website advice help!

emma*1976

thanks to all for your time and such excellent advice, I have enlisted a pc lit freind to help overall my site and put your advice to use, as a compleat novice and bad speller its all a bit too overwheming for me! I ve removed the thread because I wont have much access to my pc over the next few weeks and I dont want to be rude by not thanking future tips. Thanks again much aprecieated

Gazing_On_Sunsets

OK... your header "art for all" is too big, because when I load the page that's all I see. I need to see your artwork first.

The page takes too long to load (on my poxy connection at least!) because all your images are taking up space. You have some galleries set up, I see the links at the top but I am on Firefox and they do not show up - they are pale text on a pale background.

You do need to get someone to proofread your text as they are many mistakes, just little ones about punctuation like "Im" when it should be "I'm". That sounds really picky but things like that give the impression of professionalism.

You have used some website creation editor to make your website which has given you less control - I can see that when I look at the coding. You've got no keywords or anything in the source code. Google probably doesn't use them much anyway, but it's worth having them in.

OK so you're not a web specialist. IF you want to sell online then you do need some proper help. BUT before you go down that line I would ask:

How many people buy paintings online?

I don't know the answer to that. But my gut feeling is "not as many as buy from exhibitions, galleries and so on". I would suggest that first of all you do some research and find out how and where successful artists sell their work. And put your energies into that. I am sure you could, with time and money, create a beautiful website that appears at the top of every search listing BUT people still want to see a painting in the flesh before they buy.

DeviantArt now have a "portfolio creator" which is very slick and nice - it creates a free and professional looking portfolio of work. You might be better putting your energies into more face to face stuff and just have a nice, simple, portfolio site as back up if someone asks about your work and you can say "go here and look and get back to me with a commission idea".

I hope you don't think I've pulled your website to shreds... I just worry that you are concentrating on the wrong thing.

PS your work is impressive but large abstracts NEED to be seen for real not on a screen.

Owain_Moneysaver

The 'obvious' way to make more money is to upload images of your artworks to one of the sites where people can then buy mugs and mousemats with them on. They handle the fulfilment and you keep the profit.

Might also be worth selling in real life as many people don't want to spend £85 on a painting but would spend £3 on a nice mug.

GettingItRight

Hi Emma,

From what I see, you have the following challenges with your website:

1. Website name is a little on the long and complicated side. If you can find a new domain name which easier to remember, then it might work for you. Sorry that is not a layout issue and will add cost.

2. Your website graphics take a while to load and that is me saying this while using 4.5Mbs broadband. Compressing your graphics will help. If you know someone who has Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, ask them if they can help you in performing this task.

3. Your photos look like they may have been resized manually, I could be wrong. I am sure I noticed photos of work hanging on the walls seem to "break" around the edges. By this I mean one part is slightly higher around the edge of a hanging picture - hope that makes sense, but viewing the photo with the red sofa on the home page wil give you an idea about what I mean.

Try to use a graphics package (like Adobe Photoshop) which can automatically adjust .jpg files to the size you want.

4. Try to reduce the length of scrolling required for some pages. Does "contact.php" really need to be so long? It's purpose should focus on providing contact and delivery information to the visitor. However, it seems you have extended it into a gallery selling page

5. Your horizontal navigation menu is almost invisible. Were the current page tabs not highlighted within the menu, I'd not know straight away that such a menu was present.

6. Lose the big brown graphic which features on every page. All that room it takes up is your prime selling space and the graphic is slow to load. A user might be dissappointed with what he/she had been waiting for, once it appeared.

7. Try to reduce the number of text colours you use. Use one type for headings and use a different colour for paragraphs if needed. Think about colour association and do not use too many text colours.

8. Remove underlines, they are not really required and do not look attractive on a site. You could style the text, by sizing or use colour to highlight emphasis. If you are going to use underline, use it only for page links that are outside of your navigation menu.

9. Keep your fonts the same. For example, the web page contact.php uses 3 different styles of fonts, when all that is needed is perhaps one. Again use emphasis by sizing your text where needed.

10. Perhaps consider having your contact details (business address, email and business number) centralised in a smaller font size, as opart of your footer at the bottom of each page (just above the graphic in the footer). Still keep the contact details page though.

11. I am stepping out of my depth here as I do not have much of a clue about art. Your artwork gallery is great in my opinion, but could you possibly add titles to your pieces? Again I do not know much about art, but maybe a good title for each piece of work (or to some) could make them sound more unique or attractive to potential buyers.

12. As the previous poster stated, grammer is essential on any business website. It can be a major no-no for some visitors.

13. Reduce the amount of white in the background. Perhaps consider giving the background some colour and then adjust text colour accordingly. To get ideas browse websites.

