Would you do it again?

[SunsetSue]

Could I please impose on you to check out the same two blogs and give me your opinions? I have made as many changes as I think I am capable of with my limited abilities. The links are in my signature banner.

I am trying to create a professional blog to increase traffic to my art website where I have my artwork for sale, and cannot choose between these two sites. Are there any major faults in either of them?

Should I keep one for more personal stuff and one for professional? I really appreciate you taking time to do this for me.
__________________

[Modified Cars]

Both of them look great Sue. I would use both of them to promote your site it you have the time to post on both. Maybe give the one a more personal touch.

Nice artwork too. :)

[SunsetSue]

Thankyou for looking and commenting, Modified. I appreciate the comment about the art also. I checked out your landscape site (no interest in cars!!! LOL) and was pleased to see it load so quickly, which is a treat for dialup. I have now bookmarked it and will refer to it a lot as it is great. I also looked at the candle site and once again, it loaded very quickly. What is the reason for that? I would like for my site to load quickly but think the pictures slow it down.

[ses5909]

I like the idea of your art bistro blog being more personal.

[shyflower]

Lovely artwork Sue! I especially like your poppy and your hibiscus! :)

I like your Art Bistro Blog and I think it works well with your web site. I think to be effective, your paintworks blog needs a lot of work. I'm not sure that's one you wanted us to consider. If it is, I can go into more detail.

The one thing I don't like on your Art Bistro blog is your monetization. You can either run your art business through your blog or blog for monetization. IMO,They don't play well with each other.

[SunsetSue]

Thanks Sara, I think I will keep Art Bistro as a more personal site and promote the heck out of the website with it but keep the Paintworks and website for the business side.

Thanks Linda, I was actually trying to decide if I should keep one blog over the other but most of the response has been to keep the Art Bistro as a more personal site and the Paintworks as the business site. Paintworks links directly to the website and purchases can be made there so was thinking it was not necessary to set up a monetary system right on the blog. Perhaps I should set up Art Bistro that way so people can buy directly from the blog. Thanks so much for your comments on the artwork, I really appreciate the feedback.

[shyflower]

Okay, if your paintworks blog is your business blog, the first problem you have is your home page. The SEs will see it as a splash or entry page. Since it has very little content, it won't be indexed or if it is, it won't ever rank well with your competition.
Your home page should have two functions. 1) to give your prospective customers an overview of your business and 2) to acquaint them with the more detailed benefits and features of your business that are available on your web site.
I'm going to be frank, but I am not trying to be hurtful, so please bear with me.
You are one-click away from losing every single visitor to Paintworks. On accessing the Paintworks home page, you are expecting visitors to immediately click to another largely unknown area of your business. Experts say that your content needs to be presented so that a visitor is always within three clicks of conversion... that is, either your contact page or your shopping cart.

A lot of webmasters seem to believe that when you start a business homepage with "Welcome to..." it sends a warm fuzzy to a visitor. It doesn't. It didn't work at WalMart and it doesn't work on the web. Forget Walmart, things on the Web are fast. People are looking for fast answers and precision in navigation.
Don't welcome me to your gallery. Tell me why it's important to me that I take a look. I NEED to know that. Why do I care that they are original works of art by Sue Cowan? You have to tell me why. Unless I am looking for you, I can find original art by thousands of people on the Internet. What makes yours special? You have to tell me.

Your about section:

You are a self-taught artist who paints mainly in acrylics, and occasionally in oils.You produce paintings that express your intense interest in color and light.

Why is that important to me as your customer? Do I care if you're self taught? What are you doing to captivate my interest in color and light?

Take the blogroll off. If you want people to buy your paintings, don't even think of suggesting they visit another site. Put all of your energy into getting them to your gallery and/or your contact page or shopping cart.

Take the MBL widget off. Unless your recent readers are well-known art critics or high-heeled customers, as your prospective customer, I don't care who they are and neither should you. Better... if you have testimonials or reviews of your work, put them in your sidebar. Every word on your site needs to be focused on your work and why I must buy it... why I can't live without it!

Keep the Good Comments Cannonball's comments (http://paintworks.wordpress.com/paintworks/resting-geese/#comment-10) on resting geese were wonderful. The next comment "This is an amazing painting" is fluff. Cannonball commented as you should be writing.

Tell people what inspired you to paint the painting on your home page. What you tried to accomplish and what you feel you were successful in accomplishing. Tell your reader if you were surprised at anything that evolved from your work. I know in writing, often the work takes off on its own and surprises me. I would assume in something as creative as painting, the same is often true. Sharing it with your visitors draws them into your work and makes it personal for them. That's what you need to do to sell your art.

