Do Artists need to create Online Art Sites?
Those days were gone when we used to find art only in galleries – now people are moving towards online art sites to showcase their work to the masses. If someone shows an online presence, their work can be liked, shared, and pinned by the vast numbers of admirers and prospects that will ultimately lead to recognition on a big scale.
Source: Pixabay
So if you are a Photographer, Writer, Painter, or creative artist, you need to create your art portfolio website to extend your reach.
Things to consider when creating online art sites
Why You Should Create Your Own Website
There are many social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr, Facebook, DeviantArt, Saatchi Online, Tumblr, Behance, and more to showcase your portfolio. You can use these platforms to drive traffic to your website because they receive a lot of traffic daily. But you can not only rely on these platforms to grow. You need to build your own identity through your artist portfolio website.
You should also avoid using free website builders if you are serious about growing your business because, within these website builders, you will not be able to have total control over your website design and appearance. Your website should professionally exhibit your creative work and communicate the individuality and brand's message. And this will not be possible if you use free templates on these website builders that many other people are also using.
Source: Pixabay
You need your work to be shown in Google search ranking, and this is only possible if you create your art gallery website. Google ranks websites based on the many ranking factors, and if you are using the free platform or uploading your art on social media platforms, the chances are rare that your work will emerge on search results.
If you are thinking of selling your artwork on social media platforms, there is a likelihood that your prospects will be distracted because of many other options showing up in their feed. They will come across multiple sellers, and hence your chance of persuading them would be wasted. But if you own your website, you can always channelize your audience towards your creative work, saving them from distractions.
Having a website allows you to monetize it in your way. You can decide how you want to earn money by selling artwork, services, affiliate products, having advertisements, and more. On social media platforms and free website builders, you and your visitors will get to see unwanted branding. At times these advertisements are from your competitors as well, so it is better to build your website because, in this way, you will have total control over monetizing your website.
Source: Pixabay
Having your website will give you the benefit of seeing visitor stats of your website. You can see how many visitors are coming to your website, from which part of the world they are coming from, and based on these stats, you can improve your creative work to cater to the visitors' tailored needs. You can see all these stats by integrating free Google tools (Google Search Console and Google Analytics) to your website. If you upload your work on the social media platform, you will not see these valuable stats.
Source: Pixabay
If you create your website, you can build an email subscribers list that you can use to showcase your work as per the client's tailored needs. You can build trust by sharing valuable data with your email subscribers.
Social media platforms and free website builders can block your profile or website anytime, and you will not be able to retrieve your data. But if you are the owner of your website, you can tweak it anyway you want without the fear of being blocked by any third party.
If you own a website, you can add a blog section that will allow you to educate your visitors – the better you educate your prospects, the more interested they will be in your art. Also, you can perform an effective SEO if you write content within your website.
Things to do before creating a online art sites
It is a best practice to build your online presence on every viable platform. You can create your online art sites and link them to your social media account. In this way, you can make full use of social media platforms as well.
Starting a website has some prerequisites – for instance, you should design a prototype before building a website. A prototype will help you transform your design thoughts, and you will be able to create a stunning art website for your business.
Without a prototype, you would remain confused about how to design your website. Irrespective of any website you need to create, be it a museum website, kids art website, or pixels art website, you must design a prototype before.
And to make a prototype, you can use Wondershare Mockitt
Mockitt is a design and prototyping tool that allows its users to create a stunning prototype that they can implement accordingly during website development
Mockitt will allow you to exercise your creative muscles while you design your prototype.
You can either select pre-installed templates or start a new project from scratch – in both cases; you will be able to use a library of widgets and icons.
Mockitt allows you to select various screen sizes – you either select from website, mobile, and tablet layouts or select custom screen size by putting in dimensions.
It allows you to create links between various designed screens – this will create an interactive design and give the look and feel of an original website.
Mockitt gives you the freedom to have all of your stakeholders on the same platform and share your prototype with them for feedback and approval.
The best part is that you do not have to learn any programming language - Mockitt uses drag-drop features. You can drag a widget from the library and place it anywhere on your working screen.
You certainly would not want to miss out on using Mockitt for your next project with this many features. So, make sure that you design a prototype with Mockitt before you create an online art site for yourself.
