Whether you've already established your practice as an independent museum professional or are just starting out, your website can be a powerful tool in persuading visitors to become clients. A well-designed website can help to:
* Acquaint potential clients with your services and motivate them to hire you
* Establish your professionalism and credibility
* Showcase your portfolio, providing examples of your work.
Providing the information that potential clients want gives them the opportunity to study your site at their own convenience. It also allows them to get to know you a little better before they approach you directly.
Here are 10 tips to help you create an informative and effective website:
1. Before you start to design your site, make a list of the pages you want to include. This article will show you the fundamental ones. You can always add pages later as your practice grows and evolves. Taking the time to think the site out carefully at the very beginning will help you craft a site that is uniquely "you" and will save you time and frustration later on.
2. Make your site easy to navigate by observing basic conventions of titling and arranging pages. For example, your biographical summary is typically placed on a page entitled "About us" or "Bio."
3. To help both clients and search engines find you, use terms and keywords that prospective clients will use when searching for the kind of services you provide.
4. Write to your clients' needs — not yours — to engage their interest. You could write simply, "We design exhibits," but "We create exhibits that are informative and fun!" is more likely to catch a potential client's attention. Show how you can solve problems and thereby make the client's life — or museum — better, fresher, more relevant, more fun, more successful, less stressful, etc.
5. Describe your services. Make it easy for visitors to learn more about how they can benefit from working with you by including a page that describes the services you offer. If you have been a museum employee at some point in your career, mention it. Show that you understand the challenges the client faces, and how your services and experience can meet their needs.
6. Answer questions about what you do. What questions do potential clients typically ask you? Make a list of these questions, write out answers to them, and post them on a page entitled "FAQs" (Frequently Asked Questions).
7. Provide a portfolio page. Your website offers an ideal place to display a few examples of your work. Include pieces that show your professionalism as well as your range; if you've done projects for both natural history and art museums, for example, or have written press releases as well as website content, include samples of each.
8. Provide testimonials and/or client list. Testimonials add to your credibility, and a client list gives an idea of the size and type of institutions you've done work for. Testimonials should include the individual's first and last name, name of museum or organization, city and state or province. If you're just starting out and haven't got testimonials or clients yet, this page of your website may be added later.
9. Introduce yourself. Who are you? What aspects of your background will most interest a potential client? What experience have you got that's relevant to the services you're offering? If you've worked in a museum, at a national historic site or in some other capacity that's relevant to your work, mention it. Provide this information on an "About Us" or "Bio" page. To aid credibility and to put a human face on your work, include a professional or good-quality photograph; head shots (portrait photos) are most commonly used.
10. Contact information. Make it easy for visitors to get in touch with you. Your contact page should provide a postal ("snail mail") address as well as an email address and telephone number. To ensure that visitors find this information no matter which page of your website they land on when they first arrive, put your contact information at the bottom of each page of your site.
About the author:
Sue Schopp is an independent museum professional who provides writing and marketing consulting services to museums, other cultural non-profits, independent museum professionals and cultural-commerce professionals. A former art historian who also has a decade of experience working in museums, she brings an insider’s knowledge to her work. Learn more about her services or contact her at http://www.moremuseumvisitors.com
