127 – Choosing the Best Website Platform for Artists

Laura 0:00
Hey, Nikki, want to hear a joke? How many artists does it take to build a website?

Nikki 0:05
I don’t know, Laura, how many?

Laura 0:07
O ne to create it, and five more to tell them they should have used a different platform?

Nikki 0:13
All right, that’s actually so true. The number of options out there is overwhelming.

Laura 0:19
Absolutely. And with each platform claiming to be the perfect solution, it’s no wonder artists get stuck in the research phase for months.

Nikki 0:27
Choosing the right website platform can feel as overwhelming as picking the perfect paint color. You don’t want to make a mistake and live with regret.

Laura 0:35
In this episode, we’ll compare several of the top website platforms to help you find the best one for your art and business. We’ll talk about what each platform does well and where they fall short.

Nikki 0:46
And by the end of this episode, you’ll hopefully be able to make the decision without resorting to bourbon to calm your nerves. Though it never hurts.

Laura 1:00
Hi. This is Laura Lee Griffin.

Nikki 1:02
And this is Nikki May with the Startist Society, inspiring you to stop getting in your own way and start building an art biz and life that you love.

Laura 1:11
We are artists who believe strongly in the power of community, accountability, following your intuition, taking small actionable steps and breaking down the barriers of fear and procrastination that keep you stuck.

Nikki 1:24
Follow along with us on our creative business journey, as we encourage you on yours.

Laura 1:32
Nikki, as we’ve mentioned before, you and I both use WordPress for our artist websites, and we even use the same theme, Divi, from Elegant Themes. But why does choosing the right platform matter?

Nikki 1:45
Well, like we’ve talked about before, your website is your digital storefront. It’s where people learn about you, see your work, and ideally decide to buy from you or hire you. If it’s messy, outdated or hard to use, people will click away faster than you can say Shopify.

Laura 2:02
We don’t want that the platform you choose affects everything, how your site looks, how it functions, and how much time or money you spend managing it. It’s not just about finding something that works now, it’s about finding something that can grow with your business. So Nikki, how do you choose? What features do you look for?

Nikki 2:21
Well, the first few things to think about are, how comfortable are you with technology? Do you feel comfortable building the website yourself? Do you want to use a platform that’s designed for artists, where all you need to do is upload your images and input your text, or do you want to hire a professional like me to do it all for you so you can spend more of your time in the studio making art. You can also go back and listen to episode 123 where we talk about overcoming your tech fears.

Laura 2:47
Now the next thing to think about is what features you actually need. In our last episode, we gave you a list of all the things every artist website needs and some optional ones to consider. Make sure the platform you choose offers all the features you’ve decided you need in a way that both works well and looks great doing it.

Nikki 3:06
Yeah, think about things like the portfolio options. Will it showcase your work well? Does it have multiple layout options, or do they all look the same? Does it offer e-commerce if you want to sell on your website? Does the platform you’re choosing have that functionality. And can you add print on demand if you want to? And then also think about integrations. Can it connect to tools like email marketing, or does it have it built in? And also analytics?

Laura 3:35
Also consider things like customizations. Can you make it look like you and your art? Or do all of those sites again, the platform look similar? The ease of use – do you need coding skills, or is it just drag and drop? The cost? What’s your budget? Are there any hidden fees? Scalability – can your website grow with you? Or will you need to change platforms if you get wildly successful and offer additional products or services. Support – what help is available if things go wrong? You want to have somebody that you can contact who can help you get out of that.

Nikki 4:08
Yeah, keep all of these things in mind as we talk you through the individual platforms, because each one excels in some areas and flops in others.

Laura 4:16
All right. So first up is the big powerhouse, WordPress. Over 43% of all the websites on the internet are built using WordPress, and for good reason.

Nikki 4:28
It is insanely customizable. You can choose from thousands of themes and plugins to make your site do pretty much anything you want. E-commerce, blogging, portfolios, memberships, you name it. If you can think it up, you can probably build it in WordPress.

