ArtistSurveyResultsFeb17 (PDF)

Artfinder Artist Survey
February 2017
Results

The results are in...
•

…and there’s good news and bad news.

In this document, we aim to address your common queries and
concerns but please understand we may not be able to cover
everything. So if something was mentioned but not covered
here, it hasn’t been forgotten!

© Artfinder 2017

2

In this section, I will reveal what your most common concerns where, and what
we hope to do about them.

1. How to get noticed on Artfinder
Overwhelmingly, the most common issue was how to get noticed among all the other artists
on the Artfinder platform. We have been aware of this becoming a problem and had a
discussion specifically to address it.
Possible solutions that we are considering implementing may be;

A promotional package for artists (at a further cost)

Automated email features

Special education and training

Curation

2. Inter-continental shipping
Unsurprisingly, the second most popular issue was inter-continental shipping. As you know,
we have been working really hard on Artfinder Shipping Plus, which is Artfinder’s shipping
service.
Regretfully, we are going to be putting a halt on the development on our ASP shipping
program as we have encountered an insurmountable roadblock on our current path
trajectory.
Trialling has been underway for several months now and we are reluctant to roll out the
service until we are confident that any issues are ironed out.
We are still looking at possible partners to work with, to handle our shipping for us, but, for
the time being, we would kindly ask that you read the help documentation thoroughly and
ask your peers and our support team for assistance when you have difficulty.

3. Self-Promotion/Social Media
In today’s day and age digital marketing is now a university degree in itself.
Some would consider Facebook/Twitter/Instagram accounts a crucial part of selling
anything online, particularly something as visual as art.
This ties in nicely with the theme of ‘How to get noticed on Artfinder’
Artfinder’s own social media channels are a great place to get started. You can find us on
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Once you’re set up with your own accounts
you can join the community, get involved and you’ll find that people respond.
We do have help articles on how to use social media but we admit that it is lacking for
those who don’t even know where to start.
We’re therefore going to take another look at compiling some helpful articles and advice
and, if we’re lucky, we might even be able to get in some experts to help offer advice on
how to best utilise social media platforms.

4. Profile Optimisation
Again, this ties in with ‘How to be noticed’ and ‘How to self-promote’.
A lot of people asked for more 1-1 guidance, help and advice and, as much as we would
love to offer something like this, we simply do not have the manpower to handle something
like that.
We obviously want what’s best for you, we want your shops to look perfect so that we can
feature you and so that customers will be enticed to come and browse. This is why we try
so hard to have help documents to guide you when it comes to optimising your shop.
However, we appreciate that sometimes this isn’t enough. Personal consultations and
specific help and advice might be part of a premium package in the near future.

5. Basic Shipping
Finally, the 5th most popular issue was how to do basic shipping.
We realise that shipping pricing and profiles can be a headache which is why we have
been trying to find a shipping solution for you.
However, as addressed in the second point, we have hit a bit of a roadblock, and work on
ASP is on hold until further notice.
We have extremely thorough help documentation on how to set up shipping and will
continue to work on improving it.
Our support team are also available to offer advice and assistance for when it gets
overwhelming.

Other points that came up a lot
Some matters about which we did not enquire but that a sufficient number of you mentioned are
outlined below;


SEO keywords – You have expressed a desire to know what words are commonly searched for both
on and off the Artfinder platform. We have considered sharing this information but fear that it would
lead to abuse of the system, and really hinder our search results but artists tagging their artworks
with inaccurate tags, purely in order to get their artwork front and centre.



Art trends – We love this idea and think it would be great to share common colours, styles and
subjects that seem to be popular on Artfinder. Our brilliant Emily (who you can thank for ‘The Dot’) is
hoping to start adding a little column every now and again about what’s been selling recently.



Customer preferences/behaviour – This is a little more complicated to provide. We would need
cooperation from our tech and data colleagues to provide accurate information. It is not out of the
question that we may be able to provide this, but it would likely have to be included in a paid
package.



Other metrics (sales stats/data reports/trackers etc) – As above, this will be very tricky information to
provide. We can absolutely understand why you want it, and agree it would be greatly beneficial for
you to also track behaviour and trends yourself. Please bear with us while we establish to what
degree we can facilitate the provision of such information.



More live events (pop ups/fairs etc) – This is something we ALL want to do! No question about it! One
of the reasons that we have a ‘Meet up’ section on the forum is that we want to encourage our
community to come together in person. When it comes to live events though, the amount of time and
money that needs to be invested, is substantial. We are trying to start small, host the odd meetup
here and there and hopefully exhibit in more fairs, and we hope to be able to do it bigger and better
as our resources grow.



Artfinder plans exposure – A lot of you would like to know what we’re planning to do before we do it.
This makes sense with regards to e.g. marketing campaigns, so that you know when to run a sale or
when to highlight a particular theme of work. The reason, however, that we don’t do this, is that it has
been proven to limit our broad range of art as a result. If, for example, we were to run a campaign
about summer flowers and EVERY artist on our site only uploaded summer flowers in accordance
with that campaign, what is going to happen if a customer comes along and doesn’t like summer
flowers? They won’t be able to find what they do like, because they’ll think we only do summer
flowers.



The ability to contact a customer with an artwork in their basket – We are extremely reluctant to
accommodate this, for a whole raft of reasons. That’s not to say we never will, but please consider
the following. Most customers will use their basket as sort of a wish-list where they collect the
artworks they like. Artfinder sends 4 reminders to customers that they have artwork waiting in their
basket, one after 4 hours, the second after 1 day, the third after 4 days and the fourth after 3 months.
To facilitate the sending of any more emails, we believe, would be extremely off-putting for the
customer, especially if he/she had more than 1 artwork in his/her basket.