Asheville Artist Website
Case Study
Carol Fetty was wrapping up a year-long painting class and launching her second career as a professional artist when she contacted me about building her a website to showcase and sell her work.
Objectives
The objective of this website is to display and sell Carol’s work, make her more visible to local galleries and art collectors, and communicate her values as an artist using the Shopify website builder so she can update the site herself in the long run.
Target Audience
Art Galleries in Western North Carolina
Art Collectors and lovers world wide
Design Thinking
Branding
Carol is an emerging artist and had no prior branding efforts before the creation of this website. A style guide was created based on the questionnaire. Carol chose the color palette and left the rest up to me. I chose fonts that reflected her sophisticated yet warm personality and work. Her logo was her idea, simply her signature with her tag line, a common logo concept for artists. Large hero images of her work do all of the heavy lifting on the landing page, immediately visually introducing Carol’s paintings. Carol chose the quote on the homepage as a way to introduce the value of her work and immediately lead users to click the view original paintings button. The gratitude symbol was added at the bottom of the home page in an aesthetic effort to show viewers who she is. All copywriting was done with a friendly conversational tone and an inviting informational voice using keywords to optimize all copy for SEO.
UX
Upon landing on the website users immediately see Carol’s work and are giving the option to view more via a CTA. The goal is to make all user goals achievable within two clicks.
Just below the fold Carol herself is introduced next, a CTA allows the user to learn more about the artist. Users who buy art are often sold based on their personal perceived connection with the artist, so it was important to immediately provide more about Carol and draw connections between her and her target audience.
Next Mixed Media Paintings are featured in a carousel, which is a description for her entire body of work, and if the user makes it past this section without clicking, they will be given another opportunity to connect with Carol by learning about the inspiration behind her work and will be led to another opportunity to view her work via the view portraiture collection button.
At the end of each page of expected content, the user is directed to click to another page leading them to spend more time on the website and reduce bounce rate. A contact form is in the footer of each page so it can’t be missed. For whatever reason Shopify doesn’t allow social media buttons to open in a new page, so I custom coded this functionality so the user isn’t directed off Carol’s site when viewing her socials.
Navigational buttons are consistently light blue and communication buttons are yellow on a dark blue to create maximum contrast so the user’s eye is drawn to them.
Navigation is kept as simple as possible- Home, About, and Originals with a drop down sub menu of three categories of paintings so users can find exactly what they are looking for in two clicks or less every time.
Accessibility standards were met and double checked with the help of accessibe.com.
Design and Development Process
This project began with a consultation with Carol in order to learn about her goals and get a sense of her personality so I could translate it into a website. Research on the websites of contemporary artists selling online and Carol’s favorite artist’s websites was conducted.
Carol was given a questionnaire so I could get a sense of her desired functionality, target audience, develop a persona, and a style guide based on her developing brand identity.
The Shopify website builder was chosen because Carol has the long term goal of maintaining her website herself, and wanted access to user-friendly e-commerce tools. A simple logo was created with Adobe Fresco and Illustrator.
I did keyword research and collected images and “about me” copy content from Carol. I optimized the images for the web with Photoshop in order to maintain fast loading times. I did the copy-writing for the home page sections. Using the titles of her work, I developed the product listings optimized for SEO, I continue to write SEO optimized listing copy for Carol as she produces new work, she values the outside interpretation of her work.
Once the design was complete, the site underwent user testing.
The biggest challenge of this website build was working within the confines of Shopify’s free theme templates. I used custom code to enhance the design and add the contact form to the footer but felt stifled by the limitations of the website builder. Still, I would recommend Shopify to anyone with a large inventory of products because of the available e-commerce data and low overhead. I also found the platform to be user friendly.
Carol’s website ranks second in Google behind her Facebook page when her name is searched. Since her website launch she has sold multiple paintings and been invited to feature in a local gallery in Asheville.
Key Features and Functionality
Local SEO optimized painting listings
Social Media Integration
Clear UX
Testimonial
“Working with Natalie has been a great experience. Not only is she incredibly creative and artistic, she goes above and beyond when it comes to service and responsiveness. She has been quick and efficient in responding to my texts and emails during the entire process of designing my website. Her suggestions and ideas have been well-founded and I trusted every decision. My new website exceeds my expectations. I couldn’t be happier. ” -Carol Fetty
