Are you still wondering whether you need a website for your artwork? Be assured, every artist should have a website because social media networks and art sharing sites are not enough. Creating your own artist website doesn’t need to be difficult. In this post, you’ll find the most important 10 reasons why you should make a website for your art and the TOP 10 website builders for portfolio websites and web stores! Read on to learn more…
Making a website for your art is the most effective way to get your creations out there seen, market them, grow your audience, and sell products and services.
Have you already taken the step and launched your own artist website or are you still asking yourself, ‘Should I make a website for my art?’ If the latter is the case, then this is the right post for you!
In this article, we are going to delve into why an artist should have a website and I am going to give you 10 good reasons why you should make a website for your art – today!
If you find it intimidating to build your own website, I am also going to suggest website builders for artists that make it super-easy to design your site – whether you just want to showcase your portfolio or launch a store to sell your art.
Top 3 Platforms to Make a Website for Your Art
Squarespace offers the overall best website builder for artists because it’s super-easy to use, highly scalable, and comes with lots of beautiful website templates specifically geared towards visual creatives.
Simvoly is another favorite that is easy to use and highly versatile in terms of functionality. There is a wide range of premade templates for art and photography and you can learn to set up everything through Simvoly’s Academy.
Pixpa is a budget-friendly option that focuses specifically on artists. The functional and appealing templates come with client galleries, image compression tools, the option to add meta data to images, and much more what artists need.
If you are primarily interested in the best builders to make a website for your art, click here to fast forward to that section!
Everyone else just read on to learn more about why having your own artist website is important… ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
Should an artist have a website?
Back in the day, the only possibility to discover artists was by going to galleries or buying art magazines.
Nowadays, you can find awesome art in so many places on the internet! There’s no longer the need for a middleman – such as a gallery or a magazine – that suggests artwork to you. You can discover great artists at first hand, just by visiting social media networks, online art platforms, or the artists’ personal websites.
This allows a lot of artist to create a level of exposure that was previously unthinkable. And many are able to build pretty successful art businesses.
Related: → How To Start A Digital Art Business (w/ FREE Art Business Startup Checklist
How is that possible?
Very simple. If you have an online presence, your art can be found, shared, liked or ‘pinned’ and there’s a manifold higher chance to get eyeballs on your work. Especially a blog post has the potential to go viral and attract thousands of visitors within a short period of time – when you properly optimize it for SEO.
SEO stands for search engine optimization and means organizing your articles in a way that they rank high in the search results. You do that by using the right keywords in titles, headings, and throughout the text.
That’s one of the main reasons why an artist should have a website, along with a blog. Whether you are a digital or traditional artist, photographer, poet, writer or even a music artist, you should make your own artist website – rather sooner than later!
I have a couple of tutorials that help you create a successful art blog, if you’re interested:
Do I need a website for my artwork?
Why social media networks and art sharing website are not enough
There are many social media networks and art sharing websites where you can upload your art. It’s definitely a good idea to use social media, art sharing sites (like DeviantArt, Behance, Fine Art America, etc.) or specific digital art platforms like ArtStation.
You can promote your art, connect with like-minded people, gain feedback from other artists, grow as an artist and grow your audience.
However, these sites should never replace your own artist website. They should rather be part of your marketing strategy and help you drive traffic to your own website.
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Should I make a website for my art?
If you are not yet convinced that you need a website for your artwork, here are 10 important reasons why you should make a website for your art!
10 Reasons why you should make a website for your art
REASON #1. You decide how you want to present your art and yourself as the artist.
You have your very personal art style and preferences and your own artist website can reflect that. Social media platforms and art sharing websites only let you present your work within very limited boundaries.
When making a website for your art, you can choose the design of your website and customize it completely to your liking.
Your personal website gives you the freedom to showcase your art and present yourself as the artist exactly the way you want.
REASON #2. Your own artist website fully belongs to you.
When you make a website for your art, you do not only have full control over the design, but you are also the sole owner.
Your social media profiles and accounts on art sharing websites don’t belong to you. Those sites may become outdated or disappear. It already happened. Just think of MySpace, Snapchat, and Shadowness (a former art sharing platform). Once the site disappears, your content and your followers are lost forever.
