selling

The Optimize Your Profile Page for Sales article proved that customization is a popular topic. Today, let’s apply customization and optimization hints to the “show work” (your art and t-shirt) pages.

First, let’s look at what a show work page should do. show work page example

1. Honor the art by displaying it in a clean, gallery-style environment

2. Enable the viewer to see the work at a distance and close up

3. Allow the visitor to learn about the work/have enough information to envision the art print or t-shirt in their space or on their body

4. Share the work with friends, family, others via email

5. Inspire/start the order process

And for websites like RedBubble: allow the visitor to find other art and design that interests them; a next step rather than prompting an exit.

Other ideas are welcomed. Simply list them below in the comments area.

RedBubble addresses numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5. You can benefit greatly by sharing information about your work – #4. This helps you on two levels:

1. Relationships sell art – even a newly formed understanding about an artwork or design.

2. Search engines love to be right. Their job is to match a query (search) to a result (content), so any relevant information that you can supply on the show work page can help search engines find your page(s).

E.g., if your browser title says that the image is of St. Kilda, and the title of the work is St. Kilda, and your show work page description is about St. Kilda, and the tags include St. Kilda … well, you have a pretty good shot at ranking in web search for St. Kilda. You could do even better by noting the medium (canvas, print, t-shirt) if possible.

Here are a few “extras” that can help you merchandise your show work pages.

Remember that you’ll need to use RedBubble formatting to make many of these items appear.

You can show a detail of the artwork or t-shirt design.
Matt Simner placed a detail of his t-shirt design next to a full view of the design here. You’ll want to save the image for Web (making it lighter weight) with a width of no more than 335 pixels wide.

^{How to? You can upload the detail image via MyBubble and choose not to publish it. After the image is uploaded, right-click (option+click on the Mac) and “copy the image location.” Paste the image location into the product description using the “!” mark at the beginning and end of the URL. See the RedBubble formatting cheatsheet here.}

Small images of the finished product.
We noted in the previous Selling article that examples of the real product help shoppers envision it in their places and spaces.

Luxquarta also noted on their show work page that the image would look great as a “Laminated print, Mounted print or Canvas print.”

And another example of the product in real life.

Like this? You might also like …
RedBubble members can show small thumbnails of similar products on show work pages. Yanmos does this very thing here. The design for sale is also available as a free iPhone wallpaper too. With enough views of the iPhone image the shopper might just buy the shirt!

You can also use the search category trick that we discussed in the previous post to provide visitors with category links that show a broader assortment of similar work.

Small touches make visitors feel at home
It’s always the “little things” that make the difference – like RedBubble packaging, t-shirt inserts, swing tags, etc. Along these lines, Definatalie extends her design aesthetic to hand drawn headers and other visual touches that relate her Profile page to her show work pages.

Added protection
Some members opt to manually place a copyright on their show work pages. While RedBubble adds a copyright to all pages, you can add a line reminding visitors about copyright.

Rupydetequila added a softly-worded note, while boilerplate copy is available via Creative Commons or other reference websites., e.g.,

“This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia.”

or

“All rights reserved. Copyright Rupydetequila. Please do not use my images without permission. Feel free to convo me with any questions about this item. Thanks for checking out my work With love Rupydetequila.”

Building your audience
RedBubble allows visitors to email a link to their friends. You can go a step further by asking visitors to:

1. Subscribe to your newsletter
2. Follow you on Twitter
3. Become a Fan of your Facebook business page

Matt Simner does this in his Stay in Touch section on each show work page.

Building your network
We’ve all been beat over the head about Facebook and Twitter, so let’s just say that your profile and show work pages can include links to your Twitter profile page and Facebook Pages (fan pages or your personal profile).

Go forth and personalize
I should reiterate that the goal is to show the work in the best light possible whilst not burdening the page load time with tons of heavy images.

There are many other customizations that members have made to their show work pages. Feel free to share links to your ideas and pages below.

Also, if you’re interested in helping all RedBubble members sell their work, hop on over to the Sell Art and T-shirts group here.

Regards,
Jason