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Building Rapport With Customers To Ensure Sales |
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Building Rapport With Customers To Ensure Sales
One of the most important obstacles to overcome when presenting and making artwork available for purchase online is finding a way to connect with your customers. Building a rapport with your customers substantially increases the odds a transaction will be completed.
There are two aspects of e-commerce that we often take for granted:
1. Consistency of the transaction process when making a purchase.
2. The elements of a site we reference to build the trust needed to make a purchase such as store policies, contact information, artist & art information, show schedules, etc.
One of the core elements that we strive to accomplish here at ArtBeacon is to help create a mechanism to provide consistency in the transaction process for artwork. Every ArtBeacon site/store utilizes the same transaction flow. The transaction flow that we have adopted is identical to that which has been adopted by major online retailers since the mid and late 1990's. To better understand the transaction and order fulfillment process, please read "How The Order Process Works".
After spending time building your site/store it is easy to become overly focused on constructing your site/store solely from the vantage point of an artist. Put yourself in the role of a customer who visits your site. What aspects of your site would give you, the customer, confidence to place an order?
Four Things You Can Do To Build Rapport:
1. Provide basic information about your store policies (such as return, shipping, and privacy policies). Doing so will provide your customers added confidence and security as they investigate your web site/store for the first time. Until they have purchased something from you, they will not be familiar with your reliability or the quality of your work. It is a difficult task to overcome this hesitation by the customer, but once you do you are more likely to have recurring sales and recommendations made to others by your customers.
2. Include information about yourself on your site that will tell your viewers about you and what inspires your artistic creativity. Market research has shown that artist web sites thrive when information is provided to viewers about the artist and/or particular pieces of artwork. Online art buyers react to personal stories that pull them into your work and your creative mind. Accomplish this by adding a Biography, an Artist Resume, an Artist Statement and/or a custom page detailing information about a body of artwork you've created.
3. Inform your web site visitors as to where your artwork is showing or where it has been shown. Providing interested parties information about where your work can be found for in person viewing is a great way to create a relationship with an art buyer. They can see firsthand the type and quality of work you produce. They can then pursue buying artwork of interest either at the location where your work is showing or place an order online. Creating a page on your site noting "See My Work At..." is a great way to provide a schedule of your work on display.
4. Utilize your customer database for regular mailings (every 4 weeks) of news and updates about your work and where it is on display. Each ArtBeacon member site/store has a "Subscribe" link in the navigation. This allows non-customers the ability to provide you their contact information for such updates. Customers that make purchases from your site/store are automatically added to your customer database. The ArtBeacon newsletter application can automatically import your customer database for mailings such as these. View your customer database here.
Taking the time to view your site from the perspective of a potential customer and going through the necessary steps to build rapportwith your customers will put you on the path to success. Remember, posting artwork and prices on a web site don't magically translate to sales. A carefully crafted and customer-oriented web site will provide you the best opportunity to make sales online.
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Did You Know? - New Themes Can Be Previewed
One of the best features of ArtBeacon is that you can change the look and feel of your site instantly, with no impact to your existing information, utilizing "Themes".
It is also possible to preview how your site will look with a new "Theme" before switching to it. To do so, visit the "Themes" page, select your "Theme" and click on the "Preview" button. A new window will open with a display of how your site's Index page will appear with your new "Theme".
Note: The displayed preview page is for display purposes only and the links found on the page will not work.
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Forums & Community
We remind you that you can discuss account setup, business practices, recent site developments, and suggestions, with fellow members and the ArtBeacon Development Team in the ArtBeacon Forum. >> Access The Forum |
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