Search Engine Optimization

Poking around the internet a lot, as I am wont to do, means that I look at a heck of a lot of artist's websites and in my meanderings round the corners of cybespace I have found that there are some issues that come up again and again. Without wanting to be overdramatic, I would say that there are a core of common mistakes, all of which have the potential to seriously damage if not kill the possibility of selling any art on the websites that make them. So here in no particular order are my top 6 sales killing artists website mistakes. Check your site to see if you have any of these issues, and if you do, sort 'em out quick to ensure you are in the best possible position to sell art online. {warning. I may get ever so slightly ranty in this post as I get so frustrated at the amount of sites and artists scuppering their own chances of success when their work is great. Don't let it happen to you.} 1 } Hidden prices give us "The Fear" There is nothing more guaranteed to prevent a sale than looking for a price and seeing “price list available on application”. It brings out in us all "the fear" of going into an expensive shop and dealing with a snotty assistant who assumes we can't afford it and looks at us like we crawled from under a hedge. Most people {especially us Brits} would rather pull our eyes out with spoons than ask the price. If you are happy with your price structure you should be happy to show people the price. Make it clear on your site so that people don't have to hunt for it. How does it kill sales? People will just not contact you for the price out of embarrasment in case they have to make an "Ummm, Oh yes that's fine but I think I have just strangely changed my mind" kind of excuse. Just tell them. 2 } Muzak Putting music on your site is really offputting to a visitor as the chances of them liking the same music as you are VERY slim. Then it just annoys them whilst they scrabble around to find a mute button. Even worse, if you haven't included a mute button they will harbour feelings of deep and steaming resentment towards you that you inflicted Richard Clayderman on them at 6am when they were having a quiet surf and woke up their sleeping husband so he got grumpy at them [or maybe that's just me]. How does it kill sales? As well as the aformentioned deep and steaming resentment build up prejudicing sales, music also stops people having a sneaky look at your site at work. 3 } Splash screen lunacy A splash page is a web page placed at the front of a site that contains a big image or an introductory flash animation, possibly of artwork swishing in and whizzing round. They were popular about 10 years ago but can still be seen on some sites. I did think they were dying out but just this morning got a link to an artists newly launched site which had one. Splash pages annoy and frustrate visitors [Have you ever watched an animated one through without clicking “skip intro”?] and confuse search engines, even if they are static by putting an extra, unnecessary and empty page between them and the content. It can make the site unusable on smartphones and just generally gets in the way. How does it kill sales? Splash screens frustrate the viewer before they even get to consider buying your work, driving them away from your site and off to look at other artists work. See this post Artists Websites and the Attack of the Toddler Brainz to see why. 4 } Google adsense chaos. A site cluttered up with advertising. It's quite common to find a site where the work is lost amongst columns of Adsense ads [little text ads from Google] as well as flashing banner ads taking up half the space of the site. As these ads will be related to art [Google places ads relevant to your content] it can be hard to see where the ads end and the art begins. Its very off-putting to users if your pages consist of large chunks of advertising. Its also very difficult for you to make money this way unless you have a very popular site with thousands of visits and constantly updated content. You won't just get free money for cluttering your page up with a few ads. For most artist it's better to concentrate on selling your work rather than advertising space. How does it kill sales? The advertising devalues your work making your site look more "bargain basement" than "Saatchi Gallery" This makes visitors far less likely to want to part with good money to buy your art. 5 } The anti-Zen. An imbalance between form and function. The best websites keep a good balance between looking good and functioning well. A site that does either at the expense of the other will perform poorly. We have all come across them. The beautiful sites that take ages to load and then crash your machine or the extremely functional sites that look terrible. Good website design should balance both elements to create a harmonious whole. [Ooh, I have come over all zen!}. How does it kill sales? An imbalance either way can prevent sales. Too much form can mean a deficit on the technical side and issues with the user having difficulty with the purchasing process. Too much function and you can devalue your artwork by placing it in an unnatractive setting {back to the "bargain basement" again}. 6 } Weird Navigation involving fairies Visitors to your site just want to be able to view your work easily and quickly. They don't want to play a game where they have to discover an invisible hovering fairy on the page and then chase it around the screen until a menu unfolds out of its tiny wings {I have actually seen this navigation, I'm not making it up!} At this point they will have gone off to have a cup of tea and a lie down in a darkened room. Just make it as easy as possible for them to get around the site and find out more about you and your work. Don't make them have to work for the information. How does it kill sales? Going back to the Toddler Brainz post, people have the attention spans of 3 year olds on the web. By the time they have found the hidden fairy menu they will have wandered off to do something else, thereby not even looking at your work for sale. Just make it easy for them to find it and then they have more chance of buying it. So there are my top six sales killers. Removing any of them from your site should definately mean an improvement in your results and a general improvement in the user experience of your visitors. Do you agree that these are killers? Has removing any of them improved the performance of your site? Do you have any more killers that annoy you? Please share your comments below.