Every artist should have their own website. That’s an absolute necessity. It’s easy to build a website for your art—no coding skills required. But more importantly, what pages should an artist website have? This post is not going to repeat you the obvious; that you’ll need a home page and a contact. In this post, you’ll learn about 5 must-have pages every artist website should have, but that usually no one tells you about!
You’re about to build a website for your art and want to know what pages an artist website should have? Well, then you are in the right place!
However, in this post, I’m not going to repeat the obvious. I’m not going to write a thousand words to tell you what you already know—like this blog here or that blog there.
In particular, I’m not going to tell you that your artist website needs a:
- Home page
- Contact page
- About page (with your artist statement)
- Portfolio / gallery page
- Shop page
- Blog page
Because, I think, you already know that, don’t you? Plus, have you ever seen a website without a home page? Have you ever seen an artist who forgets to show off their portfolio? Well, I haven’t.
Besides, a shop page and a blog page are automatically generated once you open an online shop or start a blog. That’s always the case, whether you make an artist website with WordPress or use any of the other website builders for artists.
The blog page that’s automatically generated for my WordPress blog is this one here. You would have to be hand-coding your website to not get those pages out of the box! (ᴖ‿ᴖ)
With that out of the way, let’s talk about what really matters and what’s probably not so obvious.
In this post, I'm showing you 5 pages that every artist website should have, but that nobody tells you about!
So, let’s get into it!
Should artists have their own website?
If you don’t have an artist website of your own yet, then it’s about time to create one!
All artists should have their own website, for a number of reasons. It's one of the best and most important things you can do for your art career.
Why? Because it can be fatal to solely rely on social media to promote your art. In fact, my recent experience with Instagram is a good example that social media can kill your art career—without you even knowing it…
But even if you have only made good experiences with social media so far, you must know that those platforms have first and foremost their own interests in mind. They change their algorithms and community rules to their own benefit. If they don’t deem your art appropriate anymore or if you don’t post in a way that pleases the updated algorithm, you can lose traction really quickly.
This is just one example. There are many other reasons why you should make a website for your art.
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What website should I use as an artist?
An artist should have a website that allows them to easily showcase their portfolio, speak about their art and present themselves as the artist.
Then, as your reach grows, you should be able to add more functionality, for instance, to open an online store to sell your art. Also, if you want to start an art blog, your website should offer enough scalability to do so!
Ideally, the website you use as an artist allows you to begin with a free plan—or at least a free trial.
Building a website isn’t hard. You don’t need any coding skills at all. Here’s a great selection of easy-to-use website builders for artists that either have a free plan or allow you to get started with a free trial to test the waters. Feel free to check them out if you haven’t created a website for your art yet!
What pages should an artist website have?
Now, let’s come to the heart of this post: what pages should an artist website have?
As I already mentioned above, I'm going to reveal to you 5 pages that no one tells you about, but that your artist website should absolutely have!
Having these 5 pages on your website will help you attract a larger audience, grow your email list, increase conversions, and ultimately earn more money through your website.
So, here we go:
1. Landing Page
First off, let’s make one thing clear: your home page is not your landing page. Even though some blogs try to make you believe that landing page is just another word for home page—because it’s the page people “land on” when searching for you on the web— these are two totally different things.
Your home page is the main page of your website. The one that comes up when people just type in your domain name—and nothing else.
A landing page, on the other hand, is an online marketing tool that is used for lead generation.
In other words, the purpose of a landing page is to convert visitors into prospects that either buy something from you or help your business grow in another way. For example, by signing up to your email list.
That being said, a landing page either offers visitors something for sale or incentivizes them to subscribe to your email list by offering them something for free—a so-called lead magnet.
- Get the Best Lead Magnet Ideas for Artists in a FREE PDF
The landing page is a single page on your website that can be found under a specific URL (different from your home page URL).
Obviously, you can find my home page at ginangiela.com. The art business startup checklist, for example, that I offer my audience as a free download can be found at ginangiela.com/free-art-business-startup-checklist/.
Here are some more examples of landing pages from my website:
- Photoshop Blend Modes Cheat Sheet | FREE PDF Download
- Using A Graphic Tablet With Photoshop | FREE Download
The landing page is what comes up in the search results when people type in, for example, “free art business startup checklist.”
When someone comes across your landing page, chances are you can convert them into a subscriber and hopefully into a returning visitor in the long term!
2. "Work With Me" Page
Just like you shouldn’t miss out on having an About Me and a Contact page, you should have a Work With Me page.
