There are lots of different types of websites out there, and lots of different ways that artists can use their websites. And before you start building your website, you need to know how you want to use it and what your ultimate goal is.

Are you looking to build recognition in your brand as an artist and gain more visibility for your work? Do you want to get more people to come to your physical gallery? Are you hoping to sell your art online? Do you want to give clients a place where they can learn about your service and schedule an appointment?

Once you have a clear goal in mind for your website and what you want to accomplish with it, you can build a website specific to your needs.

When choosing an artist website builder, look for one that offers the features and functionality you need. If you want to sell your art, for example, look for a website where you can showcase your products and accept payments.

Websites 360® offers a library of professional, fully-customizable website templates designed specifically for artists.

Art, even when it looks basic, has layers and can be complicated. But, when it comes to your website, complicated is the last thing you want.

You want your website to be clean and simple instead of complicated and busy. This will help you bring attention to the main goal of your website, send a clearer message to your visitors and get more conversions.

Another benefit of keeping the design of your website simple is that it will help it to look more modern and professional. A clean website design is easy to read and pleasant to look at, which is a standard for up-to-date websites.

In addition to keeping your website design simple, you also want to make sure that the navigation of your website is simple and easy to use. Whether people are visiting your website to see your work, learn about you as an artist or purchase a piece, they need to be able to figure out where to go on your website.

If you offer services or do commission pieces, you want to ensure that your contact information is easily accessible, no matter what page someone lands on.

As of December 2020, desktop users made up 48.56%, mobile users made up 47.46% and tablet users made up 3.98% of all internet traffic in the United States.

Not long ago, mobile users made up more than half of all internet traffic, and while quarantine has slightly tipped the scales toward desktop use, mobile users still make up a significant percentage of total internet users.

Too often, people design their website on a desktop or laptop computer, with only desktop and laptop users in mind. This leaves a lot of users out of the equation, and can actually have an impact on how visual your website will be on search engines.

You need a website that will work for all visitors, no matter what kind of device they are using. That means that you need to choose a responsive design, which will automatically reconfigure itself in order to provide the optimal look and functionality for every user.

You should also make sure that you structure your website with mobile users in mind. That means keeping paragraphs short and sweet, leaving plenty of space around buttons and other clickable elements and ensuring that your website loads quickly.

Your website is only as good as it is visible. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your website is, or how well it highlights your work if no one sees it. And, in order to ensure that your website is visible on search engines, you need to optimize it.

Before you write the content for your website, take some time to brainstorm the search terms a potential client might use to look for your pieces or services on Google or Bing. Then, use those terms in multiple places on your website.

Include your targeted keywords as naturally as possible throughout your website, including in the title tags and meta descriptions, page titles, headings and content. Never force keywords or use them unnaturally, as it will make your content look spammy.

Another important step in building a more SEO-friendly artist website is to make sure that you properly optimize the images of your work. This includes creating a unique alt image tag for each of your images.

No one wants to wait around for your site to load, and most people simply won’t. If your site takes more than a few seconds to load, a lot of your visitors are simply going to click the back button.

In fact, the longer a page takes to load the higher the bounce rate (the rate at which people visit your website and leave without visiting any other pages) will be. That’s because people expect quick load times.

Not only does a slow site speed negatively impact the user experience on your website, but it can also hurt its visibility on search engines. As of 2018, Google has identified site speed as a key ranking factor for both desktop and mobile searches.

One thing that can hurt your site speed is large, unoptimized images. Every image of your work needs to be compressed, resized and optimized properly in order to ensure that your site loads quickly.

When you build an artist website with Websites 360, every image you load will be automatically compressed, helping you keep your site fast. Plus, you can compress all of your images more or less at one time.