In order for your product or services to thrive and attract more customers, you will need a website. Whether you choose to hire a professional to design the website or do it yourself, you must ensure that the website truly represent your line of business. If you are a lawyer, for example, your website will be more about the content and the services you are providing and less about images. On the other hand, if you are a photographer, your website is more likely to be about your photos than words. Here are a few pointers on how to design a website for the visual arts.
Less is more
It is less about the web design and more about your work. If people are starting to comment about how nice your website is rather than complimenting you about your photos or images, then you have a problem. To make sure that your images are not competing with the web design, check their size so that they fit into the screen without having to scroll from left to right or magnify the image. Keep your website free from watermarks. Instead of cluttering your image with a long text, you can add a link that viewers can click on if they wish to read the description.
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Organise your website
Label each category clearly, so that your viewer can navigate easily and don’t be tempted to add too many clever artistic touches or complicated words that may frustrate the user. Imagine you are the one who will be using the site and use obvious category names with simple descriptions. Part of organising your work is to link every image on your website so that others can share your images with other artists or even clients. Although this may sound obvious, do include your contact info on every page, preferably a contact link or a dedicated category simply named “contact me”.
Only put your best work on your website
“Your portfolio is only as good as your worst image” still is true. Check every single photo, image and drawing and make sure that none of them are weak. If need be, ask a friend or a tutor to look at your images and get an honest, objective critique of your work. Companies such as web design Southampton will be able to advise you on what works best. Sometimes it is better to have less but amazing work on your website rather than lots of average images.
Tricks to help the user navigate around your site
If you have a portfolio of images and your visitor is scrolling through it, it helps to give the user an idea of where he is by annotating each image with a number page to let people know where they are. You can have a page number (15/30) or a counter. And allow a back to menu button to return to the main menu without having to scroll through every image again. Many visual arts professionals use the controls on their keyboard to scroll through images or portfolios make sure that you have that facility on your website.
Whether it is to acquire commissions or simply show off your work, these simple but effective tricks will help you make your website and work stand out from the crowd.
With a decade of experience in authoring informative articles on web-related topics, Alice is one of the most sought after authors. In This article she writes about web design Southampton.