Laura 4:43
But with great power comes a steep learning curve. WordPress is not for the tech phobic. Unless you’re tech savvy or you have a designer or developer on speed dial, it can be a bit overwhelming.

Nikki 4:57
And you’ve gotta think about the costs while the WordPress. Platform itself is free, as is WooCommerce, the number one shopping plugin. You’ll still need to pay for hosting, themes if you choose a premium theme and a lot of plugins that you’ll need to do more customizable things, which can really add up.

Laura 5:15
Yeah, Nikki, I do have to say that’s one reason I love Elegant Themes, who make Divi because I bought the lifetime access to Divi. I can’t remember what I paid. It was like, less than $300 or something at the time, and so I only had to pay for it once, and I got all the updates forever.

Nikki 5:32
Yeah, I did exactly the same, and I use it on all of my client websites.

Laura 5:37
Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. So let’s talk about the pros and cons for WordPress.

Nikki 5:42
All right, the pros are – virtually unlimited customization. It’s great for SEO and scalability. And there’s a huge community and a gazillion resources out there for you.

Laura 5:54
Yeah, and I can speak from personal experience that you know. I’ve reached out to people before. This was before I knew you Nikki – and hired them to fix things, and it would be like I could hire somebody to fix something in 20 minutes. It was amazing, because there were so many people available who knew how to use it.

Nikki 6:10
Now what about the cons?

Laura 6:12
All right, so for the cons, it has a pretty steep learning curve. It requires regular maintenance and updates. It’s not sort of a set it and forget it platform, because the usually there are upgrades regularly that happen to it. And then all of the plugins also have to get upgraded, and you have to make sure that they’ve been upgraded so you don’t have any security risks and things like that. The cost can quickly escalate if you want all of the bells and whistles, again, if you’re having a lot of paid plugins, for example. And then sometimes the plugins don’t play well together, and it can require you to find the needle in the haystack. So if WordPress updates and all of a sudden some function isn’t working in your website, you’ve got to figure out why.

Nikki 6:54
Right. But despite all that, it’s still my platform of choice for most types of websites, because of the sheer customization, I can really make it do anything I want it to do, pretty much. But if you’re looking for simplicity with style, Squarespace might be right for you.

Laura 7:12
Yeah, so Squarespace is perfect if you want a beautiful portfolio website without any coding or fancy integrations and a pretty simple shop to sell your work. They have beautiful templates that are designed with creatives in mind.

Nikki 7:25
Yeah, you can definitely make a gorgeous website pretty quickly and easily with Squarespace. The downside, it’s not as powerful for e-commerce, especially if you want to sell a large number of products or need advanced tools and customization, and they take a percentage of each sale on top of credit card processing fees.

Laura 7:45
Yeah, that’s a bummer, whereas in WordPress, I get to keep everything, right, that I sell for my own website, except for the credit card processing fees. Now, the pros of Squarespace are gorgeous templates, easy to use with no coding required, built in tools for SEO at no extra cost and analytics, but I think that’s not on their basic plan. That might be for a higher plan. It’s a managed hosting plan, so your hosting cost is built into their fees. You don’t have to pay some, you know, something extra, to host the website, and you don’t have to worry so much about managing plugins and things like that.

Nikki 8:20
On the other hand, the cons of Squarespace are there’s a limited amount of customization. The e-commerce features are pretty basic, and your monthly fees can add up depending on the functionality you choose and the number of products you sell.

Laura 8:33
Now, if your main focus is E commerce, Shopify is the gold standard as of the end of 2024, Shopify only powers a bit over 4% of all websites, but 27% of all online stores. That’s huge. It’s literally built for commerce with powerful tools for managing inventory, shipping and payment processing. You can do print on demand seamlessly, all kinds of cool things you can do with Shopify.

Nikki 9:01
Yeah, it’s perfect if you’re serious about selling, but it’s overkill if you’re just looking for a portfolio site and maybe a blog. It’s definitely completely shop focused, which is why I plan to keep my WordPress site for my portfolio and design services while I’m building a print on demand shop in Shopify.

