Website Promotion

Hi,

I have set up my website http://www.bluefinart.com to sell my canvas prints and need to try and get some sales, but not sure how to best promote it. I have set up Google adwords which is working and I can see from Google Analytics that this has increased my hits dramatically. However I am still only getting 30 hits a day and no sales for 2 months. Is this too low a figure to generate sales? I sell roughly 2 prints a month through my local gallery which is in a small town in Scotland and I was hoping to achieve a similar figure on the web.

Does anyone know how many hits a site should try and achieve to provide a good chance of a sale. I.e. If you have 1000 hits you be likely to get one sale. Some of the larger sites get 1000’s of hits a day and I wanted to know roughly what percentage of these hits became sales/ conversion factor.

Also would be grateful for any hints or tips to increase hits.

Many thanks

There are art forums all over the internet. Visit those and read the site rules to find out if you can post personal websites in the forums. If you can jump in and start promoting! Also make up business cards with your website and pass them out everywhere you go. I leave them at coffee shops and other such public places that get a lot of traffic where people might read it-bus stops, bulletin boards, at conventions, libraries, etc. Just a note, though-internet art sales are not as good as public face to face sales. People generally like to see the art in person, meet the artist, etc. That being said, make sure your website provides as personal an experience as you can provide to your visitors. Tell about yourself, your general art background, etc. Show pictures of yourself, particularly photos that show you in the process of creating your art. Don’t be anonymous—a BIG part of the art is the person who made it! Good luck!

Dang it! Every time I use a dash I get crossed out text!

Azzutaluna,

Thanks for the tips, been on Flickr forums, but not many punters on there. So will need to do some more research. I’ll add a bit about my background also, but as not qualified might put some people off.

Thanks

Rod

I have a site to, at
http://www.geocities.com/lyndastevens

At the art pages.

I do feel hampered by my lack of knowledge on how to make thumbnails that lok really good, also photos that download quickly. Also, there seem o be problemsin using my digital especially to copy my black and red collages! The red looks garish and the black somehow loses the refleciveness of my glass fragemtns.

I have a Vivitar camera too – back to that maybe??

30 hits a day sounds great to me.

You seem to have a better sense of career-mindedness than I do.

Hi Nexus, It’s not really a sense of career-mindedness it is a requirement for more money, as I have now have a new addition to the family!

Just trying to work out whether it is worth spending £30 a month when it is unlikely to make sales and return my investment.

Had a look at your site and with regards to displaying images on the web, I found that I had to increase the contrast to make mine display clearer. This can be done in any photoshop type application and a bit of trial and error is required.

Regards

Rod

Thanks for the feedback Rod. I have been looking at saturation and howe to tidy up the thumbs especially, bt did not look muich at contrast.

Nexus7, what do you use (program) when you upload your photos of your art into your computer? Do you have an option for pixel resolution? You can make the pixels higher and then down size the pic by dimension. I seem to have a number of sizes saved out on my computer of my work and mostly try to keep the picture resolution as high as possible. Also, you might try enhancing the colors of your red by hand on the computer. It might take some getting familiar with but if you play around with your photo imaging program you should be able to improve on the quality or lack of quality your reds are showing. The important thing is that the art comes across with all it’s vitality and if you need to do some color adjustments on your computer to get it to look the way it does in real life…this is OK, you are not lieing to do so.

These are just suggestions. I do not feel qualified to teach anything about programs or anything….LOL but maybe you can just do some experimenting with what you have to work with.

Hi Julie

Thanks for your ideas and for the kind feedback you put on my page.

I may put up the pixel resolution for the main pictures, though I believe for thumbs it is better to reduce colours, pixels, whatever. I am getting a litle help ATM anyway. I have photoshop and adobe, but I do feel a bit doh with them.

Hi Nexus7,

OK, I have those programs too! Happy you are getting help with it! I’m still trying to sort out so much of it too! Best of luck to you! And you are most welcome.

google seardh “art forums”, everybody. there are lots of them. Wet paint is one that comes to mind…

I would also try submitting your site to some art directories which you can find from searching on google. I’m trying to promote my site as well so I know what youre going through

Thanks for all the information.

I have now stopped Google Adwords as after two months it has not drawn any sales. Unless you can get 100’s of hits a day I don’t think that you can have a good chance of someone liking your work enough to buy.

I think there is just too much work out there. If you are wanting to purchase art online there must be hundreds of thousands of works to choose from and unless you have a big budget/ well known enough I don’t think you can promote yourself easily.

Art forums like these are great for sharing info, but as for promotion most people here are looking to sell art rather than buy it.

I will investigate the art directories listings, as many are free and might produce some results.

Thanks

I have never been on a website online that required me to make thumbnails. As with this site, once you upload, the program at the site creates thumbnails. For me, I do not care for the ones that slice the picture for the thumbnail; I prefer the ones that just reduce the image. Compello Art is the worst. Its slices are arbitrary horizontal slices that give no idea of the whole image.

As an old fashioned person due to my age, I still have professional slides made of my artwork. I then then scan them into my computer with a Minolta Dimage scanner, where they are saved to any file I select. I use PhotoImpact (that came with an old scanner) to crop, adjust color, and adjust contrast. Then I use Adobe Photoshop Elements (which came with another scanner) to save as a TIFF or JPEC image and to adjust the resolution and size. Each competition I enter asks for slightly different size. Some express it such as 300 rpi, maximum dimension 600 pixels; others refer to the inches they want the image to be. Photoshop expresses size both ways in the same window.

My personal website was designed with the help of a consultant but she made it at my request so I can run it using the program called “Contribute.” She made my thumbnails miniatures of the image, so I use a separate image to do that. But everywhere else the thumbnail is made automatically.

I also find that when I want to print out copies of my work I have to use entirely different color and contrast settings. Each printer has its own quirks. I like the HP printers best.

All this was done in tiny steps over the last 7 years. I hope this helps.

Just one more thought. If you wanted to buy art, let’s say in the price range over $200, would you buy it from a website online? I NEVER would. At prices that make me deliberate, I would want to SEE the work in person. And from the first time I bought art (before I ws an artist) I wanted to MEET the artist. For that reason, I have never put my work online with the hope of selling from the website. Rather, I use the best one or two as part of my email signature. Especially with my own website, I use it as a reference so galleries and other places that might show my art can see my work.

Has anyone here sold online for over $500?