Your own artist website is an online presence that you’ll never lose. Plus, it’s also the first thing that comes up when someone searches for you online.
REASON #3. Your artist website helps you create a sense of professionalism and a branding.
Every company has their own website. Just imagine: you see a product that you are interested in on Instagram or Facebook. As you are trying to get more information about the product and the company that’s selling it, you find out that the company doesn’t have a website. How trustworthy would you consider that company?
The same goes for you as an artist – especially if you want to sell your work. Businesses need a website to be taken seriously, and having an artist website will help you create a sense of professionalism and trustworthiness.
It also allows you to build your artist brand by having your personal domain and logo that people will remember.
REASON #4. You have a place to freely speak about your art.
When people see artwork they like, they do not only want to contemplate the piece but also find out more about the meaning behind it.
Your own artist website is a place where you can freely communicate your thoughts behind a particular work of art. You can speak about what inspired you to create it, the creation process itself, and the meaning behind the work.
You are not limited by space, upload volumes, file types, etc. On the contrary, you can create an entire blog post with work in progress shots, timelapse videos, pictures that inspired you, and so on.
REASON #5. You can have your own domain name.
As I mentioned above, an artist website is your chance to create brand awareness. Your artist name should also be your domain name, or if not possible, at least be included in your domain name.
This will help people remember you and also find you easily when searching the web.
Some of the website builders we are going to talk about later on in this post allow to get a domain name for free. However, this will usually be something like “www.wix.yourartistname.com.” You should absolutely avoid domains where your artist name is only the subdomain of another website. Why?
First of all, such domains don’t rank as high in Google’s search results as unique domain names. And secondly, they are way harder to remember for your audience!
REASON #6. You don’t want distracting ads or other artists’ work around your art.
When you share your art on social media or art sharing sites, your artwork never gets the full attention of the viewers.
Because, either, there are third-party ads that distract the viewers from solely focusing on your pieces. Or, you will have to compete with other artists for the viewers’ attention. Either way, your artwork is never fully in the limelight. (Free website builders also place their ads on your website; that’s another reason to avoid them.)
Your own artist website, however, allows you to channel people towards your creations — and your creations only. That means the viewers will have the opportunity to peacefully contemplate your art and make their purchase decision.
REASON #7. You control how you make money and you don’t need to share your profit.
If you make a website for your art and include an online shop, you can sell your artwork and services directly from your site. And the best thing – you don’t need to share your profit with anyone!
You have full control over what you sell and how you price your items. You can sell fine art prints, downloadable images with a license agreement, printables, or other downloads like Photoshop resources.
Should I put prices on my art website?
Yes, absolutely. If people are interested in a piece of yours but they cannot see how much it costs, they will most likely leave your site. Because most potential customers are reluctant to ask the artist for prices. They prefer to shop around quietly, decide whether they can afford an item, and if so, make the purchase.
In other words, not putting prices on your art website means lost customers…
REASON #8. You can SEO-optimize your website so that it ranks high in Google.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is impossible on social media platforms and art sharing sites. But you can optimize your own artist website to rank high in Google and other search engines.
Search engines use algorithms to determine how relevant the content of a website is to a given search query. If you have your blog posts optimized for certain keywords, your website will appear in the search results.
This will allow you to create more exposure for your art, increase your sales, and grow your audience. A great tool to find out whether your pages and posts are on point is RankMath.
On a scale from red (needs improvement) to green, RankMath shows you how well your content is optimized for search engines. It lets you know what you can do to help your website rank higher and apply best SEO practices.
REASON #9. You can track website traffic and other important data.
To optimize and improve your artist website, you need to know who visits it, when, and where they come from.
Google Analytics and Search Console are free tools that you can connect to your website and that will provide you with free data about your website visitors.
For example, you can see what country they come from, how much time they spend on your website, which pages they visit, and which search query they typed into Google.
If some pages turn out to be less attractive than others, you can improve those pages and drive more traffic to your website.
REASON #10. You can build your own email list.
You can have as many followers on Facebook and Instagram as you want – once the platform decides to change their algorithm, your posts may only reach a small percentage of your total following. And when people delete their social media account, the contact is lost forever.
This cannot happen with your own email list. If you have an email opt-in on your website, fans and followers have the option to subscribe to your newsletter. In return, you can contact your subscribers whenever you like.
