The gallery website: essential pages and the ones you can drop

01The home page: your permanent shopfront

The home page is the most visited page on any gallery website. It must accomplish three simultaneous functions: display the gallery's visual identity, provide access to the current exhibition and guide the visitor to the site's main sections. Galerie Perrotin, which operates spaces in Paris, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo and Shanghai, offers a home page dominated by a full-screen image of the current show, accompanied by the artist's name and dates. This radical choice places art at the centre and immediately communicates the gallery's level of ambition.

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, based in Paris, Salzburg, London and Seoul, employs a similar approach: a monumental image occupies most of the screen, with direct access to main sections in the top navigation. Galerie Templon opts for a carousel presenting simultaneous exhibitions across its different spaces. All three examples share a common thread: the home page is visual before it is textual, and it links immediately to the current programme.

The most frequent mistake is overloading the home page with presentation texts, social media links, news feeds and dropdown menus that drown the essential information. The visitor arriving at your site is not looking to read your philosophy; they want to see what you are showing right now. A home page that demands three scrolls before reaching the first image of a work has lost its visitor before convincing them. Average time spent on a web page is measured in seconds, and every second during which the visitor sees no art is a second wasted.

02Artist pages: the heart of your catalogue

The section devoted to represented artists is, alongside the home page, the most consulted part of a gallery site. Each artist should have an individual page comprising a selection of recent works, a concise biography, an exhibition list (solo and group) and, where possible, one or more critical texts. Galerie Marian Goodman offers exemplary artist pages: a grid of works accompanied by a concise biography, a chronological exhibition list and links to associated publications.

The depth of these pages testifies to the seriousness of your commitment to your artists. A collector consulting an artist's page wants to understand their trajectory: where they have exhibited, which institutions have supported them, how their work has evolved. This information is not decorative; it directly contributes to the perceived value of the work the collector is considering acquiring. An artist whose page mentions exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo, the Lyon Biennale or MACBA Barcelona sees their work immediately inscribed in an institutional context that reassures the potential buyer.

The question of pricing on artist pages divides the gallery world. Some galleries, including those operating on specialist online platforms, display prices transparently. Others consider price part of a personal conversation and refuse to publish it. Both approaches have their logic, but the general trend moves toward greater transparency, driven by the expectations of younger collectors accustomed to online commerce. The dealer who chooses not to display prices should at minimum offer an enquiry button that facilitates contact, because a collector who finds neither a price nor a simple way to ask will look for the work elsewhere.

03The exhibitions page: your institutional memory

The archive of past exhibitions is a page many galleries neglect yet one that is essential. A curator preparing a research project, a journalist writing an article, an academic studying the art scene: all need access to your exhibition history. Galerie Lelong offers systematic archiving of its exhibitions since its founding, with installation views, press releases and works lists. Galerie Chantal Crousel provides a complete chronological overview of its programme, constituting a genuine documentary resource.

This archive is not only useful to professionals. It reinforces your gallery's credibility with collectors by demonstrating the coherence of your programme over time. A collector hesitating between two galleries will be more reassured by the one whose twenty years of programming can be consulted than by the one showing only the current exhibition. The archive functions as the gallery's curriculum vitae: it attests to its seriousness, longevity and the quality of past artistic choices.

Each archived exhibition should ideally include professional-quality installation photographs, the press release, dates and the artist's name. Installation views are particularly important: they show how works function in the space and give the online visitor an approximation of the physical experience. Pace Gallery, which archives its exhibitions with panoramic views and wall texts, has understood that this documentation constitutes an intangible asset whose value grows over time.

04The contact page and practical information

It is surprising how many galleries make it difficult to get in touch. The postal address, opening hours, telephone number, email address and an access map are basic pieces of information that should be accessible in one click from any page on the site. Galerie Nathalie Obadia, which has spaces in Paris and Brussels, places this information prominently in the footer and on a dedicated contact page covering both addresses.

