Art Website Suggestions

I have been reviewing several websites that artists have been
submitting to me for review and I have some suggestions in
general for everyone reading this.

Consider not having a flash video on your opening page. I use
broadband to connect to the internet and still have to wait
almost forty seconds for a full flash video to load. Now that
may not sound like a long time, but for someone visiting your
site for the first time…if they wait, they’re gone. I went to
look at the submitted sites so I waited for the videos to load,
but visitors may not. This is probably something your web
designer suggested you to have but from a marketing point of
view it gives people reason to leave.

Most of the sites that I went to had no method for capturing
visitors names and e-mails. This is what we do immediately when
someone visits my site in order to have the opportunity to
market to them in the future. They may not be interested in
buying something today but by keeping in touch with your
visitors they may buy in the future. Consider having a guestbook
where people could sign in at your site and in return give them
some images of your work that they could download for
“wallpaper” for their computer. This not only gives them a
reason to give you their name and e-mail but keeps your art in
front of them when they work on their computer. The images you
give could have your name and contact information on the bottom
of the image to keep your contact info in front of them.

Following up on my last comment you are probably saying that you
offer a newsletter to people who leave their e-mail. I would
suggest you “sell” the newsletter signup with the items I
mentioned in number 2 above. Furthermore, capture their name.
When I send out my e-mails it is thru an auto responder. If you
are not familiar with what that is…it is an automatic e-mail
that takes information that people give (name, e-mail, etc.) and
plugs it into e-mail template being sent out. I have thousands
of people in my database, I would never be able to send out each
and every e-mail one at a time to everyone who signs up for my
course. By being able to send out an e-mail that is personalized
to your visitor will keep you in their consciousness.

These are just but a couple of suggestions that I have for you.
I am going to recommend you to take a look at either my complete
advance course at the link below or if you like I will be
breaking out a special section on “Selling Your Art Online” from
the course within the next week. That section will be available
in a downloadable format and is extremely thorough on strategies
to make your website profitable. I will be e-mailing my entire
list when this section is available. The advance course has this
section and 26 other sections. I hope the points I made above
help you.