People are way less likely to delete or change their email addresses than their social media accounts. Your email list is a safe and long-term way to stay in touch with your audience.
To collect the email addresses of your readers, you’ll need to have an opt-in on your website, for example, from MailerLite, ConvertKit, or AWeber — which of the latter one I’m also using on this website. ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
- The Best Lead Magnet Ideas To Grow Your Email List
What kind of website should an artist have?
Basically, there are two kinds of websites that an artist can have: a mere portfolio website to showcase their art or a website with an integrated web shop to showcase and sell their art.
Depending on whether you wish to simply showcase your work or whether you also intend to make some money from your art, you can choose the kind of website that best suits your needs.
That being said, you can always start with a simple portfolio website and upgrade to an ecommerce website, whenever you decide to also sell your work.
All of the website builders we are going to have a look at below are highly scalable and allow you to upgrade from a simple portfolio website to an artist website that sells — whenever you wish.
We are going to look into the TOP 5 website builders for artists to build a portfolio website and the TOP 5 website builders to sell your artwork.
Overall, Squarespace is the best option for showcasing and selling art because it comes with ecommerce functionality and numerous templates that are specifically designed for artists.
Pixpa, also geared towards artists, is a more affordable alternative to Squarespace with lots of features for visual creatives. Simvoly is another website builder great for both showcasing and selling your work. And for artists who want to sell art on a larger scale, Shopify is the way to go due to its advanced ecommerce features!
But first up, here are the TOP recommendations for artists who want to showcase or sell their art:
Top 5 Website Builders for Artists to Create an Online Portfolio
- Squarespace – Overall best website builder for showcasing art.
- Simvoly – Guided web design approach for both newbies and advanced users.
- Pixpa – Portfolio website builder especially for visual creatives.
- Weebly – Portfolio website builder with great blogging features.
- Wix – Flexible website builder with lots of templates to choose from.
Top 5 Website Builders for Artists to Launch a Web Store
- Squarespace Commerce – Best visual-focused ecommerce website builder.
- Simvoly eCommerce – Budget-friendly plan with the option to add a full-fledged web shop.
- Pixpa eCommerce – Easy-to-activate e-commerce store for your digital art platform.
- Shopify – Advanced ecommerce functionality for larger art stores.
- BigCommerce – Another ecommerce-focused website builder for larger sales volumes.
Top 5 Website Builders for Artists to Create an Online Portfolio
- Focus on visual content
- Lots of templates for artists
- Easy to use even for beginners
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Free trial available
Paid Plans: $16 - $49 / month
Squarespace has by far the best template designs that are specifically geared towards visual creators. That’s why so many photographers, digital artists, illustrators, graphic designers, etc. have their websites hosted with Squarespace.
Squarespace comes with a drag-and-drop website builder that makes it super-easy for anyone to create a website without any coding skills. Squarespace considers design to be ‘the ultimate competitive advantage’. That’s why you can be sure that the templates will put your visuals in the limelight.
Visually stunning Squarespace portfolio templates are Gates, Avenue and Wexley. All you need to do is import one of them with a click of the mouse and start filling it with your own content. And voilà — your art portfolio site is up and running!
While Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan, it offers a free 14-day trial for you to decide whether or not you want to stick with it.
The Personal plan for $16 per month is a great choice for all artists who are just starting their online art platform. You’ll get your custom domain with SSL security and unlimited bandwidth, and everything you need for a new artist website!
→ Read the Full Squarespace Review for Visual Creatives for more.
Website builder with guided approach for both newbies and advanced web artists.
- Guided web design approach
- Ideal for beginners and advanced
- Small learning curve
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Free trial available
Paid Plans: $12 - $149 / month
Simvoly is an ideal website building platform for beginners, because its Academy offers all the tutorials you need to build your website, launch your e-commerce store, and create sales funnels and email marketing campaigns.
Simvoly’s visual drag-and-drop website builder is easy to use, even if you’ve never created a website before, and you won’t need much time getting used to. More advanced web developers can get access to CSS and source code with Simvoly’s White Label plan that will allow you to customize your site down to the T.
