Do you think a social media account is enough to run your art business? Think again!
In this episode of Art Crush, hosts Fi Marks and Paula Telizyn dive deep into why every professional artist needs a dedicated website—and why relying solely on Instagram or TikTok could be putting your art business at risk.
In this episode, we cover:
- How a professional website builds trust and justifies higher price points for your artwork.
- Why depending on social media algorithms (and sudden AI bans) leaves your business vulnerable.
- The pros and cons of WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix for artists.
- How to structure your home page to turn cold visitors into paying collectors and art retreat attendees.
- Simple Search Engine Optimization tips to help buyers find your art on Google.
Whether you’re building your first website or looking to audit an existing one, learn how to turn your online portfolio into a 24/7 sales engine for your art business.
🎧 New episodes of Art Crush drop every Saturday! Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe.
00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to Art crush with artists Fi Marks and Paula Telizyn, where we talk about running an art business, being an artist, being a woman who’s an artist and more.
00:00:23 Speaker 1: Hello, Fi.
00:00:25 Speaker 2: Hi, Paula. today’s topic is something very close to Paula’s heart. And I know because until I knew Paula, I probably wouldn’t have understood or, known about this, but it’s actually about Why do artists need a website? Because I know there’s plenty of artists out there who don’t bother because it costs, or they’ll get a friend to just knock something up or they’ll knock something up on Wix. and then they’ll be like, I’ve got one, I’ve got one and walk away. And they’re just a little bit like a calling card. If anybody happens to, trip over them on their search for certain things. I thought it was quite important to actually Help you guys out there and help artists understand a why you need a website, but not just why you need one. That’s not the fait accompli. Actually, how do you use your website to make sales and improve your business? we are so fortunate because another string to Paula’s bow is that she does run a website making company, with the other member of the fifty one percent. but we’re not just here to do a big advert. Sorry, Paula, but we are actually here to discuss. Why should I get one? So, Paula, why why on earth I’m an artist. Why do I need a website?
00:02:12 Speaker 1: So there’s a few reasons for needing a website. number one, it adds legitimacy Because any yahoo can start up a social media account, plunk some art on it, and say it’s for sale. But if you want to sell art at and above certain price points, if you want to assure your potential buyers that you are legitimate, having a website adds that legitimacy because they take time and money to make. As you so rightly said, even if you are getting the most basic website, they take time to make. If you are getting something that isn’t basic and free and whatever, then you are also spending some money. So it shows that you are invested in your business. So legitimacy is the number one reason why you would have a website. The other reason you would have a website is to do work for you. Your website is your shopfront. It’s your calling card. it’s how you show up in searches. It’s where you send people. It basically does a lot of work for you. It’s also the place where you own the data. So on social media, we know that you can lose your account at any time for any reason, especially now that companies are using AI to determine if your posts are legitimate or not, and then they shut your count down just like that if they decide. And typically it’s wrong. Um, a couple of months ago, there was a huge spurt of, um, meta accounts. So Instagram and Facebook being banned because the AI decided that users were promoting child abuse in the worst form possible. So these people who weren’t doing that would have their accounts banned. They would go to Reddit and go, how do I get my account back? Because this is wrong. And so we have these bursts of bans. But when you own a website, it’s really hard to take a website down. Hosting companies don’t do that unless you are violating their terms of use. And an artist wouldn’t be violating terms of use. You’re not selling weapons or drugs or telling people to go and, um, leave this mortal coil. So a website is where you own the data you own. what’s being put out there? You have control over how it looks. so those are sort of the two core reasons, but one of the things that artists don’t understand consistently, because I’ve taught this in programs that I’ve run in the past, is how a website actually affirms your pricing. what I mean is when you go to a high end website, let’s say you go to like the Rolex watch website, for example, you go there. It’s very swanky. The photos are really nice. The website’s clean, the fonts are consistent. Everything’s laid out. When they say Rolex watches. I don’t know how much it is, to be honest, but let’s say it’s thirty thousand pounds. You look at the website, which is swanky, you look at the price of the watch and you go, those two line up. They’re clearly a company that invests in their website and their marketing and their photography, and it all lines up. I don’t feel so bad about paying whatever amount it is thirty thousand pounds, twenty thousand pounds, whatever, right? If Rolex just went to a free website platform, so it says free on a banner on the bottom. And they threw a couple of photos up and a couple of lines of text and went by our thirty zero zero zero pound watch, you’d go like, no, absolutely not. So the website affirms the pricing because you position your art and yourself as an artist as being worthy of that pricing through things that most people who are visiting your website aren’t consciously aware of, but are taking in.
