If you’re an illustrator or an artist who wants more website visits – and for as many of those visitors as possible to convert into clients – well you are in for a ruddy lovely treat.
This is the fifth instalment of my Website tips for… blog series, a deep dive into ultra-specific helpful advice for different types of small businesses and industries, from selling jewellery to growing podcasts, and now, getting more eyes on your illustrations and art.
As a heads up, this article will spend a lot of time in the realm of search engine optimisation (SEO) – a topic we blog about all the time – which has a reputation for being highly technical and mega mysterious.
Really, it’s just the process of making sure our websites have the best chance of appearing in Google search results, and appearing as highly as possible, so please give the dry stuff a chance.
As a wee twist on my usual entries in this series, as well as practical tips, I’ve added in some website design principles too.
In my experience of working with hundreds of creatives on their websites, a lot of the missed opportunities stem from having a difference of understanding as to how a website can support an artist’s small business.
So without further adoo-doo, here are 14 expert tips & principles for designing an illustrator’s or artist’s website.
1. When it comes to websites & SEO, a picture most certainly does not tell 1,000 words
The content – well, the words – on your website is the biggest way that you can influence the terms that you rank for in Google searches.
If you’re a street artist in Yorkshire and your dream client is Googling “Garden murals Sheffield”, you will almost certainly not appear if your website doesn’t have the words “Garden”, “Murals” and “Sheffield” on it.
You might even have a gallery with 17 stunning photos of 17 stunning murals in 17 stunning gardens, but Google can’t see ’em like a human can. Google can’t tell what that picture is, so it’s your job to write stuff on your website.
A website without text might better meet your aesthetic preferences, but my preference is that your website gets visits from people who wanna pay for your art – so I ruddy implore you to get wordier.
2. Your creative work cannot always speak for itself
Oh gosh, I almost feel shady popping this in my article as I think I’ve heard “I don’t really need many words on my website – my work will do the talking” about 62,007 times in nearly 9 years of website consulting & design.
As I mentioned already, it’s unlikely that your website will appear in Google search results without words.
But. Let’s ignore the SEO side of things for a hot sec.
Let’s also say that I wanna commission an artist to create a set of illustrations for a new web project here at Studio Cotton.
The first artist I find, Sally McWatercolours, has a website chocka with beautiful photos of her work with examples that are aligned with my brief.
The second, Jean Pastels-Charcoal, also has a website with plenty suitable examples, plus a page that explains:
- He is currently open to commissions on commercial projects
- He loves working with briefs similar to the one I had in mind
- He can create digital work and has experience with web-suitable files
- He has a turnaround time that fits my schedule
- His packages are a little more than I wanted to spend, but I can make it work
- He has testimonials from very happy clients who have successfully completed projects
- How to get started
It’s just so so so much easier to call Jean and give him all my buckets of fivers, because he has massively reduced that initial admin burden.
Sure, I could email Sally, but we’d already be 5 steps behind because the first questions I’m gonna ask are the ones Jean already answered.
Even if Sally would have ultimately been the best creative for the website illustration job, we’ll never know because her lack of website text meant she never even reached the enquiry stage.
3. Portfolios are ok, but focusing on your customer tends to be more profitable
“What’s the best platform for a DIY portfolio website?” – it’s probably Squarespace, but I really want to convince more artists to ditch ‘portfolio website’ from their vocabulary.
A portfolio is a curated showcase of previously completed work. In ye olden days of like, 12+ years ago, a physical portfolio was a crucial component of securing creative roles, projects, and clients.
The artist might submit their folio to a pitch request or opportunity, choosing their projects that are closest to the project on offer.
If successful, they’d progress to sitting in a room with decision makers, and pitch their ability to complete a brief or fulfil a need using their previous works as examples of how they can apply their talents.
The biggest weakness of a portfolio website is that you’re not in a room with that decision maker, and you often have no idea what the brief is that sent them to your website.
It’s missing context.
Even the most stunning portfolio website design relies on the visitor gaining that context either before their visit – like a word-of-mouth referral or having seen work on social media – or after the website visit, like the long email exchange that I skipped with Sally McWatercolours.
Instead, I always advise designing your website to be your customer-first, not you-first.
4. Let your art be your art, and your website be your website
Website design can be incredibly creative. Whilst writing this article I went on a hunt for The Wildernerss Downtown, an experimental web project set to Arcade Fire’s We Used to Wait which still gives me goosebumps.
Actually, take a sec to open that link in a new tab so you can play with it after you’ve read this article. Make sure to use your laptop/desktop, headphones, and allow pop-ups too.
Anyway. Design creativity in websites can definitely help drive engagement and curiosity – but that almost always comes with a user experience (UX) compromise.
Optimising a website’s UX is all about creating a site that works with human behaviour to achieve a desired outcome. So, basically, it’s about setting up a website to move your visitors towards a goal.
It’s often measured in conversions. A conversion is a visitor completing that goal (like a purchase or form submission), and the conversion rate is the percentage of successful goal completions.
