12 Tips for Showcasing and Selling Your Art Online

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Showcase your work beautifully.

You need to have visual design skills to create a beautiful artist website. Here are some points to get you started:

• Most Important: Use high-quality, professionally-photographed images. Excellence in, excellence out!

• Keep the website simple and elegant with the focus on the art.

• Create multiple galleries to compliment the work — just as a good physical gallery would do.

• Choose colors that compliment (not overpower) the work. Think of the colors you would use in a physical gallery to showcase your work — neutral colors like crème, white, gray, and good safe choices.

• Think "minimalist" not "busy" for the layout.

• Keep your copy (text) brief. Let the art speak for itself!

Bring collectors and galleries to your website.

Its no use having that stunning website sitting in cyberspace. Make it work for you! Here are the ways to bring quality visitors:

Search Engines: If your website has been well optimized for search engines, a search on your name or your style of art should bring up your website in the first few pages of results.

Letters of Introduction: A letter of introduction sent to a gallery or dealer is a very effective way to bring a qualified visitor to your website. Better still is to include a brochure or postcard of your work with the letter.

Advertising online or in magazines: For example, if your art is minimalist and modern in style, a banner add on an interior design website focused on the same minimalist ethic could draw a lot of traffic to your site.

You need to be able to sell your work on the internet.

But there are many ways to do it. More important than anything is that you have clear and up-to-date contact information on your website. If a buyer likes your work enough to bring out their checkbook, they will normally be happy to call you to close the sale.

It's also handy to be able to sell directly from your website, especially if you sell lower-cost reproductions. There are simple and cost-effective ways to do this.

Think again before designing your own website.

Have you really added up the total cost? Here are some questions to consider before you start designing:

• Do you have visual design skills/training?

• Can you wait several months for the site to be ready?

• Can you afford to give up a month or more of your valuable artist time?

• Do you have all the computer software and the relatively-new computer needed to build a high-quality website?

• Are you fully trained in your design software?

Can you answer "Yes" to all of the above? If so, you might think about doing it yourself. Otherwise, hire a designer!

Choose your website-designer thoughtfully.

The most important thing here is to remember what you are trying to create — a beautiful online gallery space to elegantly show your beautiful work — this is very different from building a high-volume website selling printer ink cartridges and paper rolls!

Look for the ability to design a space to present your work. One way to do this is to find artist websites that you like and then contact the artist to get the name of their designer.

Know what you should pay.

Artist's website development prices range from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. Typically, bigger design firms have larger overheads and will be significantly more expensive. On the other hand, Joe down the street can probably build you a website for $200 — but you probably don't want that website!

At Beautiful Artist Websites we have packages ranging from $700 to $2000 for simple elegant artists websites with different levels of functionality. We can also develop fully customized sites to your specifications with prices based on requirements. •

© 2005 Josse Ford and Daniel Tardent. All rights reserved.

8/6/05