00:06:00 Speaker 2: one of the things that Paula, when she mentors you gets you to do is actually go and find a luxury website to look at other websites. Now, if you look, as I have at many artists websites, I have to say, and please prove me wrong, if anybody manages to do that, you struggle to find a luxury artist’s website. They don’t feel like they are luxury goods and even gallery websites. So you might think, oh, it’s okay because I sell everything through a gallery. They deal with all of that. But even if you go on gallery websites, very few of them are high end and make you feel like you are buying Something special. we’ve talked about making your buyer feel special. Well, if you have actually spent time building a website and making it feel as Paula said, like your shop front, this is where I am positioning my art. You can tell by the website you might struggle. And I’m not saying this is just artists. There are a lot of people because we don’t understand. A lot of artists don’t understand because they might never have had a website before. If you’ve run a business, you might have had a website before. But until I became a professional artist, I’d never had a website before. So Paula, could you just break down for somebody like me if they go, okay, I understand now why I need a website. What is the process they need to go through in order to get this a website that is working and viable, and they don’t know anything about websites. What do they need to do?
00:08:02 Speaker 1: Well, the number one thing is decide what they want their website to do for them. because usually people go, I need a website, build it. And then afterwards think, well, it’s not doing anything for me because they haven’t done that pre work. So before you even decide what we call it CMS. So it’s content management system, but we can say platform. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Before we decide which platform you want to be on, you should be deciding what your website’s going to do for you. So is it going to be a calling card just to showcase maybe some of your portfolio? And this is how you contact the artist. Is it going to be a storefront? So you’re going to sell your work through it? is it going to be specifically maybe, just to log your work? So it’s going to be an archive of your career as an artist. These are three examples. I’m sure there’s other things you can do with a website as an artist, but typically when I work with artists, even just to consult and walk them through the process, it’s storefront or calling card is typically what artists aim for. So you have to decide what you want your website to do for you
00:09:10 Speaker 2: Can I just ask one question, Paula? because I’m aware that, often not all, but often artists run, uh, sort of like side hustles, like they do lessons or one to ones or art retreats or workshops. Would you recommend having everything on one website, or would you encourage people to run those strands of their art business separately?
00:09:44 Speaker 1: One website? as long as they’re related. So if you’re an artist who is also, I don’t know, an auto mechanic, probably you need two websites. But if you are an artist who teaches art, or you’re an artist who runs retreats or whatever, those elements feed on each other, right? if you’re saying, come and join my art retreat, you’ll learn a lot. Then you want people to see that you are legitimately an artist, a professional, and an expert. So you want those two things together. But one of the areas that everyone trips up on, and I’m not just talking artists, I’m talking in general because I’ve worked with, other small and medium sized businesses for websites is they don’t understand that the website isn’t about them. It’s not about their business. It’s not about them. It’s actually about the visitor. The potential client, the person who comes and maybe finds them by accident doesn’t know a thing about them. It’s about guiding them through a process. So this is why before you do anything technical, you have to decide what you want your website to do. So if somebody comes to your website and you’re an artist who has retreats, so you want to sell your art, you want to sell your retreats, which questions are your visitors who don’t know anything about you? So they’re cold, they don’t know anything about you. What do they need to know in order to maybe convert to being interested, to wanting to learn more, to feeling comfortable about you so your home page would immediately want to guide them through. If you’d like to buy the art, click here. This is the kind of art I make. if you want to go on retreats and learn whatever click here kind of thing, you have to understand what people are thinking potentially when they come to your website. So before you even pick your platform, you’re deciding what your visitor needs to feel like. They can trust you. So when we’re marketing the premise and basic premise of marketing, you’ve probably heard this before. Maybe you haven’t. It’s know, like, and trust. So you want your cold visitor who doesn’t know anything about you to get to know you. You want them to get to like you, which means that you need to talk about yourself as an artist with the intention of letting them see who you are authentically, and you want them to trust you. And your website, in its quest to build your legitimacy, also builds trust, you want to guide them through to do the thing that your website is supposed to do. So inform, sell, educate, whatever it is that you want your website to do.
