What you put on your website is what helps you build relationships with your customers and convince them to take the action you want: to buy your art. If your website isn’t able to reach this goal, there’s a good chance that your content is to blame.
The best way to determine if your website is effective is a thorough site review. Once you have identified areas for improvement, you can make an action plan to make it run better. Reviewing your website content can seem a bit daunting, but here it is, broken down into eight steps:
Identify The Purpose of Each Page
Start by looking at each page of your website and thinking about what it is for. For example, the purpose of your home page is to help your visitors find the information they need. Likewise, the purpose of your product pages are to get your visitors to want to buy your art.
Once you have identified the purpose of each page, try to look at them with fresh eyes. Are your pages accomplishing their mission? Is there anything you could add (or take away) from the page to make it stronger?
Use Your Analytics To Gain Valuable Insights
If you haven’t already done so, add analytics to your Website. The most noteworthy app to do this is Google Analytics. Once you sign up for an Analytics account, you can get a snippet of code to add to your website. From that point forward, you will have access to a lot of data about your visitors. If you are using WordPress, you can also get analytics from other plugins like Jet Pack.
Once you have analytics installed, take a look at your website’s stats. If you know what each page is for, you can see if people are doing what you want them to do. Are they spending time on your important pages, or bouncing right off? Are they clicking the links you are encouraging? Are previous visitors returning? What search terms are they using to find you and your art?
It’s important to use analytics to find out if people are taking the steps you want them to. It means you need to figure out why and make changes.
Double-Down on Whats Working
The analytics will also let you know which pieces of content are working the best for your business. See which pages people spend the most time on. These are the things that your audience is most interested in, so you should highlight these pages more.
For example, if you notice that people spend the most time on your pages featuring your series of large graphic art within minimal lines, you should write more content around it. Whether it’s posting more of this type of work, or just writing more blog posts about the series you already have available, your audience is interested. Make the most of this and give them more.
Check Your Website Speed
Check your website load times. Remember that your load times will vary on each of the different pages of your website. You can enter your page URL’s into a speed test such as Google Lighthouse or GTMetrix. These sites will tell you how long it takes for your website users to load your pages.
If your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, you are probably losing visitors. Website visitors will not wait long. Not only that, search engines will not send traffic to pages that load slowly.
If you find that your pages are loading slowly, you should optimize your website for speed. Are your image sizes too large? Is your hosting provider slow? Are you using caching or a CDN (content delivery network?) If you are using WordPress, there are many optimizing plugins that you can test.
Make Sure Everything is Up To Date
Everything on your art website should be up to date. Have you participated in any new art shows you should add? Have you committed to any new events in the next year that should be mentioned? Are all of the pieces you sould elsewhere been updated on your website?
As you go through your website review, you might want to make a few small changes and edits in the wording of the text. Keep an eye out for things that aren’t right or aren’t in line with where you are as an artist. Have you changed your thinking on any of your previous blogs? Have you changed any of your policies? Are you ready to take down some old work that no longer best represents you?
Check Out Your Competition
As part of your review, look at some of the websites of some of the other artists that make similar work. Of course, you should not copy from those websites. But ask yourself: Is there something about your competitors’ website that makes it more effective at attracting collectors and making sales? Compare these websites to your own and use these insights to improve your own website.
For example, if you look at another artist’s website, you might see something in the way they write the descriptions of their art on their sales pages. Maybe they do more storytelling. Or maybe they break the text up and it’s easier to read. These are insights that you could test on your own website.
Make an Action Plan
The goal of a website content audit isn’t just to look at how well your site is doing. It’s also to make sure that your site’s content is up to par. After looking at its performance, write down a detailed plan of action.
Decide on what your goals are for your website. What do you need to do to make people more excited about your art?
Calendar to Review Your Website Again Next Year
How often should you do a review of the content that you have? The best thing to do is to look over your site at least once a year, but you can’t do this too often.