(This is what I added) – Are your paintings available as prints or original only? Are the prints numbered? You needn't put the price on the home page if you have it on a conversion or other detail page, but in that case, you need to tell your visitors that the image link takes them to details (and set the image link to do that). Right now, clicking on that link takes me to another blog page and then to an empty jpeg rendering. Remember... three clicks and I'm gone. Give me the chance to leave with a receipt for my purchase.

Take all the fluff out of your sidebar. No one cares how many visitors you've had and several of your sidebar items have code mistakes which are displaying as such.

I really hope some of this helps you. You have a wonderful talent for art and I hope you do well.

[SunsetSue]

Thankyou Linda. That is exactly what I was looking for; a good, honest critique. I do not find your comments hurtful at all, just to the point. I needed to hear that. I was thinking that the more junk I had on that page, the better but now that I know, I will work on it and give it a good tuneup. I can not thank you enough for this assessment. I had no idea what I should put where but you really nailed it down for me. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou. Check back later to see what I have done.

[shyflower]

Hi Sue -
It looks a lot better to me. One thing you need to do is make clicking on the image resolve to your purchase page (http://www.myartclub.com/art.cfm?XYZ=1143&UVW=18&PAY=2), especially in the case where it resolves only to your jpeg image.

I was surprised that you removed the whole "About the Artist" area. That isn't what I intended to convey. For instance, we have a signed and low-numbered print from the artist Tel Hicks in our living room. I was lucky enough to meet the artist in person. Now, when newcomers visit our home, I can proudly tell them about the painting and the artist. I know where he is from, where he studied, and exactly how he came up with the composition.

What I meant to convey is that your about area should give your visitor information that they can "show off" to newcomers to their private galleries.

For instance, I think it is cool that you are self-taught and that you come from a very artistic family where you had both mother and grandfather to nurture your talent. You just need to find a way to present that information that is more user friendly. Think if you were my visitor, what you might want to know about the artist who painted the painting hanging in my living room. Put that information into your about section in a format you'd like me to use to "show off" your work to my visitor. Help me sell your next painting through showing the one I purchased.

I really like the new content under the goose painting. I have a special place in my heart for wild geese and believe me... if I had the money that painting would be mine!

[shyflower]

I also wanted to mention that I think you should keep an rss feed prominent at the top of your sidebar. You have a wonderful opportunity to provide original content about each of your individual painting to your readers through blog posts. RSS feeds are a great way to spread the word about your blog.

A subscribe by email is also a good idea for those who are specifically interested in new works and works that you display on your blog.

Filling your home page with several picture-posts will show the depth of your skills and be a good representation of the subject matter of your paintings. For instance, someone may not be a goose lover, but have a special preference for your flowers, such as those I mentioned earlier. The goose painting might not lead them to your gallery, where displaying the flowers would directly hit their special interest and result in added sales of your work.

It's also very important that you emphasize whether there are prints available or if each painting is for sale only to one buyer. This information will work for you to draw sales from either those who are looking for prints or those who buy only original works of art.

[SunsetSue]

Linda, I will add more of my paintings to the front page as you suggested, however, I do not know how to go about making them clickable so that they will go to the gallery catalogue page. Dang, I felt so cheeky yesterday when I figured out how to make a page go there!! LOL

I have my artist profile on a separate page which is under the Pages category on the right hand side. As I get better at this, I would like that column to stay with you as you scroll down the page looking at paintings, if you know what I mean. But that will be later. I am going to set the whole thing up on my own domain soon.

Thanks so much for all the details, it sure helps to get things working right. I think I shall have look into prints as that is probably where I will have the most sales. Your ideas and information have really gotten me thinking about all this stuff so in the early part of the new year I shall be very busy. The main thing for me was I had to know whether or not people liked my art and to my great surprise they do.:blush:

[shyflower]

From what I could see you are loading your pictures as attachments (uploads) in your dashboard? If this is true, when you "send to editor" you see the text in the post area.

You have two tags. The first is your link tag

<a href =" "> </a>

which surrounds your image (makes it clickable).
<img src=" " />

Change the first tag to the link on your purchase page. This is how it would look for your goose picture:

<a href="http://www.myartclub.com/art.cfm?XYZ=1143&UVW=18&PAY=2"><img src="http://paintworks.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/merged-geese-500.jpg" /></a>

This makes the image clickable to its purchase page.

However, if your front page is a "page" and not a "post" (and it appears to be), I wouldn't add the images there. Rather than have your front page be a static page, I would make it into a regular blog post page that shows 5 or more image "posts". That's where you'll get the most mileage out of a feed I think. That would also get rid of the "Welcome to Paintworks" title on your first page. It would shorten up your visitors' need to click by one click and, I believe, really open up the doors to your ecommerce gallery.