Building Your Artistic Website

Being someone who has had one foot in the arts and one foot in web development for a few years now, I have come to recognize some of the pitfalls that artists fall into when making their web page. Included here is some advice for artists who have a website but do not have giant pocketbooks to pay big design firms to develop Hollywood-level websites.

The first thing that I want to stress is that form follows function on the web--which is something that is very hard for artists to understand. I've known many artists over time that are so picky about the presentation of their art coming across at a level that is inappropriate for the internet--in the end they shoot themselves in the foot.

For example, you don't need to have print-quality graphics on your web page. Of course you want your work to look nice--or else no one is going to think your art is worth looking at! But, on the other hand, you cannot expect visitors to wait five minutes while each page downloads.

Many artists think that a web page is simply a web page, and that one is as good as the next. But for those of use who make a living building pages, we try to live by a few simple rules. One of those is the Eight Second Rule--if your page hasn't loaded the bulk of its content in eight seconds, you've lost a visitor. For well-known artists, this may not be that big of a concern, since fans will take the time to download work they know that they want; unfortunately, most artists are not well-known--and getting a new fan may mean putting forth some effort to accommodate.

One way to optimize the download of your web pages it to use graphics sparingly, and to reuse the same graphic file whenever possible. For example, use the same file for your logo in all of your pages--don't have a new logo for each page! You can also shrink images with image editing software like Corel PHOTO-PAINT and Jasc Paint Shop Pro, and Adobe Photoshop.

One very common mistake I see when browsing artist websites is converting an entire page to one big graphic. While there may be moments when this is acceptable, I would only recommend using this technique very rarely. If you have to use a background image, refer to it in the style sheet of your web page rather than converting the whole page into one image (or a bunch of chopped up images). The one-image-web-page is usually generated from graphic design software that happens to have a web page exporter.

Another big mistake that artists tend to make is creating an Introduction page, also known as a Splash page. Examples include pages that have a Flash Animation to introduce you to what you are about to see and a link to skip intro. Other examples are an image of artwork saying to click the image and "Enter Here".

While this may seem harmless enough, it is the absolute worst thing you can do for your main page other than putting nothing there at all. Splash pages are, in effect, only appropriate for national bands, movies, and other projects that have a lot of promotion going on in other mediums; for a small website, a splash page destroys a site's value in the eyes of search engines. There are many reasons for this; the main point is that your main page should be used to tell visitors and search engines how to get around your site and what all is there to find. Flash-heavy and text-sparse front pages will not get much notice from search engines. And let's face it, unless you have a really talented Flash programmer helping you design your page, your introduction becomes pointless--no one wants to wait twenty seconds to see a few words fly up to say, "Welcome, come on in"?

Now you can still use Flash in your site effectively, but, like your graphics, it should be used sparingly.

Links are another consideration that many artist web pages fall short on. Now some artists, trying to get fancy with their designs, try to jazz up their pages with JavaScript, Java and/or Flash; while that is fine--do not use JavaScript, Java or Flash for menus or site links unless you really know a lot about web development. JavaScript and other scripting languages are great for adding flavor to your pages--but the functions of scripting languages are ignored by search engine crawlers. This means that if all of your links are JavaScript functions that send users from page to page on user clicks, you are really shooting yourself in the foot: search engines like Google will only see pages that it can get to without the scripted links. If you want to make a scripted menu system, be sure to either build it on top of HTML links or mirror the menu with another HTML link system that search engine crawlers can find.

While artists may feel that function should follow form with art, such is not true in the case of presenting art via the medium of the web. All artists want to impress potential fans with the quality of their work--but the best art in the world is going to fail to maximize its audience on the web if it isn't easy to find in searches and then easy to see once someone finds it. This isn?t to say that form is to be ignored--but it has to be fit into the context of the current state-of-the-arts in contemporary internet technology. I know not everyone is a web designer, but if you're going to build a website and intend to make it a thriving part of your presence in the arts, you ought to take the time to build a site that gets the best results and is designed to get traffic--then let your creative prowess reel in the fans.