00:12:15 Speaker 2: Great. So I’ve now decided about what I want my website to do. I want my website to be a shop I wanted to sell my art. I want to sell my prints on there. and I want to advertise my weekly workshop that I run in the community. I’ve decided that’s what I want to do. What do I need to do next?
00:12:44 Speaker 1: Well, next you need to decide how technically skilled you are because there are different levels of website demands, when it comes to choosing your platform. if we look at Shopify, which is very popular, it’s also expensive to run. It’s a little bit challenging to set up, but once you set it up, it just goes right. They take care of the security, they take care of, all the little issues that, you know, other website platforms may have. I am not promoting Shopify. by the way, I’m fully aware of the political views of the owners. And so I would personally never support them. But that’s just me. Shopify can be challenging to set up at first, but once it’s done, you can just motor along and just go. They do take a cut of your sales, but a lot of platforms will plus the payment processor will you can also look at other platforms. So there’s like square, there’s, Wix, there’s squarespace, different company, there’s WordPress. I’ve made websites on all the platforms, but I specialize in WordPress. So for somebody who’s willing and able to learn a WordPress website is the most flexible. And the reason for it is, is because you can take it anywhere. So let’s say you’re hosting with, an internet company, website company, and you decide you don’t like their policies or they’ve doubled their prices or whatever, you could take your WordPress website and find somebody else. You don’t have to rebuild. You can’t take your Shopify website and go anywhere else because only Shopify hosts Shopify. You can’t take your squarespace website and go anywhere else. You’re stuck. Right? It’s the same thing with all these AI website builders. Now, it may feel very affordable to buy an AI website, but what they’re producing is a website that cannot easily be changed. So they’re producing websites that are basic HTML pages, which means that they are not changeable. They don’t work with a back end. You can’t just upload new photos and go, here we go. Easy peasy. it’s an AI website that is not flexible. And then you have a monthly fee. So if you choose to go with an AI website with a lower upfront cost, which may be an issue, calculate over five years how much you’re actually paying for it. When you pay for a WordPress website, you’re paying a developer and a designer to create it for you. You do have an upfront cost, but your monthlies are very, very low and they can stay low for years. So there’s different things you can do with your website, but it really depends on how technical you are and how much you’re willing to learn or your budget. And are you able to maybe have somebody who looks at your website monthly for a small fee and takes care of things for you? So a lot of that depends.
00:15:44 Speaker 2: I think this is where a lot of people fall down because they’re going for the cheapest option. And as we know, you pay for what you get. we’re not saying go for the most expensive option, but, you know, shop around. And so I’ve decided as I did that I am not going to build my own website and I want somebody to do that and I want somebody to, maintain it, but I want to be able to upload stuff myself. I want access to it so that I can put new work up there, new, workshops. So how do I, as an artist, what is the difference for people thinking? Well, I’m an artist. I want like a specialized art website. So would you suggest, Paula, you go to somebody who has done art websites before, understands the needs of artists or would you say, no, it’s fine. Just find somebody who is really good at building websites.
