price can be
valuable if your aim is to sell online.
Keep in mind that text is difficult to
read on the screen. As an artist, you must include an art statement and resume
(people want to know about you), but keep both brief. A few paragraphs for an art
statement, and 1 to 2 typed pages for a resume. If you must have a complete
resume, give the viewer the option to print the document as a pdf.
Sans serif fonts such as Arial are easier to read on the
screen. Don't overuse bold and italics which make text harder to read and can
get confusing.
Underlined text is usually reserved to indicate a link:
avoid using underlined text that is not a link to prevent confusion and frustration.
Don't blind your viewers! Avoid a bright
yellow background with red text!!! Bright colors can be difficult to look at on a
screen, especially for text. Keep your color scheme with low saturation colors
Background images can slow the site down, and
unless properly done, will tile and look unprofessional. Background images also
tend to make text harder to read.
Although it can be tempting to have music on a site, I
have to recommend against it for several reasons: your viewers might not share
your taste in music, music files are large and therefore slow to download, and
finally, even if your viewers like your music, it may get annoying to hear the same
song every visit.
This one is fairly obvious: it will annoy a large
majority of internet users. Your goal is to make people like your site: don't
alienate them with annoying gimmicks!
Some sites try and keep their audience captive by
disabling the back button. It's obnoxious! Don't do it!
Both of these methods of coding tend to
be unfriendly to search-engines, so use them sparingly and embed them with
good old fashioned html.
There are no enforceable
rules for website coding, only general accepted guidelines, so browsers tend to
display the same code in slightly different ways. Therefore it's important to try
and look at your site on several different browsers and screens to ensure that
your site looks good for most users.
It's not only annoying to the user, but you may
also run the risk of losing your site's ranking with search engines, or worse, not
being indexed at all!
It's nice to give extra information to
your viewers by providing useful links, but make sure your own site stays on their
screen by opening all external links in a new browser window.
However, you need to keep a good working
relationship with your gallery. Make sure you both understand who gets or
doesn't get a commission through internet sales. For example, if your gallery
sells work on their site, or you sell work on your site that's currently in their
space, they should get the commission.