Originally published on the Strikingly Blog.

If you’re a creative and still contemplating whether you need a website, the answer is a resounding yes. This is a simple guide to building a website for creatives. Having a website is the first step on your road to credibility and building a reputation in your industry. It should be the foundation of your creative identity and a place where people can go to find out what you’re working on.

Now that’s settled, you’ll be looking for a platform to create your site. Hopefully Strikingly is your choice; that’s why you’re here. Our mission is to make web design possible and easy for everyone so it’s no problem if you have no idea about coding and web development, that’s totally unnecessary.

Initially, it can be hard to decide on what you want to include on your site. Here are some simple suggestions to have a great site up and running in no time. The online world is constantly changing and it’s fine to adjust your site and improve upon it frequently. Even if you have things to add and tweak, try to get your site published and then make changes as you go along.

A Short Bio

Firstly, you should create a brief section about yourself. Just a few sentences at this stage is enough to give your viewers an overview of you and your work. Aside from just your name, age, and location here are a few questions to get your bio looking great:

• How did you get into your creative field?
• Describe your biggest influences.
• What are some of the defining moments of your creative journey?

Here’s a great example from Andre Tacuyan, an aspiring product designer from the US. He’s still in college but he’s getting a head start by having a really solid online presence and a great website.

“Hi, I’m Andre Tacuyan. I knew at a very young age that technology and design weren’t going to be just passions, they’d be who I am. If I could describe the past few years in one word, I would say it was an evolution. Just like a Pokemon. I enjoy building beautiful products that connect people with one another. With a goal to make the world more simple, open and connected, I’m working on making the future come faster.”

It’s also a great idea to include a picture of yourself here to put a face to the name. We tend to feel more partial to brands or products (especially online) when they link with a person, so adding a personal touch is a really effective way of connecting to your viewers. The idea is to turn the ‘unique visitor’ into a fan or supporter.

People want to know who it is behind the cool track or awesome design. The story behind the art that people consume has a lot of importance. So show your readers who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Your Creative Offering

Current Projects

Add some details about the things you’re currently working on and involve your viewer in the creative process. Some in depth information about the project is a great way to help your viewers to feel invested in your journey. Try to answer the following questions when you’re giving a rundown of your projects:

• What was the inspiration for the project?
• How long have you been working on it and when do you think you’ll finish?
• Have you hit any major milestones or setbacks?
• What are your plans for after the completion of this project?

Steph Harding is a photographer who specializes in documenting the craft beer community around the Midwest US. Her site is a great example of keeping her following up to date with her projects; she has a ‘lately’ tab on her page that links to a really great video and a gallery of the projects that she’s been working on!

Portfolio

Showing previous works that you’re proud of is pretty important too. It gives you credibility as a creative and positions you as someone genuinely involved in the industry.

Collaborations

If you’ve ever done collaborative work you should list it here as well. Working with others shows that you have the support of other creatives and is a good way to help each other out in terms of sharing each others work.

Gallery

Great visual content is the make or break of a lot of websites for creatives. Include a gallery that demonstrates your best works. For visual creatives you might like to embed your Instagram or Pinterest feeds and for musicians you can embed the Soundcloud application to allow people to listen to your music directly from your site.

Artist, Anne Sigismund’s site is full of amazing samples of her work which demonstrates her creative versatility and the breadth of her skills.

Frequent Updates

Keeping a blog is also a great way to keep people in the loop and involved in your creative process. You can talk about your journey, the ups and downs of your current project, and all of the bumps along the road. Even just a short post every week is a cool way to engage your page viewers. You can insert your Medium feed in if you already write there or start using Simple Blog, Strikingly’s very own blog editor.

Carica Road, a small business run by college student Bailey Connor with the help of her brother and mother has started to blog little updates about their creative process and small points of inspiration that they have experienced.

Once you’re happy with your blogging habit, you might like to set up a regular newsletter to go out to your subscribers. This is a nice way to get people to return to your site. You can make newsletters relatively easy to automate and including content that you’ve already created like your blog posts will take all the hard work out of it. Really work on making the newsletter catchy; you want people to read your updates instead of sending them to trash.

Recommendations

If you’ve got friends, colleagues, or customers who are willing to endorse you and your creative work you can include short written statements from them attesting to your skills. A lot of people are actually really flattered to be called upon for a recommendation as it shows that you value their opinion and are actively seeking feedback for your work. Make sure that you include a picture, name, qualifications, and their relation to you with the recommendation to ensure the credibility of the source.

Contact Details

Add a form for enquiries and submissions so that people can easily reach you with questions and comments about your site. Include some details of the kind of contact you encourage. For example, you may like to mention that you are happy for people to reach out to you for potential collaborations or press enquiries.

Social Media

Leave some prominent icons on your page to link people to your social media pages. A lot of people tend to prefer to ‘follow’ others on social media rather than subscribing to a newsletter or mailing list. Have an active presence on at least a few major platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn so that you are appealing to the range of visitors you get on your site.

And that’s it! Your site should be looking great after all this content has been added. After you’ve created your site you can share it with your social networks, add the URL to your email signature and promote it within your circles.

Ready to create your site now? You can get it started here.