UX comes with some Best Practice principles – like how we expect to see a main menu at the top of a web page, or how we streamline the number of interactions a user makes to reach a checkout.
Deviating too much from UX Best Practice usually comes with a hit to conversion rate, which means (to put it more harshly) too much creativity can hurt your bottom line.
With this in mind, if you need your website to work as hard as possible for generating traffic and sales, it is worth embracing a more traditional set-up – which can still be beautiful.
5. Choose a primary focus for your website: service enquiries or ecommerce?
Most of the websites we create at Studio Cotton either sell products directly via ecommerce, or they’re designed to promote services and generate enquiries – or both.
And both is where it gets tricky.
(Sorry to all you freelance illustrators who also have a product range).
For example, on an ecommerce website we tend to wanna get the average visitor from wherever they land to products and to the checkout as quickly and efficiently as possible. We remove as much friction as we can, and set up the site for quick movement.
For a service website – like that of my website design co – if people move too fast, they might miss crucial information that would have massively increased their chances of booking. We don’t really want our visitors to be pushed towards our enquiry form before they’ve seen our pricing or caught a testimonial.
Otherwise, it might mean too many people who aren’t suitable complete our enquiry form, like brands that have a deadline we can’t meet, want a technology we don’t use, or a project that isn’t aligned with our values.
So, for a service business, we tend to introduce strategic friction, and make website design choices that slow down our visitors.
This does mean that it can be impossible to build a website that is both the best ecommerce website and the best service website.
My advice is to choose one as the primary focus, rather than making them equally important.
Bonus tip here: if you’re ever looking for website tips online, keep an eye out for whether they apply to ecommerce or service websites. I find very few sources make this definition, and I have seen way too many websites with a totally jumbled UX as a result.
6. Include literal terms like “original painting” or “art print” in every product title
This is the first tip for you artists & illustrators with an ecommerce website. Your product titles determine the H1 headings on your product pages.
H1 headings are at the very top of your content hierarchy, and they’re basically the lil bit of text that tells Google exactly what a page/product is about – which is the info Google needs to match your website with suitable searchers.
If you title your products creatively, with something like “Daydreams at Sea” or “Dusk 032”, Google won’t be able to match your product pages with your dream customer who is searching for a “Abstract sea art print” or “Textile art sunset”.
Instead, go for a 2-part name that adds the literal words onto the end of your creative titles, e.g. Daydreams at Sea: Abstract Art Print. I get it looks a lil bit cluttered, but I would compromise on clutter if it gets your art into the search results of your customers.
7. Describe your products like you’re on the phone to a customer
Google can’t see your photos or illustrations. Sure, its detection AI is getting better – but do you really wanna rely on AI to understand the breadth and depth of your creative output?
This is why product descriptions are often the biggest way you can positively impact the SEO of an ecommerce website.
Yet, I know they’re also the part of a website that most people struggle with, which is why I want you pick up a phone and describe your works to a fake customer.
Tell them what it looks like – the colours, the size, the genre, the overall vibe, what kinda rooms it would look nice in, your favourite detail, the paper stock, the print quality. Waffle on like you’re talking to your favourite aunt who always asks enthusiastic questions, and write that on your website.
You can even record this as a voice memo to yourself, or use an even fancier voice transcription app.
I’ve found this trick really helps people sell their product as it doesn’t feel like selling when it’s just telling.
8. Separate your offering by service, project type, or audience, and create a page for each one
Time to switch over to services now. I hate the generic ‘services’ page. I hate it so gosh darn much and I want to pop it in every website design bin.
So let’s use another example, and this time you’ll be playing the part of Google. Hey Google.
Mary in Sheffield has just typed “garden muralist” into their search bar, and you’ve gotta decide which of these two websites to send to Mary.
Website one, Fran’s Frescos, has that generic services page that describes their creative process, some photos, mentions murals once, and in a paragraph towards the bottom, you’ve picked up the word ‘outdoor’ too.
Website two, Bill’s Big Art, has a website covered in the word ‘murals’, and instead of that services page, he has three individual pages: Residential murals, Outdoor & garden murals, Commercial murals.
And, on that Outdoor & garden murals page, it says garden muralist, garden, murals, art and Sheffield a handful of times.
So Google-babes, which one are you matching with Mary? Bill’s Big Art. Every time.
Individual pages per service, project type or audience makes you way more competitive for SEO and gives you the space to speak directly to each client’s needs.
They’re more likely to win you more traffic, and more likely to convert.
9. Answer the who, what, why, where, how and when questions most clients might have
So you’ve got those individual service pages – now what do you pop on them? The answer to your clients’ questions.
Close your laptop for a moment and grab the biggest sheet of paper you have, because we’re gonna apply some primary school writing tips to your artist & illustrator website.
Write down who, what, why, where, how and when, and then brain-dump every client question that might start with one of these words. Stuff like “Who is the artist?”, “How long will my mural take?”, “What media do they use to create their art?”.
When your brain can dump no more, try grouping any questions that could be answered together. For example, “How long will my mural take” and “When can you get started?” could be answered together with “Each mural takes up to 4 sunny days to complete, with a waitlist of around 2-3 months.”.
