selling

A merchandiser’s goal is to make shopping easier – often resulting in more sales. If you’ve bought an item from a store mannequin display or purchased an item that was featured on an aisle end (an “end cap”), you’ve experienced a merchandiser’s work. The same goes for those of you that have added a suggested item to your online shopping cart.

Here are a few ways to merchandise the art and designs on your RedBubble profile page.

The first thing a merchandiser does is to think like a customer
How do you search for art or other products online and what elements of the process guide your buying decision?

E.g., which keywords would you use to search for an (you can insert a term here) image or a t-shirt? Jo has a good, quick example here. What information would help you bond with the image? What price point will help the customer decide to buy your art or t-shirt?

Be unique
Your images and designs are yours alone, but your written voice has a lot of power in terms of making the shopping experience more fun, or educational, or simply pleasing to the spirit. If there’s a story behind a term or regional colloquialism, be sure to explain it.

Show the shopper what else you have in store
Show a print next to a greeting card as a way of up-selling shoppers from a greeting card purchase to a print. Better yet, pair the print and the card and suggest that the shopper purchase both. Learn how to post an image in the description field here.

“Approximately 30 percent of category buyers also made purchases in the past year of items where art and illustrations were a prominent feature of the item. The most frequently purchased other art item were calendars and stationery items, bought by just over half of those who made other art-related purchasers. T-shirts (44 percent) and mugs or glasses (40 percent) were the second and third most popular art-related items purchased.”
^{Source: UM Study, 2006}

Rearrange the display case as you add new work
New artwork pushes down older work on your profile page. Carefully curate the first six designs on your profile page with a mix of best-selling and new designs. Press the selling designs and test the new ones. You can change the order of your images by clicking on the Art tab in your MyBubble; use the up and down arrows on the far right-hand side of the page.

Tell the shopper why to buy
Where would your photograph look great? Is it a seasonal work? Is it reminiscent of a place or space? Much like a Realtor’s open house, shoppers want to envision themselves in your space and frame of mind.

“Most art buyers are willing to spend more for a piece of art that really ‘speaks’ to them. They are highly value oriented and want the art they purchase to represent a good value for the money. At the same time, the majority of art buyers are not particularly motivated by owning an original or one-of-a-kind piece of art. In most cases a good quality reproduction works for them, as long as the buyer really likes the picture.”
^{Source: UM Study, 2006}

Have a sale
Create your own promotion by lowering margins for a period of time. Tell your customer base, friends, and family – if only to have them spread the word. Use holidays as a reason to hold a sale and reach shoppers when they’re in a buying mode. See holiday calendars for Australia, the UK, and USA here.

Use the Buyers’ Booth to expose testimonials – written, spoken, and pictorial – as endorsements of your work.
There is an odd psychology around both wanting to discover something new and wanting what others already have. If you can allot the time, create a buyers’ book or collection of your work in offline settings as a way of helping buyers to see your work in their space. Overall, tee artists have done a very good job at this. For print artists, you might find interest in this statistic:

“In terms of the size of art bought, a majority (49 percent) reported that their most recent art item purchased was medium sized, or approximately 20-24 inches by 28-36 inches. The next most popular size was small, approximately 16 by 20 inches or smaller, bought by 27 percent of art buyers most recently. Large-sized art, approximately 30 by 40 inches or poster-sized, was bought by 20 percent of art buyers most recently with only 5 percent reporting their most recent art purchase was over-sized, or approximately 40 by 60 inches or larger.”
^{Source: UM Study, 2006}

Tag accurately
Use the Google keyword tool to help identify tags (keywords) that are searched for often. Accurate tagging is the best way to ensure that your work shows up as part of both RedBubble and search engine query results. We can’t emphasize this enough and mention it frequently in the forums.

Until next time
There’s your Merchandising 101 primer. Merchandising is both an art and a science. We could teach an entire course or curriculum about using metrics to guide merchandising decisions, but the idea above is to start small, keep the process personal, and to measure – albeit simply – the improvements that an extra bit of marketing polish can make.

Have a success story to share or a question? Please comment below.

Regards,
Jason

Enjoyed what you read here? Join the Selling Group on RedBubble.