So, what’s a “Work With Me” page for?
A Work With Me page is specifically designed for potential collaborations, meaning companies, brands, sponsors and other people you might be able to work with.
Before a company offers you a sponsored post, for example, they want to know exactly who they are working with. A Work With Me page is a great opportunity show them what you are about. You can describe the main topics of your blog, your mission statement, and in what partnerships and collaborations you are interested in.
Many creators include a so-called media kit in their Work With Me page. The media kit provides information about your website audience and statistics. For example, gender and age of your visitors, where they come from, what they are interested in the most on your website, etc. You can get these data from Google Analytics.
Other things you can include in your media kit are the number of your email subscribers, social media statistics, or testimonials.
Having a Work With Me page will increase your chances of attracting companies to work with. In like manner, you can also use it to approach brands you are interesting in collaborating with.
You can have a look at my Work With Me page here to get an idea of what it can look like.
3. "Linktree" Page
You probably already know a Linktree page from platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and others. Linktree is actually the name of the company that provides these customizable “link-in-bio” pages for social media networks.
However, once you have your own website, you don’t need any third-party solution to create such a page. You can create it yourself, and you have the greatest creative freedom in designing your Linktree page that you can possibly imagine!
But why do you actually need a “Linktree” page, if you have your own website?
Well, a “Linktree” page holds multiple benefits. First of all, you can provide people who don’t know you yet with a concise overview of your art and of who you are as the artist.
Sending your followers directly to your Home page can quickly become overwhelming and they might lose interest before even taking a closer look.
A "Linktree" page shows them everything in bite-size portions, without overloading them with too much information all at once.
They can pick what they want to discover about you first. Do they want to read your blog? Do they want to visit your shop? Maybe they want to connect with you across other social media networks. Or stay in touch by signing up to your newsletter.
A “Linktree” page makes it easy for your audience to choose their priorities.
Another benefit of creating your own “Linktree” page is that you are not reliant on third-party integrations. For example, you can present and sell products the way you already do in your shop—including your personal branding. You don’t need to worry about incompatible payment gateways, plugins, and so on.
Of course, you can also offer some of your lead magnets on your Lintree page to collect your visitors’ email addresses. Likewise, you can include tip jars or donation links.
Last but not least, as your website is linked to Google Analytics, you will get all the powerful insights to know what your followers are engaging with!
To get an idea of how to design your “Linktree” page, you can have a look at mine here.
4. Freebie Page
Having a landing page with a free lead magnet on your website is already great. But I recommend you also create something like a free resource library for your audience.
Not everyone might be exactly looking for what you offer on your landing page.
That means that some people might not even come across that page and know that you provide valuable resources for free. In return, you might fall short in converting people interested in your art to email subscribers. It’s a loss-loss for everyone.
To not let that happen to you, it’s a good idea to link to a “Freebie” page directly in your main menu. People usually don’t overlook what’s directly in the top menu, so everyone has the chance to benefit from your free offerings—and you have the opportunity to grow your email list even more quickly!
Make sure to give a short description of what’s available in your freebie library. People are more willing to sign up if they know what’s on offer and whether they’ll need it or not.
You can inform your visitors in form of a bullet list or show them some images of the freebies available. Here’s how I do it on my Freebie Library page.
5. Sitemap
The last page an artist website should have is a sitemap. I’m not talking about a sitemap for search engines that’s automatically being generated for websites you create with WordPress or one of the website builders for artists.
I’m talking about a sitemap for your actual human visitors.
Why do you need a sitemap, if you already have all those other pages your artist website should have?
Well, look at it this way: as your website grows, your visitors might find it hard to sift through all the content and sort out what’s interesting for them. When you have 20+ blog post archive pages, who can possibly look through all of them?
The same holds true when you have a lot of products in your store or lots of items in your portfolio.
A sitemap can help visitors find specific pages. It can help them navigate through your website, providing them with an overview of your site’s content at a single glance.
You can organize your sitemap in different ways. For example, you can group all your portfolio pages together, your shop products, your blog posts, and so on. You can list the items alphabetically or chronologically according to the date published.
You do not necessarily have to link the sitemap in the main menu. A link in the footer menu of your website is totally enough to help your visitors access that little discovery aid!
Thank you for sharing this post. It is very helpful. I have been rebuilding my website with another host. I am a mixed media artist. This helps me move forward as far as what I really need for basic pages. Thanks a million!
Hi Sharon, it’s great to hear that the post was helpful (:
With what platform are you building your artist site now? Let me know if you need any help or have further questions!