Tara Reed suggests - and it makes great sense to me - that when offering an art licensing website, you stick to art licensing and put nothing else in that particular website. In other words, if you want to sell your products yourself in a non-licensing manner, don't put that information into your art licensing website.
Marilyn MacGregor has stuck to licensing, and done it beautifully. Take a look at her website - www.mmacgregordesign.com while I tell you why I not only think that this is a tremendous sample website, but why I removed pages from my own and streamlined it using some of the ideas from her outline - e.g., showing the icons that make up the pattern, and showing the pattern as well.
- Clean layout - Not a lot of extraneous wording, and not a lot of information on each page. Easy and quick to scroll through - quick is good when you're wanting busy potential licensees to take a look at your website. You've got about 2 seconds for a viewer to decide it's too much trouble to invest time in looking at you; so, quick is good.
- Use of images - Marilyn did something that I think is brilliant: she shows four single images, and then shows the pattern she made from using them. This shows the viewer that she (a) understands how licensing works - that licensees are looking for patterns as well as single images, (b) that she is flexible - able to replace one image with another to create an entirely different pattern, and (c) that show knows how to do patterns. (If you have drop patterns and half-drops, it would be good to include those as well.)
- Themes - She has different themes, so that the viewer doesn't have to wade through other types of themes that don't interest them, in order to find the one that they are looking for.
I know she inspired me reorganize and redesign my own, and as a result my website has really increased the professionalism of its look, reflecting self-confidence, capability and style. Thanks, Marilyn!
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