14. You need to ensure you add "keywords" to you web pageem, titles, links, paragraphs and images where possible.

15. You should add brief descriptions to your photos. If a user is waiting for a photo to load, they may want to know what is going to occupy the big blank white space on their screen. If you add a description using the ... alt= "" ...option witihin a link, the visitor can read what to expect.

e.g alt="A photo showing the inside my shop"

Of course by having good text content visible from the top your web page, this can help while the image loads. Text uses less memory than photos, so will appear on screen first. If the image does not display, at least the alt option, allows the user to read what would have been there.



Sorry, I think that is enough to be looking into. The above are just ideas you might want to look at. Others may agree or disagree with what I said. At the same time I am not trying to bash your website in a negative light, just give you some pointers.

From viewing your art gallery, it can be clearly seen that you have a great talent. I only wish you took my GCSE art exam for me at school, about 14 years ago

If you can improve your web page layout, your website will have a greater impact on visitors.

I would also consider looking into the deviantart website as suggeted, if you have not already. I believe it is free and I found out about this website from a friend in Sao Paulo. He uses it to promote his freelance graphics work for clients to view. It might pay to make regular uploads there for your profile.

Just remember when it comes to layout and design of your website, "form follows function". That is the bare bones of website design, as I was taught.

Good luck, I really do hope you can improve the site. You produce good work and business is probably not easy in your field. Hopefully one day a rich Japanese guy will come and find your site, then ask you to do x amount of work and kit out his entire house with paintings - you never know :cool:

cally6008

Excellent information given from the posters above.

Just to add to this .. forget about trying to figure out Adwords or any sort of website advertising (at least for the next 6 months or so). Reason I say this is because if you follow the above posters advice and work through their points they've raised .. you will slowly start to see a difference in traffic levels and your website will be better.

joeczucha

try and break the site down into more manageable sections - preferably in the form of a 'sitemap' (see below) and plan what you are going to put in each section, it will help you organise your information more clearly

Home
|
- Paintings
|
- 2010
- 2009
- 2008
|
- About me
|
- CV
|
- Contact me


etc - you don't have to use these headings; you could, for example, organise it by the type of art. but the point is that my breaking up the information you are going to make it more enjoyable for a user to click through the various sections of the site and find what they are looking for...

dgerati

Forget all that techy stuff, you would be better off paying a techie to worry about all that.

You need to focus on two things and two things only.

1. Focus on getting visitors.
2. Focus on solving your visitors problems.

Some thoughts to get you started:

For point 1, think of free ways to get visitors. Get links from art sites and art forums, get a facebook page dedicated to your art which links to your site... and so on. The more links you get, the better you do in Google too...

For point 2, make the main subject of your site about your art and obtaining your art, not about you...

Hope that has given you something to think about.

mr_roll

dgerati wrote: »

Forget all that techy stuff, you would be better off paying a techie to worry about all that.

You need to focus on two things and two things only.

1. Focus on getting visitors.
2. Focus on solving your visitors problems.

Some thoughts to get you started:

For point 1, think of free ways to get visitors. Get links from art sites and art forums, get a facebook page dedicated to your art which links to your site... and so on. The more links you get, the better you do in Google too...

For point 2, make the main subject of your site about your art and obtaining your art, not about you...

Hope that has given you something to think about.

I'd only sort the site before you looked at getting more visitors.
If you follow the above posts then look for visitors it'd help, I think.
Maybe you could get some car stickers that are smallish and ask friends / family to stick them on their car windows of the URL. It might help improve visability and you may get some curious souls.

What about creating small pieces of work? Something you could market from around £40. It might entise people into buying one of the bigger pieces.

Some of those pieces of art are superb. If I was looking for art work I'd go back to your site

cally6008

site first, visitors second

no point getting visitors coming to a website that is half done as they wont be back

geordie_joe

cally6008 wrote: »

site first, visitors second

no point getting visitors coming to a website that is half done as they wont be back

Not true at all. Ebay was a lot less than half done when it was launched, and it's still not finished yet!

You are confusing "not done" with "not working" and there is a big difference.

A site should be fully working, but that doesn't mean it should be fully complete. It means what is published should work, you shouldn't have links to pages that are not working or not completed etc.

You can have a fully working web site, but have plans to add to it or improve it, as long as what visitors see is fully working.

In fact, a web site should never be "done", you should always be updating it and improving it. Because people will stop visiting a web site that never changes just as quick as they will stop visiting one that doesn't work.

BargainGalore

Perhaps andoverit you wouldn't mind removing advert in your signature, links or adverts arent allowed