Hey artists: Sell more art with PayPal...

And eBay (Don't laugh; I'm serious-- read more)

Related article: Website Tips for Artists
Related article: An Art Website that Makes Money

The mantra for a successful art or artist web site has been and continues to be "Keep it fast, easy, and organized." Navigation and content must be straightforward in order to attract visitors and keep them on-site once they get there. First-time visitors to any artist web site need to know as quickly as possible who the artist is, what his or her art looks like, why the site is worth seeing, why they should buy the art, and how to move around the site in order to get where they want to go. Sites that don't deliver these basics or make other common errors do not attract and hold visitors, and get lost among the countless numbers of art web sites already on the Internet. Avoid the following artist web site mistakes to help assure your maximum visibility online.

Don't use free web hosting services. Get your own domain name. Free web hosting is never free. "Free" web sites torture visitors with advertisements, irritating pop-up screens, and other obtrusive graphics, and they also "set cookies" (attach small files to visitors' computer hard drives in order to track their movements around the internet and collect personal data). At worst, you only get half of the screen to show your art with the other half going to the host site. Your art ends up being in competition with gobs of commercial garbage and hardly any art looks good under those circumstances. Furthermore, free sites give the impression that you're not successful enough to afford your own domain name.

Make sure your web site looks the same on Camino, Firefox, Safari, or whatever browser you use as it does on Internet Explorer. The same web site can look great on one browser and terrible on another, or worse yet, may work on one browser, but be non-functional on another. Test yours on all major browsers before going public.

Make your site easy to navigate. Some web site formats are far too confusing, have dead-end pages, or have gallery sections that seem more like medieval mazes. Visitors get lost, and lost visitors mean lost sales. Make sure that every page on your site is linked back to major pages like your homepage, contact information page, art ordering form, and gallery main page.

Keep text to a minimum. Use too many words to explain yourself or your art and you'll bore visitors right off of your site. If you want to provide detailed information about yourself or your art, link those pages rather than place them on high-traffic locations like your homepage. People who want to read more will click over to them; those who would rather see art than read won't be slowed down by oceans of verbiage.

Avoid large image sizes. Your art may look great as it downloads over high-speed connections, but remember that many people still connect to the Internet via slower connections. Long downloads frustrate visitors and force them off of your site, so use images no larger than 100K-200K, preferably less. Photoshop and similar digital imaging programs have options for reducing image sizes for websites or other Internet transmissions without significantly compromising quality.

Never require visitors to join, register, get passwords, or fill out any forms of any kind in order to see your web site. Forcing people to identify themselves before they can see your art is a horrible idea. Imagine if people had to show their driver's licenses or other types of personal identification in order to visit bricks-and-mortar galleries or artist studios. If it doesn't happen in real life, it shouldn't happen online.

Don't overuse "cookies" (small files that attach to visitors' computer hard drives, track their movements around your site, and collect personal data). The worst offenders are websites that refuse to let you in unless you allow them to set cookies in your computer (I rarely stay on these sites). Certain types of cookies are intrusive at least and an invasion of privacy at most. However, cookies occasionally necessary when filling out certain forms or when buying art using "shopping cart" services, or for purposes like tracking visitors around your website to see which pages they visit the most. Again, when people want to contact you, they will. Don't overdo efforts to extract information out of them.

Avoid plug-ins, special effects, complex visuals, and other gimmicks. These often take a long time to load, require special software or, at worst, crash visitors' computers. Unless your web site is designed to be a work of art or performance piece in and of itself, and exists primarily for entertainment purposes, avoid the fancy stuff. Most people visit an artist's web site to see the art as fast and as easy as possible.

Provide plenty of contact information. The more you tell people about yourself such as your complete studio address, phone number, fax number, and email address, the more accessible you appear. Don't give potential customers the impression that you're hard to communicate with by only showing your email address and not even telling them where you live. Some artist websites provide no contact information whatsoever, but rather have feedback or comments forms that you fill out and submit. The question that always goes through my mind here is "What are you hiding from?"

Price every piece of art on the web site for sale. Not pricing your art on-site, but rather asking people to email you for prices, is a big mistake. You'll lose potential sales if you do this. As in real life, many people prefer to shop for art quietly by themselves. They're afraid that if they start asking for prices, someone will try to sell them something. Would you like having to ask how much something is or would you rather see a price tag? Do unto others...

Explain your selling prices. Everyone likes to feel that they're spending their money wisely, so provide information about your price structure. People who don't understand how you set your prices or why they're as high or as low as they are will be reluctant to buy.

Offer approval, return, and refund policies. Online art shoppers often want to see art on approval first and be able to return it for complete refunds if it doesn't look like they thought it did when they saw it online. No approval, return, and refund policies mean few, if any, sales.

Don't show too much sold art. Some artists think that showing numerous sold works of art will make people want to buy whatever remaining pieces happen to be for sale. The effect is exactly the opposite. Potential buyers think that the best pieces are already gone and all that's left are the leftovers. They also get frustrated when a selection is too limited.