Additionally, there are lots of premade templates to choose from that you’ll only need to populate with your own content. In fact, there’s huge library with templates specifically made for artists, photographers, and fashion designers!
All Simvoly plans are ad-free and you’ll get your own domain name and email address. The Personal plan for $12 per month is a good choice to host your personal portfolio website.
But if you haven’t made up your mind yet, you can start with Simvoly’s free trial here, without paying any money or submitting your credit card details!
Portfolio website builder tailored to photographers and other visual creatives.
- Great for visual creatives
- Structured templates ideal for beginners
- Lots of extra portfolio features
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Free trial available
Paid Plans: $4 - $12.50 / month
Pixpa is similar to Squarespace in that it is specifically designed for photographers and other visual artists — but more affordably priced.
Pixpa is the best pick if you want to make a portfolio website for your art because you will get lots of extra features that other website builders don’t offer. This includes client galleries, image compression tools, the option to add meta data to images, and much more.
The templates are not as customizable as Squarespace’s, but this will also help you avoid faux pas in your website design. That can be something especially useful when you are just starting out making a website for your art.
Pixpa focuses on clear and affordable pricing. Their cheapest plan starts at $3.60 per month (billed biannually), which is reasonably priced for budding artists, too. In any case, have the option to test out Pixpa with the free 15-day trial.
A great website builder for artists who also want to run a blog on their website.
- Customizable templates
- Great blogging platform
- Budget-friendly option
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Free plan available
Paid Plans: $10 - $26 / month
Weebly is not specifically tailored to visual artists as are Squarespace and Pixpa. However, the platform offers heaps of templates to choose from. You can be sure to find a design that fits your creative needs.
Once you’ve selected a template, all you need to do is use Weebly’s drag-and-drop editor to populate the template with content.
Weebly is ideal if you are planning to run a blog alongside your art portfolio. It has a great blogging platform with inbuilt SEO features. Additionally, Weebly offers embeddable apps to enhance the functionality of your site, such as an image accordion to display your best artwork, or Printful as a print-on-demand provider to drop-ship your art prints.
Weebly has a free basic plan that you can use as long as you wish. However, it’s rather a good option to try things out. Because if you want to have your own domain name and no ads on your site, you need at least the Professional plan for $12 per month.
- Flexible website templates
- 500+ templates to choose from
- Option to build website from scratch
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Free plan available
Paid Plans: $17 - $159 / month
Wix lets you take a survey to find out about your requirements before you start building your website. It will then suggest template options that are suited to your needs based on your answers.
This can be extremely helpful when choosing a template for your artist website, because Wix comes with more than 900 premade template designs — among them many for art, photography, and illustration.
However, one thing you need to know is that it’s not possible to change templates on Wix. Once you’ve started building your website with a specific template, you’ll need to stick with it. That’s why you should be cautious when experimenting with different designs.
Wix offers a free plan, so you can start building your portfolio website at no cost. However, you won’t get a custom domain and Wix will also display ads on your free site.
To remove the ads and get a custom domain, you’ll at least need the Light plan for $17 per month. If you’d like to add a web store at a later point of time, you’ll have to upgrade to the Core plan for $29 per month — which is more expensive than Shopify’s Basic plan and doesn’t offer advanced ecommerce features.
How to make a website to sell art
Should you make a website for your art that also sells? If you do not only want to showcase your creations, but also allow people to purchase prints and other products, then you should make a website to sell art!
For that purpose, you’ll need a platform that provides you with essential ecommerce features to display products, handle payments, and manage your inventory.
The TOP 5 website builders with ecommerce features that we are going to talk about below can handle these functions without sacrificing the quality of your design!
Top 5 Website Builders for Artists to Launch a Web Store
Best ecommerce website builder for artists to create a visually appealing web shop.
- All essential ecommerce features
- Visual-focused web shop
- Easy-to-use shop builder
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Free trial available
Paid Plans: $23 - $52 / month
Squarespace Commerce lets you launch an art shop as easily as you can create an online portfolio on the platform. Squarespace has ecommerce support included in their Business plan, providing you with all the features you need for your online store.
You don’t need any third-party software to start selling because everything is already built in with Squarespace Commerce – from shopping cart, to payment gateways, to product galleries, to upsells, cross-sells, discount coupons, and so on.