Laura 9:19
Nikki, didn’t you say by the end of March you were going to have your Shopify website set up?

Nikki 9:24
Well, initially I said that by holiday time last year I’d have it set up. But, um…

Laura 9:32
How’s that going for you?

Nikki 9:34
You know, I spend way too much of my time figuring out where I’m going to drive this big ass bus, and not enough time working on my new shop.

Laura 9:44
Now, the pros of Shopify are, it’s a best in class e-commerce tool. It’s got all the things built right in. It’s scalable for growing businesses, and it has tons of integrations and apps to expand functionality.

Nikki 9:58
But the cons are, it. has limited portfolio options as that’s not its main focus, higher monthly cost than a lot of other options and a bit of a learning curve for more advanced features. I’ve heard the shipping can be really confusing.

Laura 10:11
Shipping is confusing on any website.

Nikki 10:13
I know. It really is.

Laura 10:17
All right. Another platform that deserves discussion is ShowIt. It’s a drag and drop website builder that combines the ease of use of Squarespace with some of the customization potential of WordPress.

Nikki 10:29
Yeah, the standout feature of show it is its design flexibility. You can create pixel perfect layouts without needing to touch a line of code, which makes it really popular with photographers and designers who want their site to look exactly how they imagine it. I have to admit that although I’ve been tempted, I haven’t tried it myself yet.

Laura 10:47
Yeah, I know, at least in the past, that Jenna Kutcher and Jenna Rainey have both used show at websites, and they are both beautiful. If you go check out their websites, and we can link to those in the show notes, you’ll just see how beautiful those templates look and we’ve been told it really is as easy as drag and drop. It’s also worth noting that show it integrates with WordPress for blogging, so you kind of get the best of both worlds, creative freedom for your design and the power of WordPress for your blog.

Nikki 11:16
But ShowIt is a bit on the pricier side, especially if you add e commerce functionality through plugins like WooCommerce or ShopifyLite.

Laura 11:24
Yeah, it’s definitely more expensive than going the route that we did, which was, you know, WooCommerce and WordPress. So the pros of ShowIt are, it’s incredible design flexibility with no coding required. It integrates seamlessly with WordPress for blogging, although not on the basic plan. It’s great for visual storytelling and for creative businesses.

Nikki 11:47
However, the cons are it’s more expensive than some of the other options, and the price goes up as your audience grows. If you’re not a designer yourself, you’ll likely want to buy a premium theme, which can cost almost as much as hiring a designer in some cases, and e-commerce requires additional plugins, so the learning curve can be fairly steep for advanced designs, and you’ll have to create your responsive layouts yourself, unless you’ve purchased one of those premium themes.

Laura 12:14
Yeah, and also I want to mention that ShowIt ,one of the reasons that it is simpler and easier to use is they do limit the plugins. So even though it sits sort of on a WordPress platform, they only allow you a certain number of plugins, and you can’t go outside of that. So there are restrictions.

Nikki 12:30
It doesn’t give you the full WordPress flexibility.

Laura 12:34
Now, another thing worth mentioning, and we’ll go into in a future episode, I think it would be really good to go into these deeper, but there are also teaching or learning management systems, LMSs or teaching platform sites, and there are a lot of different ones out there. So if that’s your focus and you’re interested in teaching in the future, you could establish a website through Teachable through Podia, there’s another platform called Teachery that both Nikki and I utilize. You can get plugins inside of WordPress. There’s one called Sensei, for example. So there are different, different ways that you can create something where people can purchase a class from you, and then it would have lessons that they could click through, you know, with your videos and your downloadable documents inside of that. So, so there’s definitely room for that as well.

Nikki 13:27
And we’ll talk more about teaching platforms in the future.

Laura 13:30
Yeah. All right. So, so there are a zillion other website builders out there. GoDaddy has one, although you’ve heard what we think about GoDaddy for hosting, so we aren’t likely to recommend their website builder at all. But there’s Wix and Weebly and so many more.

