 | Begin Collecting E-mail Addresses Today!
 | Even if you don't yet have a site set up, begin an e-mail
list. Approximately 50 percent of the people who visit your
booth will have an e-mail address. Unlike post office
mailings, sending e-mails is virtually cost free. You can send
a notice to 1000 people with the same effort as it as it takes
to contact one. And what better way to launch a new site than
to invite 1000 people who loved your work at shows to the
"grand opening"?
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| Choose a Catchy Domain Name
| A great domain name can be a magic selling tool. The right
name will stick in a person's mind and have a logical
association with you, the artist. Jayne DeMarcay was fortunate
to find DeMarcay.com was still available. Now her clients can
write her at Jayne@Demarcay.com and find her work at www.DeMarcay.com.
Laurie Fowler and Bill Thelen decided their own names were too
easy to misspell, so we helped them search for a name that
described what kind of work they do. Now you can find them at www.FineArtFiber.com.
Even if you're not ready to put your work online, don't put
off registering a domain name, or you may find someone else has
the name. More than 20,000 new
domain names are being registered every day.
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| Make Your Web Site Hosting Company Really Work for
You
| Web server hosting is getting better and cheaper than ever.
But not all hosting companies offer the tools you will
need to make your site successful. After redesigning the www.MaryMcSweeney.com
domain, we moved it to a web server with superior tools and
services. Now Mary has access to web server log analysis
software which tells her where her web site visitors came
from, what they saw at her site, and even what keywords they
used in a search engine to find her. All this and we were able
to get her monthly hosting fee reduced from $50 to $12.50
per month as well! |
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| Successful Web Sites Are Well Promoted Sites
| No matter how great a web site you have, it won't work for
you if your potential clients don't visit. Use your art shows
to bring people who love your work directly to your site. Use
signs, banners, and handouts. Just including your URL on your
business card is not enough. Another important source of
traffic will be the search engines. Getting top listings is
both an art and a science. Check out Mark Mowen's www.LeatherStuff.com
site by typing "leather handbag" into any of the top
search engines. Or search for "Titanium Wedding
Rings" on Yahoo and see how well Chris and Sandy Booth's
www.RingsForever.com does. (Chris and Sandy's site has
been so successful they have been able to give up art shows
entirely!)
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| Make Your Pages Fast Loading
| With the ever-increasing volume of web sites being
published, make yours stand out as being consumer friendly.
Pages should load as fast as possible and should have logical
navigation. How many sites have you visited where it seemed
like the pages took forever to load or were confusing to get
around? We specialize in creating images that look great and
load fast. We just completed redoing Lance Munn's web site www.VicLan.com
and the pages now load in half the time they previously
did. That's especially important for artists because their web
sites generally contain pictures of their artwork. |
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