emiko-o reware

Gallery Panel SNAG

The last segment of the PDS program, The Evolving Role of the Gallery in a Virtual World of Commerce, gave us the insider perspective of what it takes to run a gallery in this age of internet commerce, not to mention a bad economy. Each gallery owner had 5 minutes to show a powerpoint presentation about their gallery and mission. From left to right: Ruth Synderman of Works Gallery, Beth Ann Gerstein of Society of Arts and Crafts, Sienna Patti of Sienna Gallery, Whitney Couch of ObjectFetish, Patti Bleicher of Gallery Loupe, Karen Lorene of Facére.

Questions posed to the group were:

1. What does a Brick and Mortar Store (all are physical sites, except for ObjectFetish being the sole online-only store) have to offer that justifies the 50/50 split on sales? Why wouldn’t an artist just sell retail through their own site or on Etsy?

2. How are they finding and educating new, young collectors?

3. And how is the internet affecting their sales?

Answers (higlights):

1. “the gallery is there to facilitate the future of the artist,”-Sienna Patti. “It’s ALL of our jobs to be the advocate for art jewelry,”-Karen Lorene.

2. Co-sponsoring important art jewelry exhibitions with local art museums, as Patti Bleicher did with the recent Helen Drutt Collection show; brings in new audiences. “All my customers are collectors,” says Karen, who makes a point to educate every customer about the artist they are purchasing from, even with a letter welcoming them to the world of art jewelry collecting.

3. Whitney finds that the competition, like Etsy, pushes her to work even harder to promote her artists; she encourages the competition!

Thanks to the PDS organizers for all of their hard work: w

SNAG PDS organizers

From left to right: Andy Cooperman, Harriete Estel Berman, Don Friedlich, Ken Bova. Also, much thanks to Etsy and MJSA for sponsoring this program.

This will be the last year that the PDS will be a Pre-Conference event. Next year, PDS will be incorporated into the SNAG conference itself (no more flying in the night before, maybe…)

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!

loews philadelphia hotel

First day: Checked into the SNAG Conference hotel, Loews Philadelphia; an Art Deco building, comfortable, and has a boutique feel. Just had a chance to run down a block to the Reading Terminal Market on 12th St and grab some fresh fruit and get back for the Professional Development Seminar at 2pm.

PDS Gallery Panel

Here are the lovely ladies of the Gallery panel portion of the afternoon, waiting for the Professional Development Seminar to start. Left to right: Karen Lorene (Facére Gallery), Beth Ann Gerstein (Society of Arts & Crafts), Ruth Synderman (Works Gallery), Whitney Couch (Object Fetish), Sienna Patti (Sienna Gallery) (not pictured: Patti Bleicher of Gallery Loupe).

A jam-packed 4-hour afternoon of very very important info, with the theme, “Maximizing the Online Revolution: Websites and Beyond”. And while I’ve been to my share of website optimization sessions (and having a boyfriend in the industry doesn’t hurt), I learned a TON of stuff that I will share with you all later tonite. But off to the pinswap–it’s 7:13 and I don’t want to miss out on the good ones!