Be like Amazon: redirect to .ART
Building a website can take a long time. But you can always use your existing website, a section of it, or even the address of your profile on social media as the place your .ART website redirects to.
What does one find at www.amazon.art? All Amazon products related to art: books, drawing materials, paintings, funky socks. This is Amazon’s way of saying that their range of products related to the arts and crafts is so big that it deserves a separate domain name, although it is still placed as a subcategory of their .com website. Neat trick! That way you can choose a section of your existing website (online shop, new projects) to highlight for marketing purposes and print. In a similar way, Bank of America is marketing their art conservation projects through www.bofa.art, which redirects to a section on their main .com website dedicated to it. In this simple way the organisation is showing that this is not part of their com(mercial) activity, but rather something they do with a different motivation and reasoning. If you are a business organisation involved in charity, social or cultural activities, a .ART domain will be a simple marketing tool to attract attention to and show a different side of your business.
Many choose the same path of least resistance. www.fondationbeyeler.art redirects to the museum’s .com address, and yet they choose to use .art in their advertising materials. Illustrator Sarah Burgess also found a way to make her life easier, her www.sburgess.art redirects to her Wix website with quite a cryptic wix-issued domain name which would have not looked very consistent with her sleek artistic image. There are many ways to play around with domain usage. Dastan Gallery in Tehran (Iran) not only purchased its .ART address, but also an additional address www.ardeshirmohassess.art, which is the name and surname combination of one of the most prominent Persian artists, whose works it features. The address simply redirects back to the main website, and yet it’s a way of honouring the artists and being able to focus the limelight on their work rather than on the whole collection, when needed.
You don’t need to build a complicated professional website to be a part of .ART – just like you don’t need one to call yourself an artist. Work with what you already have: your profile pages on social and artistic networks, a section of your existing website, a simple landing page you can make in a few hours with a website builder.
