Foundry Artists is a creative community built around Hilary Baker’s studio at Bewdley Museum in Worcestershire. Ten years on from the first small group that gathered there, the studio runs weekly workshops in painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics and sculpture, and welcomes complete beginners just as warmly as it welcomes experienced artists. This art studio website design project gave that community a proper home online.
Until we stepped in, there was no website at all. Places on workshops were sold through PayPal, so every booking arrived as a message, followed by a payment request, followed by a note somewhere of who was coming and what they had paid. For a studio run by one artist who would far rather be teaching, that admin quietly ate the week. Anyone searching for art classes near Bewdley had very little to find.
We designed and built a new WordPress site with WooCommerce behind it, so workshop places and original artwork can both be bought online without Hilary lifting a finger. People can book a single session or a full term, choose daytime or evening, join in the studio or on Zoom, and pay for the lot in one basket. You can see the finished site at foundryartists.co.uk.
Small creative businesses are often told that ecommerce website design is for shops with warehouses and stock rooms. It is not. A workshop place is a product, a term of workshops is a bundle, and a painting on the studio wall is stock. Once you treat them that way, a one person studio can sell as smoothly as any retailer, and spend the hours it saves on teaching instead of chasing payments.
Ongoing Support and Hosting
A manual, message by message process became something that runs quietly on its own.
If it isn’t pulling its weight, we’ll show you why. One of our experts will review your site for free and send you a plain report, with the changes that matter most listed in order, so you know where to start.
