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To create an artist website, decide what you want visitors to do, choose a builder that supports that goal, organize a focused portfolio, and publish only after checking the site on desktop and mobile. A strong starting point is a homepage, portfolio, About page, and clear contact route; add a shop, events, or newsletter only when you can maintain them.

1. Decide what the website needs to do

Choose the main action you want the site to support before you select a template or start uploading images. Your priority might be helping galleries and collectors view your work, attracting an audience, receiving commission inquiries, applying for exhibitions or grants, or selling art. That choice affects what pages and tools belong on the site. Wix’s artist website guide identifies these as common goals.

Write down one primary goal and, if needed, one or two secondary ones. A portfolio built for gallery inquiries needs easy-to-find work, background, and contact information. A site intended to sell work also needs product details and a working checkout. Avoid adding features that you do not expect to keep current.

2. Choose a website builder and domain

Hosted builders such as Wix and Squarespace provide portfolio and gallery tools, but neither is universally best for every artist. Compare them against your workflow and the features your site actually needs. Squarespace describes portfolio pages as a landing page with individual projects, while gallery sections can group images by subject, theme, or series in its portfolio site guidance.

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  • Portfolio organization: Can you group work into projects or series and present images clearly?
  • Editing: Is the editor comfortable for routine updates, and does its design control suit how you want to work?
  • Mobile display: Can you review and adjust how pages and images appear on phones?
  • Contact: Can you add a working contact form, email address, and any newsletter signup you need?
  • Domain and launch: Can you connect a custom domain and make the site public when it is ready?
  • Sales: If you sell directly, does the setup cover product pages, payments, taxes, and shipping?

Pick a domain that is easy to spell and matches the name you use professionally. Check it carefully before sharing it. Current builder prices, plan features, portability, and support terms vary and are not compared here, so verify those details directly with the provider before committing.

3. Plan the pages and navigation

Give visitors a direct route from your identity to your work and a way to contact you. A simple menu can make the site easier to use than a long list of loosely related pages. Wix quotes Adi Huri, Head of Product and Creative Director of Wow!: “Keep in mind that the menu is the map of your website. By adding the right pages to your menu in the right order, it can become the heart of your website’s success.”

Home

Identify yourself and your medium, show a small selection of representative work, and link visitors to the portfolio and contact information.

Portfolio or work

Organize selected pieces into series, projects, or another grouping that makes sense for your practice. Include useful details such as title, date, medium, dimensions, or availability when they help your audience understand or inquire about the work.

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About

Write a concise biography and practice statement. Add a CV or exhibition history if galleries, institutions, or opportunity applications are part of your goal.

Contact

Provide a professional email address or a form that you have tested. Include social links only if they are part of your professional presence.

Optional pages

Add a shop, commissions, events, newsletter, or journal when it supports a clear purpose. Squarespace recommends making it easy for clients or fans to get in touch in its portfolio guidance.

4. Curate and prepare your images

Treat the portfolio as a selection of projects, not an archive of every image you have. Choose work that represents your practice and arrange it so visitors can see how individual pieces relate to a series or project. Check that images are sharp at their displayed size, crop appropriately, and do not take so long to load that the work becomes difficult to browse.

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Review the pages on a phone as well as a desktop screen. A crop that works on a large monitor may cut off important details on a narrow display. Add concise, meaningful alt text that describes relevant visual information for visitors using screen readers. Do not use alt text as a place to repeat search terms. Squarespace explains the accessibility and image-identification role of alt text in its SEO checklist.

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5. Build, review, and publish the site

  1. Create the planned pages and menu. Use straightforward labels such as Home, Work, About, and Contact, then link the pages in a sensible order.
  2. Add the selected work and its context. Group images into projects or series and add details that matter to your intended audience.
  3. Connect the domain and contact route. Check the spelling of the domain, then submit the contact form yourself or test the email route to confirm messages reach the right place.
  4. Review every page on desktop and mobile. Check navigation, image sharpness and cropping, social links, page descriptions, and any buttons or image links.
  5. Test sales features if you have a shop. Before accepting orders, verify product information, payment processing, taxes, shipping, and checkout with a test order.
  6. Publish deliberately. Confirm the public site is not unintentionally hidden or password-protected, then open the live URL and check the main pages again.

Squarespace’s site launch checklist covers publishing, pre-launch checks, and store setup.

6. Make basic search setup part of the build

Help both people and search engines understand each page without treating search visibility as guaranteed. Give pages descriptive titles and headings, use readable URL slugs, write useful page descriptions, and add accurate alt text to meaningful images. Squarespace’s SEO checklist also recommends checking search presence with webmaster tools. If you change a page’s URL later, set up a redirect from the old address so visitors with saved links have a route to the new one.

7. Keep the site current

Update the portfolio when new work changes the picture of your practice, and revise your biography, exhibition information, availability, or contact details when they change. If you use analytics or search tools, review them to learn how visitors find and use the site. When you rename or remove a page, preserve useful old URLs with redirects where possible.

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