Nikki 13:50
Yeah, a couple of years ago, I would have written them all off equally, but in 2023 Wix came out with a whole new website building platform called Wix Studio, and I have to say, I’ve seen some pretty nice looking websites built with it.

Laura 14:03
Okay, well, it can be good for beginners who want something affordable and easy to use with a drag and drop editor that makes building a website easy, but it’s not as robust as some of the others we’ve mentioned, so it’s definitely better for a very simple website.

Nikki 14:17
Yeah, the pros for Wix are, it’s fairly budget friendly, easy to use, can be good for small portfolios and really basic commerce.

Laura 14:25
While the cons are it has limited scalability and less polished designs than something like Squarespace.

Nikki 14:30
And finally, there’s a category of platform sites that we need to mention. There’s a handful of artist specific platforms that cater to different aspects of your creative business. The first one that I actually played around with a bit at the beginning of my online journey is called Artwork Archive, which is kind of like having a virtual assistant for your art career. You can organize your inventory, track sales you’ve made and exhibitions that you’ve been in, and from your inventory, you can create a public facing portfolio, but it doesn’t have e-commerce built right into it.

Laura 15:09
Okay, so that could be good for fine artists, right?

Nikki 15:13
Yeah, I mean, it’s more of a sort of career managing platform than strictly a website builder, but it’s something interesting to look at if managing a big inventory is something that’s important to you.

Laura 15:28
So you can integrate it with a website built in WordPress or SquareSpace or Wix, so you don’t have to enter so you don’t have to enter your inventory twice. But if you wanted your Artwork Archive portfolio to replace having another website to sell your work on, it’s a bit clunky, right? But I think it requires the customer to send a purchase request, and then you manage the transaction through PayPal. So…

Nikki 15:50
Yeah. So the good things about artwork archive are, it’s great for inventory management. If you’re a fine artist sending work to multiple galleries, for instance, it has built in client and sales tracking. But the cons are, it’s not e-commerce focused at all. It does not have beautiful, highly customizable templates, and it has higher costs for the more advanced plans.

Laura 16:11
There are a couple of website builders for artists that are sales focused. The first one is called FASO – Fine Art Studio online. It was one of the first ones out there, and it’s affordable, easy to set up, and comes with features like email marketing and artist specific tools like collections, events and workshops.

Nikki 16:29
On the downside, the templates look pretty dated, and it has very limited integrations. As you can tell, we’re not really recommending these, but since they’re out there and so many people know about them, we kind of feel like we need to just let you know what’s out there. There’s another one that has much more robust e commerce features. If you sell prints or products and want a website that integrates with print on demand services, Art Storefronts is an option that has a lot of fancy features.

Laura 16:59
Yeah, I think I’ve seen that one on social media before. Art Storefronts. The features are definitely cool. It has a framing and wall preview that allows customers to see how art will look in their space. It has email marketing and social media integration built in. It allows you to create printable art catalogs and offers a countdown timer to increase your sales on holiday discounts that have, you know, has an expiration date on them.

Nikki 17:22
Yeah, so this one is another one that’s kind of kind of a an art career management platform that also lets you have a portfolio and make some sales. But those features come at a pretty high price, between the setup costs and monthly fees. Again, it’s almost as much as hiring a designer, but the sites are very basic and dated looking.

Laura 17:44
Now, there are two more that we’ve heard of that are designed specifically for artists. One is Artspan, which has tools for portfolios, e-commerce and marketing. It’s an all in one solution, and has its own marketplace where customers can discover other artists using the Artspan platform. It’s easy to use and has marketing tools built in, but it has limited design flexibility, and its print on demand options are not very robust.

Nikki 18:07
And the last artist focused platform that we’re going to talk about combines a portfolio, blog and e-commerce functionality, and it’s called Other People’s Pixels. Its main focus is on the portfolio with pretty basic store functionality, but it’s very affordable, but not very customizable, and it does not integrate with email marketing.

