The key to being successful in the creative industry is a good art website. If you want to establish your personal brand as an artist, you need to build a solid web presence. Having an online portfolio to represent your brand and your talent on the internet is a good way to get started.
The good news is that you don’t really need to learn web programming and development to build an art portfolio website. All you need is a reliable and ideally, free art website builder so you don’t have to shell out money to start your site. This is great if you’re a new professional, fresh out of school and you can’t afford paid subscriptions and your own custom domain just yet. But once your career takes off and you start taking in more clients and projects, you will want to scale up to accommodate the increase in traffic.
Strikingly knows how challenging it can be for startups and upcoming creatives to break into a market dominated by big brands. This is why our platform was built to support aspiring talents who want to make a name for themselves through free art blog or art gallery website builders and integrated tools for creating awesome content.
If you’re looking for inspiration, here are a few of the best art portfolio websites on Strikingly and some tips to remember when making your own portfolio website.
1. Be Yourself
It may sound counterintuitive that we provide you with design inspirations when our first advice is to be yourself and let your unique personality shine through in your portfolio web design. But it’s really important that your free art portfolio website shows off who you are and what you are capable of doing. Work at creating a unique website instead of copying off a style from another artist because it looks good.
Scarfig Arts is a good example of an art portfolio website that uses custom design elements such as a personalized logo to make the space stand out. The artist kept the site design simple and minimalist to let his colorful work pop.
2. Make it easy for visitors to contact you
Your site should make it clear how clients can get in touch with you. Your homepage should contain your contact details or a custom contact form where people can send messages for inquiries. You can add a quick link to the contact page as part of your top menu items or add a call to action on your header banner like what Sasha & Lulu Atelier did on their art website.
Alternatively, you can also add a live chat feature to your website to keep your audience engaged and get valuable leads. With the Strikingly app, get notified if a new visitor sends you a message so you can also respond in real time.
3. Don’t forget an elevator pitch
They say it only takes a few seconds for a user to decide whether or not to stay on a website. Upon landing on your page, people have to get a good idea what the page is about, what you can do and how your art can rock their world.
BotJoy is a good example in this case. The art gallery website leads with a headline about what it does and its aspirations along with a banner image that shows a sample of the kind of art it does. Give your visitors a sense of what to expect on your website to let them know they have landed on the right place.
4. Your best and most current work comes first
While it might be tempting to add all your projects into your website, we recommend selecting a handful of your best ones to showcase on your art portfolio. If you have upcoming gallery exhibitions or events, you want to make sure that you highlight this in your website. Hannah Campion immediately lets people know of her most recent projects and exhibits to keep visitors up to date.
5. Break your portfolio into sections
If you specialize in different areas or you want to target multiple niches, you can also break your portfolio into categories so users can easily find what they are looking for. Art of Hagan did just that by creating top menu items out of the different types of artistic fields that he has worked in.
