Your website is your very own space to promote your creations, no matter what medium you work in. These artists and builders use their sites to sell handmade merchandise, paintings, books, and even instruction manuals for LEGO masterpieces! Here’s how they do it.
Promote an online shop with CTA buttons and clickable images
ARCHd is the small business of two sisters, Kristen and Lindsey Archer, in Memphis, Tennessee. They combine skills in photography, graphic design, and woodworking to create unique handmade pieces to sell at festival booths and retail locations.
WordPress.com Premium or Business customers can make their own buttons with custom CSS.
Kristen and Lindsey make it easy to browse and buy their items: visit their website, and you’ll immediately see a “Shop” button front and center, which directs visitors to their Etsy store. This handy call-to-action (CTA) button is built into their theme, Port, but you can display CTA buttons on other themes, too.
Aside from CTA buttons, there are other ways to direct potential customers to your online shop. Simply link to your Etsy store in your main menu — you can add a custom link to an external site so readers can go directly to the shop.
New to Image Widgets? Here’s a tutorial on how to create your own.
If you’d like a more prominent or visual link, consider an Image Widget. Artist Sarah Goodreau leads readers to her Society6 page with a custom image — a black triangle with a “Buy Prints” message — displayed as an Image Widget in her sidebar.
Or, create a page with clickable banners that direct readers to your multiple shops, as Rebecca Barkley demonstrates on her site, B.Inspired Art. Visit the Shop tab in her main menu to see how she leads visitors to her Etsy and Redbubble stores.
Transform a portfolio into an online store with payment buttons
If you haven’t heard, there’s a new option for selling goods and offering services on your site: the Simple Payments button. The current top sellers on WordPress.com are using this button in creative ways.
On her sketching blog, artist Georgina Potter posts her oil, pastel, and charcoal artwork and places a payment button at the bottom of every post — and removes the button when the piece has sold.
Showcase books and creative projects in eye-catching galleries
Take note of the techniques used on Amador and Ramón’s well-designed site, Arvo Brothers. With a background in LEGO design and video games, they now work on LEGO building projects and high-quality instruction books — and they promote and sell this work in a variety of ways.
On their Shop page, the Arvo brothers use payment buttons to sell both hardcover books and instruction PDFs, which are displayed in two- and three-image tiled mosaic galleries to give readers a sample of what the items look like. They also have separate pages for their books and instruction PDFs — both accessible in the main menu — and child pages detailing these items, like a hardcover book for a model alien and the manual for a 911 Targa.
Don’t use the Avid theme? Consider another photography theme or experiment with galleries and slideshows on your current theme.
Amador and Ramón also take advantage of the Avid theme’s Gallery page, which displays their gallery-formatted posts in a special view, further promoting their work to potential buyers.
Ready to take your site to the next level? Get unlimited access to premium themes, take advantage of the payment button, use custom CSS, and much more with a WordPress.com Premium plan.
Good tutorial. I love it.
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just when I thought my design was en pointe! 😀 good points to consider 🙂
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Good ideas for what you’re thinking.
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Some great tips and examples in this – thanks for sharing – lots of food for thought!
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Thank you for your tips!
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Very helpful, thankyou!
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Thanks. It’s really helpful.
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a lot to take into stock – hoping to start an online shop in a couple of months!
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Interesting and helpful for a newby. Keep up the great work.
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Great info!
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Thanks for the guidance!
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Thank you so much!
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Thanks for the tips, was very helpful.
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Wow, I loved your post. It’s so inspiring. Please keep it up.
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Thank you for sharing the good tips.
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Thank you for your tips.
LikeLiked by 9 people
Awesome! Thank you so much for the information! 🙂
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Thank you! Once my shop is up I’ll be able to use these tips.
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I’m on it!
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Thanks for these ideas! I plan to use the payment buttons on my blog for my handmade jewelry and home decor items. I’m so excited!
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Nice 👏🏻👏🏻
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Thanks for giving ideas!
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Helped a lot. Thank you.
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This is a great help. I do wonder how I can incorporate a button as I have an online journal and I need ideas to balance this theme of really my journal is a way for others to see my process and I don’t want that to feel like I am selling. Maybe the image sounds good. I hope you do a piece on how to grow more fans. Are there any workshops here for that?
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We’ve published a number of posts around growing your site and readership — to be honest, there could never be a single post that covers this topic and answers all questions…
You’ll find lots of resources in the Traffic/Growth category on The Daily Post: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/category/traffic-growth/
Today’s interview that will be up very soon also has great tips on growing your site and readership.
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Such nice tips — thanks!
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Very helpful, thanks a lot for sharing.
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Thanks for such a great post showcasing such inspirational sites – I’ll need to up my game!
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Nice tips! I have some friends who are exploring online options for their creative projects. I’ll pass this along!
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Great one.
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Good tutorial. I love it.
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Good one!
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Superb blog post, I have book marked this internet site so ideally I’ll see much more on this subject in the foreseeable future!
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Great ideas; thanks!
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if i can’t do the CSS, is there some customer support to help me?
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You can post in the forums — other members of the community can often assist:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/forum/css-customization
Other resources listed here:
https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/learning-about-css-1?replies=1
Note that custom CSS is available to Premium and Business plan users — if you don’t have either plan, you are free to test out custom CSS in the Customizer and can see the changes live, but must purchase a plan in order to finalize the changes. With these plans, you can also ask questions/troubleshoot CSS with live chat: https://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/css-support-in-live-chat/
Hope this helps.
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Thank you, it really help.
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Great thoughts to consider.
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Thanks for sharing!
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I loved it!!
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Thanks for sharing useful content.
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Awesome! Thank you for all the inspiration 💕
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Thank you.
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