Laura 18:26
So Nikki, one last one we want to bring up is an option if you just need to get a portfolio up quickly and you already have an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, and that is Adobe Portfolio. It’s sleek, simple and free with your subscription. So that’s a great way, if you don’t actually have a website, your own website out there, you can create a portfolio website that you can basically direct people to.

Nikki 18:50
Yeah, I think it can be a great interim solution while you’re figuring out what real website you want later down the road. It’s got some beautifully built, responsive designs, but don’t expect to sell anything. It’s strictly for portfolios.

Laura 19:05
It might be a good option for surface designers who are looking to license their designs. So it gives them a portfolio page for art directors to look at.

Nikki 19:14
Yeah, like I said, I think it can be a really good interim step, kind of between just Instagram and a fully built out website.

Laura 19:23
All right, Nikki, that was a lot. I’m sure we’ve left some of you more overwhelmed by the options than you were before. But don’t worry, we have a full breakdown of everything we’ve discussed in a handy, downloadable PDF on our website.

Nikki 19:38
And you can find that in the show notes at startistociety.com/platforms.

Laura 19:42
And if you’re still unsure, start with your goals. If selling products is your main focus, Shopify might be right for you. If you want to focus on your portfolio, but have the option to sell, Squarespace might be better.

Nikki 19:54
And if you want all the options to do all the things and do them well, and you aren’t afraid of tech, WordPress could be your best bet. If you are afraid of tech and you just want a really beautiful portfolio ShowIt might be the way to go.

Laura 20:08
You know, there’s one thing we haven’t touched on yet. What about domain names and emails? No matter which platform you choose, you’ll want your own domain name rather than something like yourname.squarespace.com.

Nikki 20:19
Oh, absolutely, having your own domain name, like nikkimay.com…

Laura 20:23
Or lauraleegriffin.com

Nikki 20:26
Yes, of course. Looks so much more professional than a free subdomain. Most of these platforms let you either buy a domain through them or connect one that you’ve purchased somewhere else.

Laura 20:36
I personally buy all of my domain names from namecheap.com I’ve used them to manage all of my domains for probably 15 years. The price is reasonable. Hey, it comes in the name, Name Cheap. And I love having everything in one place, since I actually do own quite a few domains for different things.

Nikki 20:55
Are you hoarding domains the way you hoard art supplies?

Laura 20:58
Not quite as bad. I mean…

Nikki 21:00
I am.

Laura 21:03
I don’t know, I probably own seven or eight of them, something like that. But, so I just link those over from namecheap.com to my own personal web host provider, and I use SiteGround for that. Nikki, who do you use?

Nikki 21:19
I also use SiteGround for both hosting and registering domains. I like really having everything in one place. The only exception is there are a few of the newer extensions, like dot art or dot design, that sometimes SiteGround doesn’t offer. So I use 101domains.com for those.

Laura 21:40
Okay, cool. Well, while we’re on the topic of professional names, having a professional email address, like hello@name.com rather than your name@gmail.com

Nikki 21:51
…or, even worse, your name@hotmail.com

Laura 21:57
It adds.. that that’s showing how old someone is right.

Nikki 22:00
We already know I’m a dinosaur.

Laura 22:02
I still use a Yahoo address for a lot of things, so I’m not one to talk.

Nikki 22:06
I won’t tell.

Laura 22:09
It does add another level of professionalism. I actually set these up through my hosting service, SiteGround, and then I linked them up to Gmail so that I can get all of my emails from my custom domains in one place really easily. And Nikki, I think we have our Startist Society email set up that way as well, right?

Nikki 22:26
We sure do so. Another thing to consider whatever platform you choose, make sure it’s one that lets you export your content if you ever want to move somewhere else. The last thing you want is to build a great site and then be stuck on that platform forever, if your needs change.

Laura 22:42
That’s a really good point. Platforms like WordPress, Squarespace and Shopify all have export options, but some of the smaller platforms make it difficult to take your content elsewhere.

Nikki 22:53
Or even charge you if you want to do that.

