New Website

At the last open studios I became aware that a lot of conversations went like this:

“Do you have a website?”

“Yes, but it’s not that good.”

or “Yes, but it needs to be updated.”

or “Yes, but I’m ashamed of it.”

or “Yes, but it’s terrible.”

To be fair it did need updating and it did look terrible.

But I realised how little sense it made that I was actively turning people away from my website when they wanted to connect and find out more about me.

I get that creatives aren’t always great on the business side of things, but even I could see how foolish I was being!

So immediately after open studios I decided I needed to tackle this problem. Luckily I’d placed the whole of December aside just so I could do non-studio work and my website fit this perfectly.

I started by looking over Fiona Humberstone’s Brand Brilliance and taking notes.

I do have a strange relationship with the word “brand” and the idea - it makes me think of icky big companies, but Fiona’s books are always beautiful to look at so I thought I might find some helpful information.

There is a lot of good info in her book, but there was one thing that I saw that changed everything for me. In the back of the book there was a small section that mentioned creating a wireframe before doing the site.

For the first time ever something really clicked. There was only one image of the wireframe, but I understood it enough to create my own version based on it.

Understanding how to create and use a wireframe made the whole website update process so much easier.

I was able to break down the tasks I needed to do.

It helped me organise the website navigation, photos and content.

When I updated the site I treated my wireframe as a draft. I changed a few bits here and there, but nothing major.

It also meant that when it was time to deal with the tech side of things I wasn’t juggling new tech knowledge with needing to suddenly dig up photos or create new sections.

Then I went live.

Is it perfect? No. Is it better? Yes.

And that’s what’s important.

At the next open studios I won’t be mumbling about my rubbish website.

I’ll proudly share it with people who want to find out more about me and my art. That’s a success in my book!

If you need help figuring out what steps you need to take as an artist running a business, I offer coaching & mentoring where we can cover a variety of topics - included dreaded website updates!