If you want to have more functionality, you can check out Squarespace’s third-party integrations to embed more ecommerce features in your online store. You’ll find addons like Printful (a popular print-on-demand provider for artists) and email opt-ins that help you support your art business. To just name two examples.
Squarespace’s ecommerce plans start with the Business plan for $23 per month. You’ll be able to use PayPal and Stripe as payment gateways with a transaction fee of 3%. When you upgrade to the Basic Commerce plan, you will have no transaction fees.
Budget-friendly ecommerce builder that offers you a full-fledged online shop even on the cheapest plan.
- eCommerce
- Simvoly is a one-stop solution
- Easy-to-use ecommerce features
- Budget-friendly business plan
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Free trial available
Paid Plans: $12 - $149 / month
Simvoly eCommerce is a website builder that’s within the price range of most budding artists. Even the cheapest Simvoly plan lets you add a full-fledged store to your artist site, with some limitations on the number of product listings, though.
However, if you’re just getting started, this might be enough to test the waters. You can create an ecommerce store within minutes, and there’s even an intro video that guides you through each and every step. As your store grows, you can upgrade to one of Simvoly’s higher plans that allow for more product listings.
Simvoly will let you create an online store for free within two weeks, so you can try everything out at zero risk. If you like the platform and want to sell your art with Simvoly, you can start with the Personal plan for $12 per month.
Simvoly’s ecommerce plans offer good value for money, including membership options, customer relationship management, dedicated sales funnels, and email marketing tools.
#3 Pixpa eCommerce
Easy-to-activate e-commerce store for your digital art platform.
- eCommerce
- Integrated e-commerce store
- All essential selling tools
- Free web store trial available
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Free trial available
Paid Plans: $6.75 - $11.25 / month
Pixpa eCommerce makes it easy to add a store to your existing portfolio website. The online store will have the same look as the rest of your online art platform.
As a web artist, you can sell digital items, images, and services, but also physical products, such as prints and print-on-demand products. You can add products to your store, set shipping and tax rates, and connect payment gateways. Pixpa lets you start creating your web shop without paying any money with the 15-day free trial.
When your free trial is over, you’ll need to upgrade to one of Pixpa’s paid plans to send your store live. The cheapest plan for web shops is the Creator plan for $6.75 per month, but you can only sell up to 5 products.
For up to 25 products, there’s the Professional plan for $9 per month. If you have more, the best option for you is the Advanced plan for $11.25 per month (all billed biannually) for an unlimited number of products.
Website builder with advanced ecommerce features for artists who want to sell on a larger scale.
- Advanced ecommerce features
- Beautifully designed templates
- Lots of apps and plugins
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Free trial & discounts available
Paid Plans: $19 - $299 / month
Shopify is a great choice for artists who want to sell lots of different products and who already have a customer base in place. Shopify is not the cheapest among online store website builders, but it has the most advanced ecommerce features.
Shopify comes with beautifully designed templates and a large selection of apps and plugins. These enable you, for example, to sell across different channels, like Amazon, eBay, and social media, and to integrate gallery and product pages.
You even have the option to connect print-on-demand platforms to sell prints and other merch with your art via Printful or Printify.
With its recent changes in pricing structure, Shopify has become a serious competitor to Squarespace Commerce and Simvoly’s ecommerce offerings.
So, if your goal is to focus on an art selling business, Shopify’s advanced ecommerce functionality starting with the Basic plan for $19 per month is definitely worth the money.
Another great website builder specializing in ecommerce to take your art business to the next level.
- Commission-free
- Revenue-based pricing scheme
- For artists with existing customer base
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Free trial available
Paid Plans: $29 - $299 / month
BigCommerce is an ecommerce website builder similar to Shopify. BigCommerce comes with all ecommerce and SEO features you need to take your art business to the next level.
You will get access to common payment gateways, coupon and discount options, and you will be able to sell your products across different platforms. However, you should have an established customer base and sell a large volume of products per month to justify the price.
Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce doesn’t take any commission fees from your profits, so everything you make is yours. BigCommerce’s pricing plans depend on your revenue range. Each plan lets you sell an unlimited number of products.
The Standard plan for $29 per month, for instance, is for businesses that didn’t make more than $50,000 in the previous 12 months.
