How to make an art portfolio website that turns viewers into buyers

TL;DR: How to make an art portfolio website

This guide builds an art portfolio website on your own name as the domain, starting from a portfolio template in the Yola website builder and adding the six pages a buyer or curator looks for: the work grouped by series, a page of originals and limited edition prints that are still available, and a commissions page. The photography step is the long one, because flat, color-accurate shots with the size and medium beside them are what separate a portfolio from a social grid.

The second half covers the kinds of work you take on, from commissions and licensing to murals and studio visits, an inquiry form that collects the brief, size and timescale before you reply, and the exhibitions, collections and awards that tell a curator the work has been seen. It closes with a shows page you keep current by hand. Finish all eight steps and you have one link to send the next time someone asks what you have available.

What to include

Top features of an art portfolio website

How to make an art portfolio
website in 8 steps

Use your own name. It is what a curator types after they see a piece in a group show, and what a collector types after someone mentions you over dinner. If your name is already taken, add your medium rather than a number, so painter, ceramics or studio after the name reads better than a 2 on the end.

A .com still reads as the most professional choice. Skip hyphens and numbers, because people drop them when they repeat an address out loud or write it on the back of a card. Use the same spelling you use on your exhibition labels, your Instagram handle and any marketplace profile, so the person searching lands on you rather than a namesake.

Yola website builder lets you search for and register a domain in the same flow, and annual plans include a free domain for the first year.

There is no code in this and no developer to hire. Yola AI website builder asks a few questions about your work and puts together a first draft you can then move around by hand. The free plan comes with basic AI, and the full AI tools open up on a paid plan.

Start from a template that already treats images as the main event, with room around them, rather than a business layout built for three columns of text. Hosting is part of the plan, so there is nothing separate to set up before the site goes live.

Start from a template

Art portfolio templates to start from

Six pages carry an artist's site. A curator checking whether you fit a show and a collector deciding whether to ask about a price are both doing a short, fast read, and they are looking for different things on the same site.

Build these six, and leave anything else until the work asks for it.

This is not a price list. It is the short answer to what someone can actually commission, buy or license from you, and it matters because a buyer who only sees paintings on a wall will never think to ask about a mural, and a picture editor will never think to ask about reproduction rights. Name each one the way the trade names it, so licensing is licensing and not image use fees.

On prices, split it the way the work splits. Editions and prints have a set figure, so publish it. Originals are often listed as price on request, which is normal in the trade and is a perfectly honest thing to write. Commissions are quoted, so say what changes the number, usually size, medium, framing and how soon it is needed. Yola has ready-made Services and Pricing blocks, so a clear figure here and a quote there is a layout choice, not a build.

Only list what you genuinely offer today. Six honest lines read better than ten stretched to look busy.

This step decides whether anyone asks about a price, so it is worth a full afternoon. Shoot flat work straight on, with the camera level to the center of the piece, or the frame keystones and a good painting looks like a snapshot of a painting. Light it evenly from both sides and kill the glare, especially on varnish, glass and glaze. Photograph against a plain wall and crop to the edge of the work, so there is no carpet, no easel leg, no corner of the studio. Shoot a gray card or include something neutral in one frame, then match your colors to it, because a collector who receives a canvas two shades warmer than the photo is a refund and a lost relationship. For sculpture and ceramics, three angles beat one perfect one, and one shot with a hand or a chair in it tells people the size faster than any measurement.

Caption every piece with title, year, medium, dimensions and whether it is available. Name the image files the same way, so tidal-drift-2025-oil-on-linen.jpg rather than IMG_4021.jpg, and put the same description in the alt text. That is a two-minute habit that helps the work turn up when someone searches your name or your medium.

Galleries is a ready-made Yola block, which covers most portfolios. If you want something the catalog does not do, the Custom code block on a paid plan lets you build the layout yourself. Yola's paid plans also include a library of 1M premium icons, which is useful for page furniture and never for the work itself. If you have studio video, a piece being made or an install walkthrough, host it on a platform like Vimeo or YouTube and embed it, since video is not a Yola block.

Most of the people who want a piece will not phone you. A curator on a deadline and a collector browsing at eleven at night both want to leave a message and get on with their evening, so give them a form that asks for what you need to reply properly. Which piece they are asking about, whether they want the price and availability or want to commission something new, and for a commission, the brief, the size, where it is going and by when. A budget range as an optional field saves everyone a round of emails. Then their name and how to reach them.

Yola's contact form is customizable, so you choose those fields rather than accepting a fixed set, and the Forms block help article walks through building it. What arrives is an inquiry, not an order, and nothing is committed until you reply. Yola sends an automatic confirmation the moment someone submits, so they know the message landed rather than wondering for two days.

If you sell editioned prints at a fixed price, an online store handles that part, since a print is a product. An original and a commission are conversations, so keep those on the form. Answer within a day either way. An inquiry about a specific piece is the warmest message you will get all week.

There is no license or board registration in this trade, so nothing here is a certificate you can scan. What a curator is checking instead is whether the work has been out in the world and who has taken it seriously. That means shows, collections, awards, residencies and representation, written plainly and put on the home page or near the top of About rather than three clicks down.

List only what you actually hold. A short, true exhibition list with two group shows reads as an artist at the start of something. A padded one reads as an artist who is guessing, and anyone in the field can tell the difference in ten seconds. Where a collection asks you not to name it, say private collection and the country, which is the usual convention.

One page, and everything time-bound goes on it. What is hanging right now and where, what is coming up, which fairs you are showing at and on whose stand, open studio weekends, and any residency you will be away on. A curator who likes the work online will usually want to see one piece in person before they commit, and this is the page that tells them whether they can.

Each entry needs the dates, the venue and city, the opening reception time if there is one, whether it is free or ticketed, and a link to the venue for anything you do not control. This is not a calendar feature on Yola, it is a page you edit by hand, which takes a couple of minutes once the layout is set. If you run open studios and want a headcount, point people at your inquiry form rather than promising a booking system.

Leave finished shows on the page under a past shows heading instead of deleting them. A list of exhibitions that happened is evidence, and an empty page reads as an artist who has stopped.

Common art portfolio website mistakes to avoid

Each of these loses you an inquiry before anyone gets as far as your contact page.

How much does an art portfolio website cost?

Building it yourself on Yola costs nothing to start. You can build the site and publish it on the free plan, then move up when you want your own domain, more pages or the full AI tools: free plan, then $9.95/mo. Annual plans include a free domain for the first year, and hosting, SSL and backups are handled for you rather than bought separately.

Paying someone to build the same thing usually runs from a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars, depending on how much design work and image preparation is in it. That is a real option if you want a bespoke layout, but it is a lot of print sales for a site whose main job is to show pictures clearly.

The part that matters after launch is control. You will be adding work, marking pieces sold and changing an exhibition list several times a year, and on Yola that is an edit you make in a few minutes rather than an email to a developer and a wait.