Artists going it alone with their own website

Artists going it alone with their own website.  Art Blog by Rob Kennedy

So you've tried bricks and mortar galleries and then dived in to getting an account or accounts with some online galleries. You dodged the galleries with monthly fees and opted for one or two commission based galleries. If you've got stats you're probably devastated at the lack of visitors. An add to basket but no sale probably keeps you awake at night wondering, “why”. So tantalisingly close but no deal. You've gone for months without a sale. The gallery hasn't included your art in any of their advertising. You ask “What am I doing wrong, do I need my own website”?

First of all let me say that it's so easy to believe that you are at fault and that the problem lies fairly and squarely at your own feet. Three things to consider:

1. Yes, it may be you

2. Maybe it's your chosen genre

3. Galleries promote their best sellers

It's possibly you but more likely either your genre or the gallery not giving you air time until you start selling.

Do I need my own website?

Sometimes this is the answer. However, you don't know how to get started. Well, help is on hand. I've had more than a few websites and even a few online stores. Here are two main options to move forward.

For starters you'll need domain name like “larrytheartist.com. A domain costs around $20 per year and you'll need it for just about any commercial site if you want to look serious. You'll also need hosting like VentraIP, GoDaddy etc. Then....

1. You can get a commercial website like shopify, SquareSpace or Wix, there are others but I'll just outline the main ones. Each of these have varying charges and you'll be forking out between $36.00 - $50.00 per month. If you're not selling, this might be a bit hard to cop straight away.
   
   

2. Build your own website and store. This isn't free and may be cheaper than say SquareSpace depending on the options you go for. You will still need a host and that host may have a control panel that will allow you to run a website with store attached. I used to run a website with a free builder. I then ran a webstore alongside that with a link from the website to the store. That worked fine for many years but things change. Mobile phones and tablets came along and pages began to load incorrectly. It still works but talk to your web host first to see what they have.

Then you'll need your store. There are dozens of ecommerce store fronts to choose from, I tried over 12 over a painful 12 day period. The first one I set up went quite well, however it had one major problem, the page wouldn't display on phones or tablets. To distill 12 shit filled days I found the best two free ecommerce stores were OS Commerce and WooCommerce.

I preferred OS Commerce over WooCommerce because I struggle with WordPress. To me one of the more salient drawbacks with WooCommerce is that while it's free, nearly every plug in costs money and often, particularly “themes” are renewable each year. Find a theme you like but watch out next year when you've got to pay for the theme again. Go for a free theme at kick off and you won't get too many surprises. For me, I'd get a pro to set up WooCommerce the way you want it and then do the updates (such as loading new paintings) yourself.

OS Commerce is amazing. It has all the features of some of the pay per months shops. It looks awesome and is fully customisable. The problem is it's a very steep learning curve and as I found in my research, there's not a lot of help. Your OS Commerce shop, like WooCommerce displays in PCs, notepads and phones. Once set up either option will look and run well.