Laura 22:55
Right, right?

Nikki 22:57
So Laura, what was your experience like building your first artist website? What platform did you start with and what made you choose WordPress?

Laura 23:05
Okay so I’ve actually been on WordPress the well, I should, you know, I’d say the entire time. But in college, I created my first website, and it was when, when websites first came out, Nikki. And it was goofy. It had nothing to do with my business or anything, but, yeah, I did that in HTML because that was the only thing that was available then.

Nikki 23:29
I’m impressed.

Laura 23:30
I’m not going to give you a year, because then I’m going to, you know, fess up to exactly how old I am. But I then moved on to blogging, and I created a blog, and I did use WordPress from the very get go, because it was free, and it was, you know, I just had to get hosting, which I think I used, you know, some sort of $4 a month hosting service or something for my website. And I used that to to blog. And so I got used to that, you know, the interface, which can be a little clunky for some people. I got used to that really early on, because that was the first one that I used so. And then over time, as I have taken a lot of courses and learned a lot more about, you know, designing web pages and things, I realized what a great decision it was. Just because, if you do want flexibility, WordPress can do, like you said, anything. Now my skills are limited, so I have to hire someone like you if I want to do something a bit more advanced. But I was able to create a WooCommerce shop. I linked it up to, you know, to a POD site. I have a little blog that’s not updated. I have a portfolio, so I was able to create… I even have a page for my music, and it has streamable music on it,

Nikki 24:50
But it doesn’t auto play.

Laura 24:52
It does not auto play. But if you want to listen to my music, you can go there and click on, you know, a little play button, and it’ll play different songs. So, yeah, so I’ve, I’ve used it from from the get go, and I did recreate my website, I think probably around 2020, or so. I recreated everything from scratch. And so now it’s much more designed for, you know, some of my own goals, but I do need to update it. So I have a portfolio, I have a contact page, I have a page on workshops, but I’m not really doing those workshops now, and so that’s something I need to change on my website. Change the focus on it. I need to update my portfolio with some of the newer work that I’ve been working on for licensing.

Nikki 25:30
We always need to do that.

Laura 25:32
I do have my work cut out for me. But yeah, I think it is intimidating when you first get started with something. But you know, Google’s your friend, YouTube’s your friend, and so many things are figureoutable. And if you have a great hosting platform, like SiteGround, or you have a really great theme, and we happen to use Elegant Themes and Divi, which Divi is, you know, a website builder that’s visual as well. It has a drag and drop function, but you can also program it to do things. And their team is awesome, like we we paid for a lifetime access, but I can ping them and the next sometimes, within hours, I have a response already telling me how to fix something. and I didn’t have to even pay extra for it, right? So, so I really like them for that. So that’s what made me choose it, and so have I made mistakes? Yes. Did it take me forever to figure out shipping and sales tax, and is it still probably not 100% accurate? Yes.

Nikki 26:33
But you did it, and you did a great job.

Laura 26:35
I did it. And again, the other thing I think listeners need to hear is that it doesn’t have to be perfect when you get it first started and set up and like it’s a work in progress. Even the people who have the slickest websites you’ve seen started somewhere, and they’ve all built on it over time. And so I think that’s the main thing, is taking the intimidation factor out and just just figure out one little step at a time. And then if you need help, find someone like Nikki to hire and and they’ll help, you know, get you to the place that you want to be, if that’s not your strength, and you don’t have an interest in spending time on Google or YouTube and figuring it out yourself, agreed. So Nikki, tell me a little bit about your I mean, you’re a professional, and you’ve been doing this since the dinosaur ages, right? So tell us a little bit about your experience with websites.

Nikki 27:31
Yeah. So you mentioned, I think, building your first one when you were in college.

Laura 27:37
Yes.

