Working with Artfire's New Layout

Last October, Artfire changed the user interface of its site to make it equally accessible by mobile phone, tablet, and desktop. Apparently, the site didn't want to force people to download an app just to browse the site. (Apps are expensive to develop and must be updated to accommodate new phone models. Also, Etsy has a shopping app, but I've heard it isn't as easy to navigate as getting on a desktop to view the site itself.)

Shortly after Artfire made the changes, google announced that they will start to actively penalize websites that are not mobile-friendly at some point in the future, so even if you do not personally use a smart phone or tablet to browse the web, you can't say that being mobile-friendly isn't important.

Here's what's different and how you can work with the new layout...

Article Roundup - Jan. 27

Do You Want to Get Published? Learn the "Money Shot" Layouts - these layouts work for creating advertising just as well as people who want to get published

5 Things to Watch for in Your Blog Analytics - although this is written for bloggers, it has some relevance for other small businesses

How to Influence & Persuade - has a nice infographic

New Research: See How the Top Brand Marketers Use Instagram - has a nice infographic. You can also download the full study. You can use this info to help you figure out frequency and other mundane, how-to details.

How Budgeting Money Taught Me Time Management

Working with Photo Metadata

Have you ever wondered how google knows that a given image is relevant to your search when you use image search?

They look at a couple of different things - like file name and the content of the webpage around it - but one of the big factors is the image's metadata.

What is Metadata?
Metadata is information that is attached to a file on the web (such as an HTML webpage or a photo) that is usually not visible to the general public, but can be read by search engines or viewed using certain software.

Article Roundup - Jan. 20

This week, I'm only posting one article because it's really long (but very worthwhile):

40 Things to Do When Business is Slow - This article is chock-full of ideas. It's not a quick read, but great for ideas.

I'm also including one tool, which should be helpful should you ship international:

Duty Calculator - even if your customers have to pay the duty fees, it's useful to give them a heads up of what it might cost them.

How to Make an Amazing Item Look Awful. (And How To Fix It.)

When you first start to sell online, you can be confident that you have a great product. In fact, you KNOW people love it because they fawn over it at shows.

But then, it doesn't sell online. 

Why? 

It could be your photos. Trust, me, it's possible to make an amazing item look awful. 

To show you what I mean, I'm going to use an amazing piece that I got from Anna of Crafts of the Past. It's made using an antique jade archer ring that's been turned into a necklace. For jade, it's got an amazing range and pattern of colors and a cool piece of history to boot. Anna has a lot of really neat pieces incorporating antique elements. They all look lovely in person.

However, even this amazing piece can look awful under the wrong photography conditions.

Here I've intentionally photographed it doing all the wrong things:

Article Roundup - Jan 13

Natural Social Media Marketing - 50 Ideas

Jewelry Photography Tips from MK Digital Direct. This is a pretty comprehensive list of tips, specifically for jewelry.

Photographing Desire - this is in relation specifically to jewelry supplies, but I like the general approach. (Come up with keywords for what emotions you would like to evoke. Then plan your shots from there.)

10 Easy Ways to Promote Your Online Store

63 Awesome Facebook Marketing Techniques - this one has a lovely infograph

Looking at What Gets into a Collection or Treasury

Handmade market websites such as Etsy, Artfire, and Zibbet usually populate their front page with items that all seem to go together in a theme. For example, they might all relate to a visit to the beach or they might feature a particular color combination.

Now the editors of the site don't usually go around and select the items themselves. Often, they allow visitors and shop keepers to compile these collections, or "treasuries" as they are called on Etsy. The website administrators merely look through the collections for ones they'd like to feature on the front page or in selected emails. Creating and appearing in collections can be a great way to get noticed.

If you sell on a venue like Artfire or Etsy, here are some tips for appearing in collections:

Article Roundup - Jan 6.

It's the new year. Thinking of making some adjustments? Tweaking your brand, product lines, or ads? I've pulled a few resources for that.

If You Want to Succeed, Here are 5 Things You Need to Do Differently

28 Creative Branding & Identity Design examples for your inspiration - I picked this one because it shows some of the idea sketches behind the process for how and why they ended up with the logos.

The Art of Alignment - If you want to make your ads, newsletters, graphics, and other visual designs look professional, paying attention to alignment is probably going to help. This blog has a neat and tidy set of 5 tips for working with alignment. The same blog has a lot of other mini-posts related to graphic design, such as Font Pairing Like a Pro.

The Font Snob Club: 25 more Free Fonts - I can't say how often I see the same fonts, over and over again. If you're looking to tweak your logo or brand, it might be worthwhile to consider a font that not a lot of other people use.

Pantone Color Pallet for Spring 2015 - Each year, Pantone dictates much of the color pallet used by fashion and home decor. If you sell colorful stuff, you may want to check out the anticipated color pallet.

By the way last year, Pantone decided to use orchid as the color of the year, with a version of mint and coral in the supporting color pallets. I ended up seeing lots of corals, and mints in the stores this year. (Mint was often paired with navy. I also saw a lot of indigo - neither of which was on the pallet.) This year, it looks like they are keeping the mint and a variety of lighter, brighter navy in the supporting pallet. The year before that, the color of the year was emerald. In my personal experience, it seems like designers work with things that coordinate with the color of the year, though it the color of the year does not always dominate everything.

Using Props Effectively in Product Photography

If you have to take your own product photos, you may find yourself wondering: Props or No props?

There are plenty of reasons why you might not want to use props:

A wooden spoon seems like a nice prop for
an apron. But not when the color clashes.
I altered the color of the spoon in
Photoshop to make it extra-distracting.

• The prop clashes with your product. It could be the color, size, scale, or texture. Sometimes a prop that seems to be perfectly appropriate for the item just doesn't work. One of the most common examples I see is when sellers don't pay attention to texture. If you have a fine-textured, detailed item, a coarsely-textured prop may or may not work depending on how far away you are shooting from and whether the surfaces are matte or smooth. 

• The prop distracts from what you're selling. If you find yourself looking more at the prop than at the item, then it's not a good prop. If you look through a lot of catalogs, you'll see that products are often presented completely alone - there's nothing to distract from the product. 

So far, nobody has wondered whether the
spoon comes with this embroidered apron.
However, if I used this this image to sell
the SPOON, it would be too confusing. 

• The prop has nothing to do with the product or its use. (If you're going to include a prop, be sure to have a reason why it's there.) You certainly don't want your buyer wondering why it's there. The apron photos I'm using would be a lot less effective with a toy dinosaur stuffed into the apron pocket - unless, I was trying to sell the apron to a daycare provider or something.