00:16:56 Speaker 1: It depends. And I know that that’s very vague, but the reality is that, yes, in a lot of ways, websites are websites because marketing is marketing. What you want to go with is somebody who has a track record of creating websites that don’t all look the same. That understand the strategy behind what’s going on. So we can roll back to any yahoo with some technical skill can make a website. But do they understand the buyer’s journey? Do they understand the sales funnel? Do they understand how to position content so that it’s readable rather than just huge chunks of text? I’m working with a client right now, and I looked at the portfolio of the previous website designer that they had, and all of that person’s work looks the same. It’s all very blocky, basic, whatever. They were slapping together information on a structure, and there’s no pizzazz to it. There’s no consideration to the buyer’s journey or anything. So, I mean, it’s no wonder they picked me and Jela to do their new website because it just. The previous one had no structure, no nothing at all, no strategy. so it’s important to look at the portfolio of the person. It’s important to look at, if they link out to the websites that they’ve done to check to see if those websites have changed. Because sometimes people are unhappy and they go somewhere else and get a new website, but the previous person still linking out. So it’s, it’s worth doing your due diligence. It’s worth having a conversation with them, asking them about the process book in a call. Most companies will give you a free thirty minute call, whether it’s on Zoom or on the phone or whatever, and talk to them and explain what you’re looking for and see if they give you advice and see if you feel like you can work together. See if you feel comfortable with the process. this is kind of like an area where You need to do some research. A website, especially if you haven’t had one before, requires a lot of footwork before you even get to the point. I would strongly advise, because there’s quite a few companies out there that specialize in artist websites, and these are the template kind, where they say like, you know, if you pay whatever amount per month, you get five listings for sale and you get a portfolio and whatever, I would avoid those. Any company that says that you have to limit your listings, otherwise you have to increase your subscription is predatory. that’s why I didn’t really talk about them in our previous question and answer, but I just wanted to say that it’s critical. There’s quite a few out there that say they specialize in artists. And then you look at their subscription fees and they are very predatory. So just pay attention to that. but yeah, it’s it, I would look for an agency rather than a teenager who is upfront with their pricing and clearly explains the strategy. So maybe they have case studies on their website. Maybe they go into What’s behind the tech and explain some of the stuff, even if you don’t fully understand it. If they’re making the effort, it’s probably worth reaching out.
00:20:18 Speaker 2: Fantastic. Yeah. Does the website designer have to come from the same country as you? Does it make any difference if the website designers are in a different country? Can they still manage it from another country?
00:20:35 Speaker 1: Yeah, they absolutely can. I work with clients in Canada and the UK and Australia with no issues at all. I’m used to working in different time zones, so it’s perfectly fine. the one thing I would say is that it’s really hard if there’s an issue with your website designer to enforce contracts internationally. So yes, you can go after somebody in your local country very easily, but internationally it’s a little bit harder. So if you’re going to work with somebody, make sure that they have a track record of being ethical, of finishing projects, of happy clients, all of that to ensure that you’re protecting yourself Due diligence is important, right? Yeah.
00:21:20 Speaker 2: That’s right. Do your due diligence. Right. I’m just going to ask you to end this episode, which has been so informative. So thank you. Paula, Could you tell me the bit? We’ve got our website up and running. Looks amazing. We’ve sent the link to all our friends and family and they’ve gone. Wow. Love it. Dah dah dah dah dah. What do I do to Make my website work for me day in, day out. How often do I need to go on it? What do I need to do in order to make my website work for me and promote my business?
