skygrazer.com

The last few weeks I’ve been playing around with various ideas for the new look of my website. The first image is a screenshot of my current design. The second image is what I’m imagining the new home page will look like… The subpages will have a much smaller icon of the giraffe at the top.

I think I’m going to remove alot of the old work and really focus on the better stuff I’ve been doing lately. I hadn’t done it earlier because:

• I thought some of the early work might be good reference to anyone starting out
• I haven’t updated much of ANYTHING on the site in the last couple years and hadn’t gotten around to it

So I may review some of the older stuff and if it’s something I think is worth archiving, I may just make a blog post about it. That way it will be saved for posterity (digital posterity anyway), I won’t feel guilty about throwing things away, but it won’t be cluttering up the new and improved version.

I really don’t know where the guilt of throwing away perfectly good stuff - whether it’s physical or web content - comes from but I have an overdose of it… I think most creative people do though. I’m sure that someday I will find a use for all the cool rocks I’ve saved.

Comments on the design are really welcome if anyone has any ideas or suggestions. You may be able to see it live at http://www.skygrazer.com/dev/ but I make no guarentees since I may take it down in the future and I’m in the process of working on it.

Luann’s blog is one of the first I ever read and got me started on this whole blog reading thing… I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, actually Make sure to look at her website and wonderful wall hangings too.

You’ll find poignant and sometimes funny insights on life, art, and the business of art. Take a look at some of her series on booth design and selling at shows.

I’ve already mentioned a post by the BeadNerd before. Lori Greenberg is a glass beadmaker but used to do polymer clay.

In her own words:

I’m Lori Greenberg and I want to help you be successful in your bead business. You will find these pages packed with information from how to create a web site to how to sell at shows, what’s hot in the market and interviews with who’s who in the bead world.

A recent post on Setting Goals… Something I should start thinking about for the year.

Judy Dunn is a polymer clay artist who does both wholesale and retail. She offers business and marketing insights on her blog. I think I’ve also featured an article about her polymer clay cranes before. It ought to be impossible to fold those out of polymer clay but I’ve seen her do it - very carefully.

Check out her great series on wholesale shows if you think you might be interested.

I was losing track of which blogs I had written about so far so I’ve decided to go in the order they’re listed in my reader… Which won’t make any sense to anyone else though since it will be alphabetical by category - except for the ones I haven’t categorized yet.

This is an interesting blog that I’ve just started reading. It discusses art from an investors point of view. Gives you a different viewpoint on the whole art market as well as some resources to check into for selling fine art.

This post was about buying affordable art online and is aimed at investors but would be good to look at as possible venues for artists as well.

The Art Biz Blog is written by Alyson Stanfield and is a great resource for artists on all sorts of marketing and business topics. She also has a podcast and newsletter.

For example she had a good post about whether to write your artist bio or statement in 1st or 3rd person.

Well, the only things I’ve found so far are mentions of not stealing bandwidth for images - which I knew already but I’ll include a couple references below in case anyone isn’t familiar with the concept. Basically, stealing bandwidth is like borrowing someone’s cellphone and calling China for eight hours. Not nice.

From Wardomatic:

About jacking images from other sites for your own posts: this is a no-no. If you want to post an image from someone’s site to mention them (like we do consistantly on Drawn!), grab the image yourself and post it from your own image host. Do not use the image link from the original source’s host because you’re stealing their bandwidth!

And a couple other resources:
Knitblog
About.com

So… I think I may follow standard practice and use images (copied to my own server of course) to link to other sites. But I’ll try to drop the other site an email letting them know and saying that I’ll remove the image immediately if they don’t want to be featured. I don’t think anyone will mind since it will be promotion for them but that will make me feel better about using other peoples’ images, even for the best of reasons.

I’ve been thinking about redoing my website lately and I’ve been web surfing other artists’ websites. I’ve found plenty of really, gorgeous work but not too many websites that are as elegant as the art they display.

Just a few comments:

Keep it simple! The best websites I’ve seen are clean and elegant, without busy backgrounds, 10 different fonts, or bright screaming colors. They are easy to navigate and don’t make me figure out how to do something new. You shouldn’t notice anything other than the art and how well the site coordinates with it. Your photographs should be bright, crisp and clear.

Flash based sites can be done well but it’s rare. No matter how cute your tree branch movie/menu is, most people aren’t going to wait around too long for it to load. And it’s not a good idea to hide the navigation buttons - it may be clever but it can also be frustrating.

