Caroline Barker Art

Caroline’s previous website used a custom built platform especially designed for artists. However the person who built and ran this service has decided to retire, so Caroline needed alternative arrangements. She and her husband were able to update content and add new “galleries” of artwork easily and they were wanted to ensure that they’d be able to continue to do this just as easily.

WordPress

Prior to the meeting I put together a very simple WordPress site and demonstrated how to update pages and add images. They decided they’d be able to manage this and asked to go ahead.

Together we discussed what features the site would need. An easy to use image gallery was the most important factor and whilst Caroline wants to sell her artwork, she didn’t want to have an e-commerce aspect to the website. She likes to have personal contact with all her customers, so we decided that anyone wishing to buy something needs to send her a message via a simple contact form and copies of this form would be positioned throughout the site to maximise opportunities for sales.

A New Logo

Caroline had never had a logo as such before, so she also asked me to create one. One of her favourite pieces is that of a single puffin standing on some rocks and she asked if I could incorporate this somehow. I extracted the puffin itself from the background and used the orange from his beak, together with a very dark grey to create “brand” colours. I produced two versions of this logo, one that has her website URL on it, which she can put on the back of her greeting cards and leaflets etc if she wishes, and another that has a strapline instead.

Image Galleries

Kadence, my favourite WordPress page builder, comes with its own gallery blocks and whilst I find them easy to set up and use, I wanted to see if there was something that would be easier for someone with no experience to use. I spent some time trialling various WordPress gallery plugins and in the end settled on FooGallery. Using FooGallery didn’t require Caroline to start creating new pages and dropping shortcodes on to them, to display individual albums or galleries, nor would she have to worry about linking to them from the menu system. It is just a matter of uploading her images into the plugin management section and the plugin takes care of everything else.

Newsletters

Overtime Caroline has collected the email address of her customers but never really done anything with them. So I set up a MailerLite account for her to start sending newsletters to them. She can now tell these previous customers and artlovers when she releases new artwork and when she has exhibitions etc.

Summary

You can see from the images below how her site has been transformed. Whilst maintaining an air of simplicity, the new site is lighter and brighter, more personal and images of her artwork are larger and more attractive.

The speed with which Caroline sent me content and feedback enabled us to launch this site just a week after getting started.

You can read more about my Website in a Week service here.