Behind the Build: Gorstella Gallery’s New Website

We recently launched a new website for Gorstella Gallery, located just outside Chester. It’s the third version we’ve created for them over the years, and it reflects a long-standing collaboration that we’re proud of.

Gorstella is a well-established, family-run gallery that hosts several exhibitions each year at its physical venue. While their sales are handled offline, the website plays a crucial role in promoting exhibitions, showcasing the artists, and starting conversations with potential buyers.

This isn’t an e-commerce site in the traditional sense, but it does include features like pricing, flagging sold items, and capturing visitor interest through a built-in enquiry process.

The design of the site stays true to Gorstella’s established branding, with a clean, understated aesthetic that matches both their identity and the kind of works that they exhibit.

Navigation has been kept deliberately simple. Clear top-level menu items guide visitors intuitively through the content. At the top of the homepage, we included a custom-coded image slider, so no third-party plugins involved. The gallery team can update images, overlay text, and destination links themselves without needing to contact us, something that was highlighted in our brief.

Just below the slider is a flexible text area for seasonal notes or timely announcements. Like other editable sections, it’s designed for ease of use without compromising layout integrity. Throughout the site, we’ve balanced flexibility for content updates with enough structure to preserve visual consistency. Fonts and colours remain fixed to maintain design quality over time.

Each page includes a streamlined newsletter sign-up. It’s simple, but effective, especially since site visitors are typically already engaged with the gallery or its artists. From a marketing perspective, the mailing list continues to grow with highly relevant contacts, offering an efficient way for Gorstella to stay connected with their audience.

The About page is straightforward but important, offering background for first-time visitors and reinforcing trust. All content is editable, but the design remains locked to ensure that updates don’t affect the overall aesthetic.

One of the more sophisticated areas is the Artists page. Each artist appears in alphabetical order (surnames) with a name and image. Clicking through brings up an individual artist page with a brief biography and a list of their currently available or recently shown works.

Each artwork includes a thumbnail, title, and price. If a piece has sold, it’s marked clearly and handled automatically by the content system. These entries are pulled from separate artwork pages, meaning the client enters the information once and it flows through to the relevant areas, including the artist pages, individual artwork pages, and the enquiry form. This helps reduce admin, avoids duplication, and keeps everything up to date.

The artwork detail pages are simple on the surface but well optimised under the hood. Images are resized automatically for consistency and performance. A Lightbox effect lets visitors see the artwork at full size without requiring special formatting from the client.

Beside each image, details like the title, price, and ‘sold’ label are displayed. That last bit is automated. If no price is entered, the system assumes the work is no longer available and displays a red dot. It’s a small feature, but one that saves time and prevents confusion.

One standout is the enquiry form. Hidden by default to keep the page clean, it opens with a click and automatically includes the name of the artwork. This avoids vague messages and cuts down on unnecessary follow-ups. Below the form, related artworks by the same artist appear automatically, encouraging further exploration.

The site also includes two exhibition sections: upcoming and past. The past exhibitions act as an archive, which not only adds value for regular visitors but also supports search engine optimisation by increasing the amount of structured, relevant content.

At Gortstella’s request, we also created a dedicated page for the mailing list. This gives them a clear link for printed campaigns or QR code use which is a great example of connecting offline and online channels.

The Contact page includes the gallery’s full business address, formatted to consistency and to match a variety of touchpoint on the web including their Google Business listing. This supports local SEO, the Google AI Summary and builds credibility. The page also features a general enquiry form, links to social media profiles, and a native Google Map for reliability.

The entire site is fully responsive. On smaller screens, navigation switches to a compact hamburger menu, and the layout adapts to a single-column format for better readability. Sliders, galleries, and forms all work seamlessly across devices, with minimal effort required from the client.

This project is a great example of a site that looks simple at first glance but is carefully structured to be efficient, easy to manage, and ready to continue to grow with the business.

If you’re considering a website redesign or want to explore ways to improve your current site whether for performance, ease of management, or simply to bring things up to date we’re always happy to chat.