Part 4 – Custom-Designed Artist Websites

They are what they say they are – fully customized websites designed around you and your art. Effectively executed, these websites should:

• Showcase your art like an art museum or high-end commercial gallery

• Communicate your vision and motivation as an artist through effective choices of structure, layout, color, font, and copy.

• Capture the essence of you and your art in a way that collectors and arts-professionals will understand and appreciate.

The big advantage of a fully customized site is that it showcases you in a way that is hard or even impossible to achieve with a template or online slide-registry. If your site is well designed, it can and will communicate the essence of you and your art to collectors.

The problems with a fully customized website can be significant too. It is very important to do your research well and choose the right designer so be sure to ask the right questions:

Do you have any idea what the designer is going to create for you or how long it will take? Ask to see examples of their work and to see testimonials from other clients. Ask to be given a choice of initial layouts. Talk with the designer and find out what they will be like to work with.

Custom sites are more expensive for obvious reasons – you are paying a talented designer for exclusive use of their time on a website that will only be used for your work. So, understand the cost before you sign any contracts and be willing to pay a reasonable sum for a really good site. Depending on the size of your vision that could be anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000. No question – it’s a big investment but also potentially a big gift to your art career.

How will the site be supported? What will be the process and cost to make changes? Can you make changes yourself or will the designer handle that for you and at what cost? It’s no good if you end up with a beautiful site that takes months to update every time you want to add new work.

Our advice on fully-customized websites: It’s worth considering one if you are making a commitment to your career and want to showcase both your work and your artistic vision to arts professionals. Choose your designer carefully and you should be very pleased with the results.

This is the final article in this series – thanks for joining us! A parting thought: A website is not a silver bullet. By itself it is unlikely to create overnight success for an artist’s career, but when woven together with other elements into a marketing strategy, it can be very effective in promoting the artist’s work.

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