Newsletter sign-up should also feature in this section. The newsletter remains one of the most effective communication tools for a gallery: it maintains a regular link with collectors, announces exhibitions and extends event invitations. David Zwirner has turned its newsletter into a full editorial tool with exclusive content that encourages subscription. The sign-up form, placed visually but non-intrusively, transforms each site visitor into a potential contact for future communications.

Opening hours deserve particular attention. Many galleries adopt atypical schedules (by appointment in the morning, closed Sunday and Monday) that the occasional visitor does not know. A collector who makes the journey to discover your space and finds the door shut on a Tuesday morning because your hours were not clearly stated on your site will probably not return.

05Pages that deserve serious questioning

Certain pages commonly found on gallery websites deserve to be questioned. The "philosophy" or "about" page, when it amounts to a vague text about the dealer's passion for contemporary art, adds nothing for the visitor. If you wish to introduce yourself, do so in three sentences on your contact page rather than devoting an entire page to self-promotional prose that nobody will read to the end. The galleries that succeed with their "about" page are those that present factual information: founding date, founder's background, represented artists, programmatic positioning. Konrad Fischer Galerie in Dusseldorf offers a sober historical page tracing its origins in the minimalist and conceptual movement, usefully informing the visitor about the gallery's orientation.

The "press" page listing dozens of articles without links or context is another example of a useless page. If you want to highlight media coverage, select the most significant articles and present them as accessible documents integrated into the relevant artist or exhibition pages, rather than gathered in a catch-all section.

The "fairs" page, often reduced to a list of names and dates, benefits from being enriched with stand photographs and descriptions of the artists shown, or removed altogether if it contains only obsolete information. A photographed stand at Art Basel, FIAC or Frieze constitutes a powerful visual argument for a collector assessing your gallery's international stature.

The "services" page offering framing, hanging advice and collection management is relevant for galleries that genuinely provide these services, but becomes counterproductive when it suggests the gallery is more of a service provider than a place of creation and dissemination. If these services exist, integrate them into your contact page as a discreet mention rather than devoting an entire section to them.

06Search engine optimisation and online visibility

Beyond aesthetics and ergonomics, a gallery website must be findable. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a subject many dealers consider too technical to bother with, yet whose fundamental principles are accessible to all. Each artist page should contain the artist's full name in the page title, in the URL and in the biography text. Images should be accompanied by alternative descriptions (alt tags) that include the artist's name and the work's title. These elementary practices allow search engines to index your content correctly and present it to collectors searching for an artist by name.

Hauser and Wirth, whose site ranks among the best optimised in the sector, applies these principles rigorously: each page is structured with hierarchical headings, descriptive texts and metadata that allow search engines to understand the content and rank it correctly. This technical discipline, invisible to the visitor, translates into increased visibility in search results.

07Mobile architecture and loading speed

A gallery website today is consulted predominantly on smartphones. This reality imposes technical constraints that many galleries still ignore. High-resolution images that display beautifully on a desktop become obstacles when they take ten seconds to load on a mobile connection. Gagosian, whose site is among the most visited in the art world, has invested in technical infrastructure that guarantees fast loading across all devices. Pace offers a mobile version whose navigation is as fluid as on a computer.

Loading speed is not merely a comfort issue: it directly affects your site's ranking on search engines. A slow site is penalised by ranking algorithms, reducing your visibility among collectors searching for artists or galleries online. Image optimisation, content caching and the choice of a performant host are technical investments that directly impact your traffic.

08Integration with sales platforms

The question of integration between the gallery website and online sales platforms is becoming increasingly pressing. specialist online platforms, market data platforms and Artedusa enable galleries to present and sell works online to an international audience. These platforms do not replace the gallery website but complement it by offering visibility among collectors that the site alone could not reach.

Consistency between your site and your platform presence is essential. Information about artists, works and exhibitions must be synchronised to avoid contradictions that undermine credibility. A collector who finds a work on Artedusa with an up-to-date artist page consistent with the gallery's own site is better disposed to start a purchase conversation than one who notices discrepancies between the two sources.

For Artedusa partner galleries, the personal website and the platform presence form a complementary ecosystem: the site embodies the dealer's identity while the platform expands the circle of accessible collectors, creating a leverage effect that neither could produce in isolation.