You are: Back Room
You might have expected the Back Room section to be a 'confidential' place where web secrets and tricks of the trade are revealed to insiders only. You are partly right. It is a restricted area, but this set up has nothing to do with secrecy. To the contrary. On the web, 'secrets' (if any) don't last long and tricks are often punished more quickly and severely than the furtive advantage they produce. Therefore consider the Back Room as a secure place for like minded gallery professionals looking for solutions, now that the brick and mortar galleries are under a constant threat from the ever new challenges arising from the digital world.
By subscribing to the AGH{newsletter you show your interest in what the Art Gallery Hub offers and I value your subscription more than you can imagine.
I suppose your expectations are high and I certainly don't want to disappoint you. You will always find information that really can make the difference between a so-and-so site and a gallery site that copes successfully with numerous challenges: the threads as well as the opportunities that the art gallery world is confronted with through the web.
There aren't thousands of ways to be successful on the web. It's a matter of working steadily to master new skills and new ways to interact and communicate with the visitors of your gallery's site, on-line as well in the real world.
There are a so many things to consider and reconsider continuously. Strangely enough, most of the time little tweaks and details provide far better results than extreme make-overs.
This is why I will offer articles to expand on this approach in the Back Room. First by passing you only information, advice and suggestions that you can easily put in place and check for results in a reasonable amount of time.
You will also note that all articles in the Back Room are only open for a restricted length of time. Rest assured there will always be plenty of time to implement what is explained in the articles.
With each newsletter you will be directed to the Back Room, but this doesn't mean that nothing else happens in the other sections of the AGH{site. Nothing more easy to check, because you have full access.
I hope you enjoy this section and the rest of the site, as much as I enjoy bringing them to you. And please don't hesitate to complain if the articles you discover don't match your expectations. Feel welcome to comment on 'Taste Buds', ask any additional information or suggest a brochure of interest for colleagues.
How many anonymous contacts does your mailing list contain? People you only know by their email address?
70, 80 percent?
All of these addresses contain a tremendous potential if you rescue them from anonymity. So why not prevent them becoming phantoms from the start?
Most gallery dealers look at their gallery's site like a good parent. On every new opening, they check that everything comes up as expected or briefed: no pages that go astray, no broken links, opening dates and artist's pictures are ok, etc.
Quick checks like these are paramount ... but why do they rarely look 'back stage'? Even once.
Most never do.
It's a challenge a lot of galleries struggle with: how to grow your audience? But above all, how to target and draw the right people to your gallery? The answer came recently in a remarkable announcement from an established Brussels contemporary art gallery.
Have a look at how top galleries proceed. You may think a web site is a futility for these 'powerhouses'.
They certainly don't need their gallery's sites to build their presence in the art world. They participate at all important art fairs, their artists are searched after solicited by all top museums and biennials. They function at top level all year round and you know what?
As a gallery owner you prefer to remain in the background as much as possible. Accordingly, you do the same on line: you focus 100% on the promotion of your artists and their works. And now you use the same approach into the booming social media.
A survey of messages sent by some 250 randomly picked contemporary art galleries reveals an interesting fact: almost 150, some 60 percent of galleries use a standard email program (such as Outlook Express or Apple Mail) to send out their invitations, newsletters, announcements, etc.
Much to their advantage, contemporary art galleries often form clusters in a city. To art professionals Chelsea, Shoreditch, Peckham, Berlin Mitte, Le Marais, Lower East Side, etc. instantly ring a bell. They even spell the type of galleries they can expect because they know these gallery-heavy neighborhoods inside out.
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:
My business card has been asking a similar question since I started in consultancy. I adjusted it to 'era' to mirror the thriving success of this phenomenon. What remained unchanged, are the extreme reactions the question generates.
Come on, you can’t be serious!
Gallery weekends, city art days, 'open galleries' initiatives, etc. are rapidly taking hold in the art world. Is it because they're limited in time or restricted in their geographical reach that most art dealers still underestimate the unique opportunities such local events offer?
A little snippet of art history. One day Dürer received a letter from an unknown informant describing in detail the latest court event in Lisbon: Manuel I, the Portuguese king had received a wild animal never seen live in Europe since the Romans, a rhinoceros.
This article is primarily aimed at gallery owners already working on their website.
For a professional programmer to deliver pages that pass 'validation' by the Word Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is 'good practice', not 'exceptional service'.
Running this tool should be standard procedure before finishing each page.
It's a supplementary guarantee to all that an impartial institution validated his job.
You should expect no less.
Sometimes support to achieve your goals comes from sources you expect the least. These
organisations are considered 'revered web institutions'. Because the web evolves so fast, they seem to come from another age and are systematically overlooked.
And yet, they play an important role in your gallery's web strategy.
Let's start this article with a mini survey.
Can you answer all these questions?
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Art fairs have seen a tremendous growth in the last decade. Some organisers could easily have boosted their art fair up to 500 participants, or more, based on the number of applicants. But they were smarter. They not only limited the number of participants, they offered extra guidance on top when they noticed how rapidly visitors felt lost during their visit.This feeling of getting lost pops up even faster on a gallery's site.
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Many galleries still seem to struggle about how to present their exhibitions on their site. With an average of 6 to 10 exhibitions a year, after a few years the exhibitions represent an impressive load of information and a real challenge. Not only to catalogue, but above all to arrange so that visitors will want to look them up.
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After looking up some contact pages of gallery's sites any one would ask "Why do these galleries work in almost complete anonymity?" Discovering even more similar contact pages they would certainly start wondering "What is this? What are most galleries hiding? "Aren't there any 'real people' behind these galleries?"
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One of the first questions we discuss during consulting sessions is "What category of visitor influences a gallery site's web presence the most, at the start?"
This helps set the direction of our look into building and maintaining the website. Curious to know?
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Ever heard about the game of goose? It was one of those iconic European board games played during winter evenings. The game displays a spiral track of numbered spaces the players move on with as little as possible throws towards the winning case. Depending on which space players land on they can move on or are forced to move backwards. There is no escape possible.
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Do you have any idea how many images your site counts? Pictures, illustrations, graphics, the mix? First on your mind: your artists' works of course. But what about your catalogues' covers? Or your editions? Plus your gallery logo or an association logo? Think interior views too, routes plans or even head shots. Not too bad for a quick scan isn't it? Now, imagine every single image generating extra traffic.
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Let's spend some tome at track and field competition. Amongst all jump disciplines there is a particularly awkward one. Well... to outsiders at least. Why not take simply a long run and jump? Why all these bizarre movements in between? Why hop, step and jump?
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Private contemporary art galleries form a tiny, almost lilliputian presence on the web. Logically, it's easier to get traffic if there are only thousands instead of hundreds of thousands sites to look up. And yet, it looks as if the contrary is true. With only so few galleries, why is it so difficult to get noticed?
Sorry you've missed this article, but you can always catch up!
You've certainly remarked this scene before. People visiting an exhibition, walking from painting to painting, until suddenly... they step forward and quickly stoop to the side board of the painting to read what's on the exhibition label. When they step back, the expression on their faces has changed.
They've got the message... as if a big secret has been revealed to them.
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