We want about 5-10 of these answer-rich sections to make up your pages. You should also dot in plenty of supporting images, testimonials, case studies and even press features.
This writing trick ensures your content is thorough, literal and helpful – qualities that Google and clients love.
10. Dot an ‘about you’ nugget on every single website page – not just your about page
We don’t want any visitor to need to leave their most efficient user journey to find out the basics about you. As an artist or illustrator, you are obviously intrinsic to your work, so we want a piece of you on every single website page.
Now it’s time for another analogy, as apparently I can’t get enough of them in this article. Instead of selling art, you now sell wooden chopping boards.
When writing your product descriptions for your chopping boards, you make sure every single one clearly mentions that the chopping board is made of wood. Wood is an intrinsic feature of every chopping board, and leaving it off would make the content less accurate and less helpful to customers.
You are the wood (creator) of your chopping boards (art/illustrations), and so we need that info on every single product and service on your website.
All you need is a sentence or two, as well as a nice clear button that goes to that about page for anyone who’d like the full story.
11. Optimise every single image & video on your website
Big images & videos = more data to transfer = slower website = frustrated visitors = unimpressed Google = low/no rankings = less traffic = fewer conversions = lower sales = sad you.
As an artist or illustrator, even though you’ve totally added all those words now, your website will probably still have more photos and videos than, say, a window cleaner’s.
With that in mind, it’s mega important that every gosh-darn file is squished and crunched as much as possible to keep your website speedy.
Check out my 5-step guide on optimising website images to get you started.
(Update: our Content Producer, Lyzi, has just put together 11 tips for how to use video on your website (and not mess up your SEO) that’s worth having a peek at too).
12. Don’t be afraid to tweak your website for a big pitch of funding application
If you’re mid-pitch for a big project or arts grant that could make-or-break your creative small business, it might be worth saying, “screw everything else, my website is just for this big thing now”.
You might want to curate your website home page and case studies with imagery and projects most similar to a brief you’re pitching for. Heck, you could even create a dedicated page for that client (without telling them that’s why).
For example, you might be pitching for a commission in your city’s new festival of lights. You could totally add a page to your website called ‘Light sculptures” that follows that who, what, why, where, how and when format – which will make it way easier for the project commissioner to pick and remember you.
If you’re applying for a creative arts grant, it probably comes with some criteria you need to meet – and I’m sure you’re already sick of fitting that into those 500 words in the grant application.
But. It might also be worth expanding on those application criteria on your website. For example, if you need to demonstrate how you use your art to benefit your local community, you could try adding a page called ‘community projects’ that thoroughly details all the times you’ve hosted events, workshops, meet-ups and talks.
A good nugget to remember here is that if the grant awarding body has asked for your website address, they probably intend to look at your website – so make sure it speaks directly to them.
13. Seek web design inspiration from outside of the art community
When you were building your website, did you look at all the websites for your favourite artists and illustrators? I bet ya did.
And I also bet that when your fav artists and illustrators were making their own websites, they also looked at their fav creatives too.
Whilst there is nothing abjectly wrong with this, it often leads to a lot of bad and weird website practices percolating throughout entire industries.
As a professional website designer, it’s a phenomenon that I think is really cool to observe. As someone who wants every website to attract and convert visitors, it’s not very cool at all.
For creative industries, the portfolio website I started chatting about 2,500+ words ago is the biggest example – particularly portfolios that involve a gallery grid of square images on the home page.
So this is just a note to look for website inspiration from non-artist brands. Find ecommerce inspiration by heading to your favourite online shops. Find service website inspiration from trend-setting industry disrupters – you might be surprised by how cute some modern accounting software websites are.
And if you’d just like a bank of cute websites, I would totes recommend starting with the Site of the Day from Typewolf.
14. Keep a permanent mention of previous exhibitions & studios
I’m really ending this article on a really boring and functional piece of advice – optimising your website for someone who half-remembers seeing you at that place that time.
As someone who attends more than enough networking meet-ups, I utterly suck at remembering the names and businesses of the people I’ve met – so usually end up Googling stuff like “Podcast editor Sam London”.
And I’m sure many artists will have huge fans that only half-remember their names. Including the details of places where someone might remember you from is a great way to pick up searches months and years down the line.
After all, your next client might not remember “Fran’s Frescos”, but they might remember “Street art exhibition centre space Bristol muralist”.
So there ya go – 3,000 words on how to create a way more effective website to promote your art or illustration business. If you’d like more tips, I really recommend diving into our Studio Cotton blog – it’s chocka with helpful tidbits on web design topics like SEO, content, ecommerce and blogging.
Or if you prefer something a lil more bitesize, head over to @studio.cotton on Instagram for super-short actions and advice for all sorts of websites. See ya laterzzzzz.
Featured photo courtesy of Cai Burton – Studio Cotton’s client manager by (Tuesday – Thurs-)day, artist and funding grant application coach by the rest of the time. Cai very kindly let me steal/borrow a photo from his recent brand shoot with Georgia de Lotz.
