Working the Web
This web stuff's funny. I haven't built sites since - oooh, way back in the early 2000s. Things sure have changed since then. Yes sir. Now it's all keywords and analytics and SEO. Whatever happened to "build it and they will come"? Oh, right - that was just a terrible Kevin Costner movie.
ANYWAY - using Google Analytics - which is magic and powered by fairy dust or something - I have been able to see exactly where people have been landing on Ruth's new website and where they were leaving. Turns out lots of folks were entering the site at the Virtual Friends Offer, then checking out the Gallery, then using the Contact form. She's had a few commissions out of that - so it all makes sense.
We've only had a few enquiries about full commissioning though and looking at the path people took through the site suggested a reason why that might be. It looks like people were clicking through the site like this: Home Page > About the Artist > Commissioning > Pricing --> EXIT.
There are two interesting things about this. The first is that it seems like lots of people skip the Gallery section. I assume this is because they've seen examples of the work on the home page. The second is that they exit after the pricing section.
Now - the pricing section is buried quite deep. It's in a second tier of the site - internally linked from the Commissioning page and the FAQ page. I did that on purpose.
Ruth and I made a decision early on not to list hard prices on the site. This was for two reasons:
1. Prices will vary according to the complexity of the work. There are lots of factors, such as the medium used, its size, the number of subjects painted, whether a background is included and so on.
2. Basically, we wanted the work to retain its value as art rather than be "portraits on demand". That's a whole other market that we wanted to avoid associations with.
As a result, there are no actual prices in the "Pricing" section. It seems I underestimated folks need to know how much things cost before they'll even make an enquiry based on a) the fact that the majority of contact we've had has come from the "Virtual Friends Offer", which has a fixed price and b) people tend to disappear from the site after discovering they can't immediately find out how much it might cost to commission, say, a three foot high oil painting.
I've made a couple of immediate changes to try to influence this, without actually publishing fixed prices. First - I've highlighted the "Contact" info in the commissioning section. Second, I've created a Get a Quote form and made this a main link.
This form looks high-tech - but all it does is send an email to Ruth with all the details she needs to estimate how much a painting will cost to produce. So, you fill in the form and get an answer from Ruth within a day. It seems like a way to give out prices while retaining exclusivity. At this stage though, I don't have enough data to know if it's working yet.
What do you think of this solution? Any other ideas?
ANYWAY - using Google Analytics - which is magic and powered by fairy dust or something - I have been able to see exactly where people have been landing on Ruth's new website and where they were leaving. Turns out lots of folks were entering the site at the Virtual Friends Offer, then checking out the Gallery, then using the Contact form. She's had a few commissions out of that - so it all makes sense.
We've only had a few enquiries about full commissioning though and looking at the path people took through the site suggested a reason why that might be. It looks like people were clicking through the site like this: Home Page > About the Artist > Commissioning > Pricing --> EXIT.
There are two interesting things about this. The first is that it seems like lots of people skip the Gallery section. I assume this is because they've seen examples of the work on the home page. The second is that they exit after the pricing section.
Now - the pricing section is buried quite deep. It's in a second tier of the site - internally linked from the Commissioning page and the FAQ page. I did that on purpose.
Ruth and I made a decision early on not to list hard prices on the site. This was for two reasons:
1. Prices will vary according to the complexity of the work. There are lots of factors, such as the medium used, its size, the number of subjects painted, whether a background is included and so on.
2. Basically, we wanted the work to retain its value as art rather than be "portraits on demand". That's a whole other market that we wanted to avoid associations with.
As a result, there are no actual prices in the "Pricing" section. It seems I underestimated folks need to know how much things cost before they'll even make an enquiry based on a) the fact that the majority of contact we've had has come from the "Virtual Friends Offer", which has a fixed price and b) people tend to disappear from the site after discovering they can't immediately find out how much it might cost to commission, say, a three foot high oil painting.
I've made a couple of immediate changes to try to influence this, without actually publishing fixed prices. First - I've highlighted the "Contact" info in the commissioning section. Second, I've created a Get a Quote form and made this a main link.
This form looks high-tech - but all it does is send an email to Ruth with all the details she needs to estimate how much a painting will cost to produce. So, you fill in the form and get an answer from Ruth within a day. It seems like a way to give out prices while retaining exclusivity. At this stage though, I don't have enough data to know if it's working yet.
What do you think of this solution? Any other ideas?