We recently conducted a survey of a select group of our readers asking a very simple question: What are your top concerns about artist websites?
We received about 70 responses from a broad spectrum of artists – some with existing websites and some without, some with a lot of marketing experience under their belts and others with little or none. Because we asked an open ended question, we had a wide range of answers, but they were fairly easy to group into major areas of concern.
What we found is shown below in the figure…
What we learned:
- By far the biggest overall concern was a lack of website traffic and a desire to find ways to bring more qualified visitors to the artist websites
- There was a tie for the second position shared by (1) The ability for the artist to update and maintain their own website and, (2) Great design values in the showcasing and superior technical performance (fast loading etc).
- Next in line.was website cost, followed by automatic updates to social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc), and ecommerce capability.
- Finally there were a multitude of smaller concerns which we lumped into “other”
So – what are the big takeaways from this?
- Artists want to know that their artist websites will be seen and found – otherwise, why bother?
- The importance of Showcasing and performance are recognized and in demand
- The ability to maintain and update the website quickly and cost-effectively is very important. This makes sense because experienced online art marketers know that they need to keep their websites alive and interesting with fresh content.
- The ability to interact with social media and to sell work online via ecommerce are gaining momentum in importance
Experience and data from real world market experience is priceless and we value this feedback from our readers. Does this reflect your experience with artist websites and online art marketing? If you are burning to add something new to the mix please do so in the comments below!
A few things to try to improve your website traffic:
- Check out our recent article, “18 Tips To Bring Visitors To Your Artist Website“
- Check out our Artist SEO Success System – It’s not free but it is worth every penny!
One of the odd things about running a web site is that many of the technical skills & tasks necessary to draw qualified traffic tend to be at odds with how "artists" & other "creatives" have been trained to function and market.
We depend on galleries and agents and production executives and other middlemen types to facilitate sales because this is how it's always been done.
Once we build a web site and start entering the conversation on social media sites we're saying we're not relying on that now.
..but we are relying on a technical set of skills many either don't have or aren't willing to learn and execute. Simply plopping our site on the net and tweeting the latest piece we have for sale isn't going to invite or even make it easy for those we want to cultivate to come to our site.