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Tip #1 -- 3-Click Rule:

You know when you make a call to the phone company and you get a recorded operator: “For service in English press 1...” and then you are faced with a myriad of options until eventually you mutter to yourself, “To speak with a real human, what do I press?”  When you’re looking for the answer to something, whether it’s through a phone call or on a website, you want to find what you’re looking for quickly and easily. This is why I suggest the “3-Click Rule” for navigation on your website.

Any visitor to your website should be able to get to where they want to be in 3 clicks or less.  Any more, and you risk losing your potential customers due to frustration.  It’s not just about the actual click of a mouse that’s the problem.  It’s the time spent as each pages loads. It’s frustrating to choose a page, watch it slowly load, only to find out that you have to go to still another page to get to where you want to be.  So how do you avoid this? 

On each page, offer as many navigation choices as possible.  For instance, if a visitor wants to view your art, specifically your landscapes in oil paintings, don’t force the visitor to first click on “About my Paintings”, then “View My Paintings”, then “Oil Paintings”, then “Landscapes”. A better choice would have been to have separate buttons on the home page “About My Paintings”, “View My Oil Paintings”, then on the next page “Landscapes”.  That reduces the clicks from four to two. Your visitors find what they’re looking for quickly and easily, and they’re not frustrated.

Now if only we can convince the phone company to do the same.

Tip #2 -- Solving Problems

What Problem does my website solve? When it really comes down to it, no one really cares about the fact that you have a website. Visitors come to your website with a problem with hopes that your website will solve that problem. Problems vary from person to person. Your job is to create a website that will solve as many problems as possible. Do visitors want to buy your paintings? Then you need to give them as much information as possible about your paintings (size, medium, price, shipping & handling, etc). Are visitors interested in you as an artist? Then you need to give them information in your artist's statement and biography.

Questions you need to ask yourself include:
· why am I making a website? to display my art? to sell my art? to promote my art?
· what kind of people am I hoping to attract to my website? who are my visitors?
· what are they looking for in my website? why are they visiting my website?
· have I given them the answers they are searching for?

Plan your website around the answers to these questions. Don't make a website for the sake of having a website. It should solve a problem for your visitors.