3 Art Website Upgrades Serious Artists Need to Know

Keeping an art website operating well is mandatory for the serious artist. Art website upgrades are important to understand due to technological changes, website security issues and changes in search engine optimization (SEO).

Artists need to have not only a well-designed website, but one that can be easily found by search engines and is secure to anyone who visits the website.

At a minimum, an artist’s website should provide the viewer with a sample of the artist’s art, an overview of their experience, an opportunity for a viewer to purchase their art, and their contact information.

Though an art website is the beginning of the selling process, a poorly designed or ineffective website can prevent a prospect from investigating that artist’s work further.

Here are 3 Art Website Upgrades to help an artist “adjust” and maintain a professional looking website:

1. Install an SSL Certificate: An SSL Certificate installed on an art website is essential for any viewer’s security and also for the owner of the website’s overall page ranking.

Just what is an SSL Certificate? An SSL Certificate automatically encrypts files of an organization’s details. When an SSL Certificate is installed on a web server, it activates a padlock and the https protocol, which then provides a secure connection from a web server to a web browser. When installed, the website URL will change from http:// to https:// and in the web browser you will see a padlock icon and word the Secure, in the color green.

***Look for the padlock showing you that the browser connection to the server is secure. If there is no padlock or the symbol is broken, the site is not using SSL.

Anyone who is searching for or visiting a URL that has an SSL Certificate is assured that the site that they are visiting is safe and their information is protected. Banks, financial institutions and social media networks that have SSL Certificates installed on their websites offer their users safe and secure transactions.

An SSL Certificate will also help with an artist’s overall page rank, as a “Secure” website is now part of Google’s ranking algorithm when they crawl and index your site and rank your art website’s pages. This art website upgrade can be done through your web host and is important to consider.

2. Image Optimization: Art websites should contain good content that is searchable and the website’s graphics and images should each contain a Meta description.

When a website is crawled by the search engines, they cannot “see” an image. The search engines will index an image based on the image’s description. A well written Meta description is the only way that a search engine can “see” your images.

Many webmasters/and or artists do not take the time write a Meta description or they ignore this aspect when they upload an image to their website.

Images and graphics, when loaded to a website, with complete Meta descriptions will show in the image search section of search engines.

3. Website Speed: Webmasters/and or artists should resize all of their images on their art website to a resolution of 72 and the image should be no more than 10 inches in width. Images resized to these specifications will not have a loss of quality. Larger images will only slow the website’s loading time.

There are 2 important reasons why image size is important; 1. A viewer will not wait for a web page to load. 2. A slow loading web page(s) will hurt the page ranking.

The loading “Speed” of a website is part of Google’s ranking algorithm when they crawl a site and rank the website’s pages. Here is a test page that Google provides for free in order to test your website’s speed. Google also provides “fixes” and tips in order to help with your website’s speed.

Today any artist who wants to sell their art on their own must have a website that is easy find, easy to navigate and that loads quickly and keep up with art website upgrades. If a visitor to an artist’s website requires too many “clicks”, loads slowly, or is difficult to navigate, the artist will lose that visitor and a potential sale of their art.

(You might want to discover > HOW TO START AN ART BLOG OR WEBSITE IN 15 MINUTES OR LESS).

Guest author: John R. Math is the Gallery Director of the Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery.  The gallery conducts monthly themed online art competitions and art exhibitions for new and emerging artists on a worldwide basis. It is the gallery’s intention to help today’s artists to successfully market their art to a worldwide audience.  The art gallery website can be viewed here: https.//www.lightspacetime.art.