The Art Gallery Hub
{ Converting web visitors into seasoned collectors
Turn invitations to upcoming exhibitions into a fuller experience
You think that the best approach to inviting people is sending a digital version of your standard card invitation to your mailing list, then posting it on Facebook, Twitter and wherever else you connect with your worldwide followers.
It sure looks like a win-win in all respects: an excellent reminder, reaching your audience via many complementary channels, it’s hassle- free, secure and above all... you're all set in a few clicks.
I can assure you that your invitation will be trashed even faster. And this can't be your intention. So why not invest a little more effort to develop a really new approach?
Remember, you're sending out an 'invitation'
You're not 'advertising' your next exhibition; you're 'inviting' visitors to discover one of your artists' new works.
So ... what if each invitation became a dedicated component of your gallery's site, serving the same aim as your site but focused and built around a single exhibition?
Its purpose? To inform invitees about that artist, nurturing their interest in recent works, teaching them about the artist's evolution, pointing out critical publications, highlighting his bio, and presenting a dedicated brochure.
So present your artist's exhibition in all its facets.
Why use this approach?
Think about your gallery's visibility on the web. Why not invest more in those rare moments, such as your openings, where you really have the full attention of your audience?
It makes sense to 'exploit' the web's flexibility, use it to transform your current 'uniform' invitations into a lively, fresh experience with every new opening.
More importantly, aren't you curious to measure your invitations' effectiveness? To achieve this, you could offer a document for download, counting the number of requests to help determine how often your invitation was 'visited'.
You think it's complicated?
It only takes three steps
Let's have a look at the announcements a lot of galleries send out. It's all there on the digital copy, including to the URL and the gallery's email address as printed on the original invitation card.
Your first point of attention: your URL and email address.They are only really needed on the invitation card because it’s your way of passing on your web coordinates.
Insert a link to your gallery's site
So, a live link, but not any link.
I can assure you, there's nothing more frustrating than 'dead' URL's and email addresses. A real turnoff seen all too often.
Don't opt for the quick & dirty fix of sending people to your homepage where they bump into... the same invitation. By the way, I hope you don't publish your digital invitation on your homepage to announce your 'current' exhibition.
Create an 'exhibition' page
Opt for sending visitors to an exhibition-dedicated page (called 'landing page'). This page will become the exhibition's central node.
- It's on the landing page where invitees discover the highlights of the latest work.
- Document these highlights, add captions to every single image.
- Position the exhibition in the artist's career.
- Add some well-chosen images of the actual gallery show to increase their curiosity even more. Don't be afraid to give it all away. True art enthusiasts will experience it as an incentive to see the works in the flesh.
- Be sure to complete the alt image tags and pay attention to your pictures' filenames to maximize your images' visibility on the web.
At this stage, don't abandon your visitors, forcing them to pick additional information in different spots of your site on their own.
Be sure to interlink this dedicated page with your existing pages
You may think that people are interested enough and will take the initiative to discover it all by themselves. Rest assured, they much prefer that you guide them.
With extra internal text links from your exhibition page aimed at existing pages, guide your visitors through your site in a dedicated course, bypassing your normal navigation. Maybe you will need to create temporary text links on existing pages guiding them back to your exhibition node.
- Create a page or link to an overview of previous work to illustrate the artist's career.
- Provide the latest news about the artist.
- Link to any publications (a monograph, a catalogue) on the artist.
- Much like the artist's portfolio you use for visitors or during art fairs, offer a dedicated digital brochure for download on demand.
Finally
- Be sure to create a dedicated, temporary email address (for example
artistname[at]yourgallery.com) where visitors can contact you for
more information.
It will help you manage incoming mail more effectively and offer interesting figures, at a glance, about the effectiveness of your online efforts once the exhibition is over.
The web is the web, with its own requirements and opportunities
Sending a message more engaging than a uniform 'carbon copy', going just these few steps further, requires some extra work to create these pages, inserting internal links and designing a dedicated tour.
Yet, it is faster that rehanging your front room for your upcoming exhibition and a real win-win in all respects.
P.S. And what about your homepage?
Almost all galleries limit the scope of their opening announcements to their homepage because they want to focus all the attention on the upcoming show. They omit any further information, isolating the page from the rest of the site's content.
So ... insert a link to the freshly created exhibition component where regular visitors can start the same tour too.