00:22:06 Speaker 1: So there’s a couple of things that you need to do depending on the website platform you’re on. How you do it will be different, but you need to do SEO. So SEO is called search engine optimization, which means that you need to tell the search engines what is on your website and make them understand when your website should show up in searches. So that means filling in information about your website. in SEO we would say V marks artist, East Midlands, Derbyshire, UK, England location, sort of information. And then we would say things about her art in the SEO. So we would say figurative art, feminist art, um, naive art, modern art. Well, naive is, is B’s art doesn’t have a genre. We find closer genres. It’s really hard to pigeonhole. Right. So we would also say, um historical art, stories of women, stories of literature, you know, things like that. We would put all of that in the SEO. So the things that people might be searching for would show up, in the SEO so that the search engines can go, okay, this website is one that I should feature as an answer. So that’s the one thing you can do. And depending on your website platform, it’s easy or a little bit more complicated, but it’s just words and you can constantly tweak and change them. The other thing you need to do is, share your website on social media. And in order to share new things, you need to have a blog of some kind or adding new content regularly. And you share that content on social media. You need to have an email newsletter, which we’re not going to talk about in detail here, but you need to get people who come to your website to sign up so that you can send them emails regularly and bring them back to the website, ideally for sales or events or whatever. So you’re doing things to bring people from elsewhere to your corner of the internet. If you think about it like a wheel, all the spokes lead to the hub and the hub is your website. And that’s where you get people to know, like, and trust you, where they give you their information because they want to stay informed, where they can buy your work and where they can learn more, and perhaps even see one of your shows or events in person if you do that kind of thing. So it’s a constant talking about it. And you may feel like, well, I talked about my website last week on social media. That’s enough. Your audience will only see about twenty five percent of what you post. So you need to talk about it to you’re sick to death of it and get people over into your email list where you’re more likely to get people to open those emails and read more outside of the algorithm. So you’ve got to constantly promote it. It’s not just make it and hope for the best and leave it alone like the set it and forget it kind of thing. You are constantly inviting people to come and have an experience, hopefully a good experience on your website with your art.
00:25:20 Speaker 2: But I just like to add, it’s not too onerous as well, because I know that’s what puts a lot of artists off, is they think, I haven’t got time to be faffing around with my website. Doo doo doo doo doo. And we have talked about actually allocating time for your business that is not at the easel or at the pottery wheel or whatever your art is. so as part of perhaps your admin day, your admin morning on that allocation of time, that is when you go on your website, have a check through. Also add new products. That’s it. And if you’re doing that on a weekly basis, you’re fine. You do not need to spend hours and hours and hours on it. And I think that’s the thing that people think of websites as something that need demands, hours and hours of work because they’ve seen people sitting at computers all day, every day and they think, well, I’m not doing that. And that’s absolutely fine. It’s a misnomer. It’s about your business. It’s not about spending time on the computer.
00:26:36 Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of people like to look busy. so they stretch out stuff and they exaggerate how busy they are. And then they start believing that they’re very busy. I think one of the things I want to add too, is if you choose to work with a website designer, slash developer to make your website, ask them whether you will have the ability to update your own website. It’s one of the things I do, and I’ve done this since the nineteen nineties. Don’t do the math. for my clients is empower them. when I finish a website, when Jela and I finish a website, we do actual recorded training. So our clients understand what they can do on their websites by themselves. They have ownership over their business asset, which is what your website is. It’s a valuable business asset. So ask when you are interviewing people who are potentially going to work on your website, will you have the training? Will you have the support? Will you have the access to your website so that you can take control over it? Or will you have to pay every time you want to add a blog post? And especially with the AI websites, which are hot garbage. Ask the same questions or look in the frequently asked questions on their websites. Do you have the ability to update and add content easily and without extra cost? That’s really important because a website is part of your business assets the same way your art is a business asset, the same way your email list, the subscribers are a business asset. You need to make sure that you have control over it, that you know where it’s hosted, that you have the ability to make decisions, you know where the domain is bought, all of that. I realize I said a lot of complicated things, but the main issue is will you be able to update your website and do you understand where it is and can you take it and leave if you need to?
00:28:31 Speaker 2: I’d just like to add, if any of you out there either, perhaps you are thinking about getting website, you don’t have one yet or you are thinking, my website isn’t working for me. I need to have, someone look it and do an audit and how it can be improved. Do I need to make another one? Got any questions at all? Put them in the comments below. I have to say I won’t get back to you on this one, but Paula will and she can certainly arrange to have a chat with you if you’ve got any questions about websites, art websites, selling your art online.
00:29:10 Speaker 1: we do free website audits for, potential clients and we do free calls as well. So if you do have questions, even if you choose to go elsewhere, because I don’t do high pressure sales, that’s fine, but definitely feel free to reach out. And this wraps up this episode of Art crush with us. New episodes come out every Friday UK time. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, audible, Amazon, and wherever your favorite podcast platforms are. Don’t forget to like and subscribe and share with the artists in your life. We’ll see you in the next one.
00:29:50 Speaker 3: Bye.