And whatever you do, do NOT have music playing when automatically on your webpage. People may not like the same music you do, or they may be surfing during lunch, or just enjoying some quiet time. Unexpected music can be jarring.

It’s also a good idea to answer some simple questions. Who are you, what do you do, what is this polymer clay stuff anyway If you have work for sale, mark it clearly and explain how I can order it. And remember to list the dimensions and materials. I was on one site where I finally found a brief mention in the About the Artist page that the reliefs I liked were cold cast bronze. I was afraid they were plaster (much more fragile). Your visitors usually aren’t going to bother to search for answers - they’ll just go somewhere else.

Now it’s time for me to take my own advice because I know I’m breaking a few of these rules…

I’ll just leave you with a few examples of sites I did like:

http://www.graingermckoy.com/ - Love this one though I’m not usually a fan of splash pages (front page where it only says Enter Here). The work and photogrpahy is incredible and the site coordinates with it wonderfully.

http://bartwalker.com/ - I like the soft colors and how well they coordinated with the paintings. The site is simple to use and it’s very clear where to find things.

http://www.relishinc.com/ - I think I like muted, coordinating colors (*Note to self for redesign*). This isn’t a ground-breaking site, but it’s clean, and clear and there are good photos in the shopping cart. Nice job.

http://www.robertbateman.ca/ - I love this site, and it’s not because of the site itself, although it’s so simple it’s almost minimalist. I love the paintings - and the site is all about the art. The only thing I don’t care for is that the art is organized by exhibitions.

http://rosettasculpture.com/ - Another one I really like although I freely admit I’m biased because I love the sculpture. But that’s how it should be.

I came across this article which seemed related to my previous entry…

It briefly discusess three steps in branding your website - Analyze, Clarify, Strategize. It’s not specifically related to art sites but most of the principles are the same

Nichol from Mossy Creek Designs (Check out her great fossil beads) sent me her link the other day and asked for other suggestions on where to promote her site. It got me thinking about the whole topic again so I thought I’d write about it. Then I’ll have to review the list and see what else I should be doing with my own site

First of all take a look through your site and decide if it’s ready to share. Do you just want people to see your work? If so, do you have nice clear images and some descriptions about each piece? Everybody has to start somewhere (you should see my first site!!) but I see a number of websites where they have three very dark, small images and I really can’t tell what I’m supposed to be looking at.

Are you trying to create an online business and sell your work? Then make sure you have your prices clearly shown, an easy way for people to contact you, an explanation of how to pay, your shipping policies and charges, return policy, etc etc. Make it easy for people to order and get their questions answered or they’ll just wander off.

Your art should be the main focus and decoration for the site. This is something I’m in the process of improving on my own site - it’s been awhile since my last major update and I want to feature some of my newest work more prominently. You don’t need textured backgrounds, lots of clip art, seven different font colors, etc to dress up your site It will just detract from your work. And whatever you do, don’t add music!! This is a real pet peeve of mine - it is so annoying (and potentially embarrassing if you’re surfing at work during lunch) to click on a link then then have music suddenly blaring at you. If you really think that music would add to your site, add a button that people can CHOOSE to click on if they want to listen. If you’re trying to sell your work, then your website shouldn’t be about you and your preferences - it should be about making your customers comfortable and showing them why and how they can purchase your art.

Depending on your target audience, try joining some forums - clay forums such as polymerclaycentral.com or pcp on Yahoo, beading and jewelry forums, etc - Be a contributing member and always keep your web address in your signature on all your posts and emails. Don’t be pushy, but if you want people to visit, a friendly “Here’s my site, tell me what you think” post is usually ok. (Look through the old posts and forum policies to make sure first)

Whatever you do, don’t join any of those link exchanges with websites which are nothing but pages and pages of links. They try to tell you that exchanging links with them will improve your search engine ranking but you’re much more likely to be hurt by it. You’re better off doing searches for individual sites with content that is related to your own. Take a look at their links page and see if your site would fit, then send them a personal email and ask politely if you can exchange links. DON’T try to submit your polymer clay link to someone who only links to deep sea fishing sites or abstract metal sculpture I get quite alot of link requests for foreign hotels and casinos - I just delete their emails.

If you want to do some more reading on search engines, keywords, and online business check out http://tools.devshed.com/. They have numerous helpful articles you can browse through.

This is a good forum on the whole business of art and craft - it’s
worth reading through the past posts and then asking for suggestions:
The Switchboards