Nikki 27:37
I was out of grad school before the internet existed. Well, the public internet that we can access So, so I built my first website in at the end of 1996 and like you said, HTML was the only option. There were no other platforms to build it on, and I was, I was leaving my first real, like illustration/art director kind of job, and I wanted to build a website just to showcase my art, because I was going to try to freelance. And that’s pretty much when I did start freelancing in 96 and yeah, I learned HTML just to build my own website to show my illustration and design work. And actually, within the first few months of having that site up, job boards started being a thing. And so I started listing, aside from my design skills, I started listing HTML as a skill because I had built exactly one website, so I knew HTML, right? Well, nobody else knew HTML either back then. So I actually, from those listings, got contacted by a recruiter for IBM. So in September of 1997 I took a 30 day temp job with IBM, which lasted 10 years. So I started just knowing HTML, and then my skills kind of grew along with the development of the Internet. I started learning a little bit of JavaScript, and then CSS eventually came out. And so I worked for for IBM, doing design and coding, and then I think I was doing just flat HTML for clients for for many years, I didn’t discover WordPress right when it first came out. I can’t really remember when I did. I’ll have to go back and see if I can figure that out. But I never really used any other website builder. I went from just straight HTML right into WordPress and started using it for client work, and I’ve been using it ever since. And I used to try different themes and website builders, and as soon as I discovered Divi, which I feel like was maybe 2015, or something, maybe 10 years ago, I think I’ve been using it that long. As soon as I discovered that, I started moving all my client websites to divvy because it’s not just a theme where you can use their designs like a lot of other themes. It’s a fully functional website builder, so you can start from no design at all and just use it to build anything you absolutely want.

Laura 30:36
It’s amazing.

Nikki 30:37
Yeah, I’ve been using it for probably about 10 years, and I have no desire to change that.

Laura 30:43
Yeah, using WordPress and Divi together is awesome. It can be very intimidating for people, so that’s why Squarespace and some of these other options are definitely where to start out if you have limited needs, but if you want something huge and functional, like I’m thinking, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that I really admire that use WordPress as well. Marie Forleo is one of them, you know, she does B School and Copy Cure and all of those courses. Her entire platform is all built on WordPress on a custom theme.

Nikki 31:13
I don’t just work with artists for for websites. I’ve also worked with a lot of creative nonprofits and even, like a local art center that accepts donations and sells memberships. And even I built the website for the National Quilt Museum, which is located in Paducah, Kentucky, where I lived for the last 20 years, until I took off on my bus and their their website I built in WordPress, using Divi and it also has memberships, uh, it has donations. It has contests people can sign up for. It has a shop. It displays, you know, all of the the quilts that they have in their collection and shows that are coming up. I mean, it can do absolutely anything.

Laura 32:02
Yeah. And what’s also great is, if you do want to be, let’s say you wanted to be a workshop teacher and you didn’t want to build a teaching platform inside of WordPress, you can still on your navigation, link to Teachable or link to one of these other Teachey or one of these other options, so that it enables you to have the best of both worlds. All right, so let’s wrap this up. Nikki, we hope, listeners, that you’re feeling more confident about choosing the right platform for your needs. But if you need extra help, download our comparison chart and feel free to ask us questions in our Startist Society Facebook group.

Nikki 32:38
And if you’re still feeling overwhelmed, just pick Squarespace for simple and pretty. Shopify, for selling, or WordPress if you want to cry, I mean, if you want to do all the things. No, seriously, for artists who want to do it themselves, I usually recommend Squarespace, and if they want to hire me, it will be WordPress.

Laura 32:59
Well, Nikki, you are the expert.

Nikki 33:01
Hey, at least I’m honest about it.

Laura 33:03
Hey, and that reminds me, in the next few episodes, we’ll be tackling other digital necessities for artists like social media marketing, how to start an email list and create newsletters that actually get opened and lead to sales, as well as deeper dives into your website.

Nikki 33:20
Yeah, Laura, those will be good ones. I might need a double bourbon for some of those conversations, right? Convincing artists that sending regular emails isn’t bothering people can be a challenge.

Laura 33:30
It can be for sure. I know I always feel like I’m bothering people, and I have to remind myself, no, they signed up for my email for a reason. Well, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time you.