In the past, I've periodically published my recommendations for the 11 Essential Elements that every artist website should contain. I've updated them for 2017 below. [...]

Most businesses need a great website to be taken seriously. When an artist makes the decision to market and sell her artworks, she is making the decision to start a business. [...]

If you follow this formula, I think you’ll find that you’ll create engaging content that helps collectors find your artwork and also convinces them to buy your art. [...]

By following this straightforward approach to structuring your artwork pages you’ll be twice as likely to sell your art online whenever you come across that 1% of collectors who are ready to buy. [...]

If I want to sell my work online, I need to engage viewers long enough to create lasting interest. [...]

In short, a great artist’s website helps collectors emotionally connect with the artist and their work, and makes it easy for them to buy artwork before anyone else can. [...]

If you’re an artist or creative, FASO has everything you could ever want and more to showcase your art. You’ll be supported, loved and part of a community of artists. [...]

Artist always ask me for tips on the most effective forms of marketing. One thing I tell them is that email marketing remains one of the best channels to promote your art. [...]

Fortunately, FASO offers free SSL on all it’s artist websites. [...]

We must remember our website has a very short window of opportunity to attract and create enough interest to stop a potential customer in their tracks and take notice of who we are and why they must have our work. [...]

Not making sure that your website is mobile responsive is a very common mistake that lots of artists make. Don’t make this mistake and jeopardize your traffic and sales. [...]

Some may think, "I paint alone. I don't partner with anyone." but to succeed as a professional artist, you will need to partner with some other industry professionals in order to get your paintings seen and sold. [...]

You will be more successful by finishing a project than you would by starting multiple projects that will never be completed. [...]

DO NOT DO THE FOLLOWING THINGS ON YOUR ARTIST WEBSITE... [...]

Successful people have mastered the art of change. They are not loyal to a “one-way strategy.” They are focused on implementing programs that work at the time and discard it when a better plan arises. [...]

12 artist website mistakes to avoid... [...]

So basically the message was coming loud and clear: Get a website! [...]

Crunching the numbers, marketing, blogs, writing newsletters, visiting galleries, creating submittals, preparing and maintaining a professional portfolio, etc.; when do I have time to create and just enjoy painting? [...]

Secure your website with Free 1-click custom SSL. [...]

Your art will change as you see things differently or want to explore a new idea, but your voice will still be evident, like a fingerprint in your work. [...]

SSL technology is what enables you to make purchases online, provide your credit card online, and even do banking online without the bad guys being able to see all your personal and financial information. [...]

Art is personal. [...]

Check, and recheck your assumptions, constantly. [...]

If you don't have a web site, why not? As a professional artist, you need to have a web site. There are more reasons to have a web site than to NOT have one. [...]

How many hoops do I have to jump through on your website to get to the paintings? [...]

The 21st century may be more technologically complicated than the past but there are fewer gate keepers now for aspiring artists and creatives. Build that website, start your blog, offer an email newsletter, write that book and share your art and message with the world! [...]

Simple works. You want a website that is easy to manage AND easy to view. You want a website that you can actually use. You want a website that art lovers will enjoy visiting. [...]

Think about this: if the power goes off in the middle of the night, can you walk from your bedroom to the kitchen without running into something? And if you have a guest at your house that night the power goes off, would they be able to make it to the kitchen unscathed? I will venture a "yes" to the first part, and a "no" to the second. Knowing something like the back of your hand plays a big part in the art of navigation. [...]

I'm sure most of us complete a piece of artwork, make sure we have natural light and take digital photos, then load them to a computer, do some kind of cropping for clean edges, save the photo, go to FASO, to our Facebook fan page, our Facebook wall and upload the photos, write all the descriptions and move along to the next piece of artwork. For me, this process could take more than hour especially if the digital camera and I were not getting along and if the photos were blurred, I'd have to repeat part of this process at least once. The app ended a lot of this work. [...]

As a writer I strive to offer current / factual information about artists to readers -- artists should strive to offer the same to their website visitors (which may include potential buyers, gallery owners, and art writers). [...]

What all of these different rendering engines mean is that the only way to be sure your email newsletter looks correct is to stick to a small, safe subset of HTML and then to rigorously test each design in every major email program...and different versions of those programs...and with images blocked...and with images enabled. One option for artists would be to pay a designer to design your email designs and test them in all of these email programs. Then you could use the same design over and over, being careful to only change your content and none of the HTML itself. Like I said before, it's a quagmire. [...]

The projects that are the focus of this article, and my resolve, are the projects that have been set aside for awhile. Some have collected quite a bit of dust. Some were set aside as other things took priority. Some of these projects were set aside because I was stuck and didn’t quite know what the next step should be. Others remain unfinished because of fear. Still others have been hindered by overwhelm. You get the picture. There are many reasons why projects get set aside. [...]

So here's something that surprises me: I see some other artist website services recommending you use their software for your blogging solution, but, for their own company blogs, they use Wordpress or Blogger. That should tell you something. How do they find the pain points? How do they know what to fix? [1] Why don't they think their own software is good enough for their own use? [2] [...]

There are many people out there selling courses, doing webinars, and pushing products that teach artists how to do SEO. Many artists see it as a path to the promised land of "traffic" and sales. I can see why: for those of us who did business in a world before Google, the idea is enticing... set everything up "correctly" and watch a steady stream of customers come to your site. But, unfortunately, for most artists, that path won't work. [...]

But, by offering something of value that is exclusive to your newsletter, you can convert anonymous blog followers into newsletter subscribers. [...]

Old information is worthless information. And even worse, you just might alarm your fans into thinking you've checked out. Let'em know you're still working this gig. [...]

What has happened is a learning curve on my part, because the more I have listened, the more I have learned from people who articulate themselves well, generously share their knowledge at the level I can grasp it, and genuinely want to see my project succeed. Each change I make adds knowledge to what I picked up from the project before, as well as customizes our website to meet our marketing, client, business, and personal needs. [...]

Too Much Screen Time – this is the inability to walk by the computer screen (or ignore the phone, for those of you who don’t live in obscure, rural areas where we’re lucky to have electrical poles, much less phone towers) without briefly checking your Facebook or your e-mail or gliding through the Internet on a search for musk ox yarn. [...]

So go ahead, call yourself something kicky and cool – The Staggering Stegosaurus Studio – but somewhere, make sure you add your name, a very important part of you, to your brand. [...]

I found the process valuable as it made me write down, in one place, a lot of information I had scattered across our blog posts and in my head. Since we don't know how much of the information will be used in the actual article, the interviewer, John Parks, kindly gave me permission to post my answers here even before the article is published. I've cleaned up the raw answers I sent him (there was a deadline) and expanded a bit upon them. I hope you find some useful information in them. [...]