emiko-o reware

Francesca Vitali and her pins

One of my favorite parts of SNAG conferences is the Pin Swap, a great ice breaker/social where hundreds of jewelers are unleashed to trade their pin creations and meet other artists. The trick being able to get there with your pins before all the good ones are gone, and not too early that you give them all away before the second wave of stragglers arrive. And of course, it’s the perfect opportunity to catch up and find old friends–without fail, I always manage to bump into my Syracuse University undergrad prof, Barbara Walter (3rd from left, next to me), and SU alums Erin Williams and Susan Myers (1st & 2nd from left, see below). Erin was the Student Exhibition Coordinator, and Susan is on the Exhibitions Committee.

the ol' Syracuse metals gang

Amy Weiks and Brigitte Martin

Brigitte Martin (pictured, above right) of the ever-growing Crafthaus–if you haven’t joined, what are you waiting for–she’s the coolest!

Marla Johnson Norris and Mr. Norris

Congratulated Marla Johnson Norris and her husband, both of Aristotle Design, for such a mind-blowing fantastic web optimization presentation. Hire her–you can’t lose!

Here’s a sampling of the pins I got tonite (not my optimal bathroom-at-4pm shot, but good for now).

emiko's pins

SNAG 09 pins

Alrighty, then; it’s 2:43am, my usual bedtime. Better head up to the 28th floor to get some shut-eye. Tomorrow will be another crazy day!

In hour 2 of Marla Johnson Norris‘ presentation for the Professional Development Seminar, (yes, that previous post was only the first hour!) she whipped through the benefits of Social Networking.

Harriete Estel Berman's facebook

Yes, the dreaded Facebook–ok, maybe I’m being overly dramatic in my distaste for connecting with creepy high school ghosts, but from a business standpoint, it really can work for you. The selling point: the Media LOVES it. Sure, creepoman can still find you, but so do curators, tv stations, and gallery owners!

Which brings me to the next dreaded portal that is even starting to steal Facebook’s thunder:

twitter

Twitter–did you know that 54% of twitterees are female? And the Media eats this stuff up; through twitter the news channels find out about breaking stories like the Santa Barbara Fires, Swine flu, etc.

So if you are considering tweeting, remember these points:

Have a Strategy. Be Interesting & Positive. Relate it to the News. Be Search Engine friendly. Integrate with blogs and other social networking portals.

Which brings me to the last point I want to share–link up your social networking sites, by using the SHAREBAR and bookmarks. See example below from Sienna Gallery. See the Facebook icon and addthis icon at the far left? Go, join, get found.

Sienna Gallery

Maximizing the Online Revolution: Improving Web Performance & Design

Marla Johnson Norris

Marla Johnson Norris, CEO of Aristotle Design wowed us for 2 hours straight with an amazing presentation completely catered to jewelers, giving us the lowdown on what makes successful websites. She not only laid it out in terms we could understand (not too techie), but had example after example of SNAG member’s websites and what could be improved or tweaked, or what was hitting it right on. No holds barred, she went to the top and scrutinized even the PDS organizers’ websites.

Let me share with you some of the highlights I’ve gleaned from her Top 10 Tips to improving your website performance.
KNOW YOUR KEYWORDS:  use your Artist Name, Jewelry types/Materials/Trends, Specific Design Terms. Start Broad and narrow down; you’re aiming for that sweet spot where a lot of people are searching for your keyword, but there isn’t much competition for that keyword.

REPEAT your KEYWORDS on your site in multiple places: hypertext links, image titles, title pages, title tags, website address, headline font.

HAVE CONTENT ON YOUR HOMEPAGE: Just having a pretty image doesn’t cut it, you NEED to have text (and text that is not a rasterized image), content, and links. Content on POP UP windows or PULL DOWN MENUS won’t be seen by the search engines. Now, before you freak out, do this at least: have your SITE MAP to your website posted, which will list all the hypertext links.

FLASH-driven SITES ARE BAD. Yes, this I was aware of and had my pretty flash site redone into HTML so the search engine spiders can find you. Flash sites are basically seen as one big image–so get over your flash selves and get with it!

MUSIC IS BAD. Nuf said.

PROVIDE PRICING ONLINE: Make it easy for people to buy your work, saves your time and theirs.

LABEL ALL YOUR IMAGES. Be specific, concise with your file names and don’t forget to label your Alt Tags and Captions. Flickr is a good example where they make it easy to label the tags for all your images. Abbreviated labels, or using your own coding system (like eo_id346) does not help others find your work, nor does it help Google Images find you either.

Marla Johnson Norris

CREATE APPROPRIATE TITLE TAGS, and LIMIT THEM TO 65 CHARACTERS MAX. This was the big whammy for all of us, especially those people who use web mac templates for their websites, which often have default, lame title tags. The TItle Tag being what comes up on that very top bar of your browser, above the URL. This is definitely a programmer/coding kind of thing, but UBER IMPORTANT. Every character counts, so GET RID OF :: | | _ _ in your title tags. The FIRST WORD is the most important, the second word the second important, and so on.  If your title tag says “Home :: Welcome”, you better change it quick. “Francesca Vitali Paper Jewelry” is ideal.

And not that, but EVERY PAGE SHOULD HAVE A DIFFERENT TITLE TAG. Otherwise, you’re only competing with yourself.

My last AHA tidbit to share is: DESIGN FOR CURRENT SCREEN RESOLUTION. Yes, this sucks for those of us whose sites are coming from the age of 800 x 600 pixels. Lesson: redesign every 2 years. Stats are that only 8% of web users have a max screen resolution of that size. Today less than 32% of people are viewing at 1024 x 768!

To sum up, remember these points: Make it EASY, Have CLEAR CATEGORIES, Every page leads to SALES, BIG IMAGES, PROFESSIONAL looking DESIGN.

WHew!