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1011 |
| Joined: |
1/6/2007 |
| Location: |
seattle, washington |
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Note: You may need to hard refresh your browser to see the changes, especially if you are using Firefox or Safari. On a PC,
press CTRL + F5. On a Mac, Command + Shift + R should do the trick!
New Artwork Page
We are very happy to announce our most recent upgrade to the way your art is exhibited on Imagekind. We are sure these changes are a significant improvement for both your customers and fellow artists. You might have already noticed the differences, but we wanted to run through the complete list of the improvements with you!
Community or Retailer?
One of the questions we often hear from people is “is Imagekind an art community, or a retailer?” The truth is we are both! From the the very beginning we were one of the first sites to successfully merge the process of quality retailing with the vibrant interactions of a community. The challenge, of course, is finding the balance between these two; particularly on single pages that need to encompass both aspects. With the newly upgraded artwork page, we believe that we have made yet another step in getting closer to Zen.
From a design perspective, we decided to dedicate the left side of the page to both the artwork itself and the more interactive tools that accompany the community features. The right side of the page is almost exclusively focused on the retail experience. Just take a look, and we’re certain you’ll love it as much as we do.
Single-Click Purchase
An often requested feature that we have always understood as beneficial for customers as well as artists is the ability to purchase your artwork with just a single click. If you have chosen a particular paper in your default framing set-up, this will be the paper your customer can purchase without ever leaving the page. If you have not chosen a default frame and paper, prints can be added to the cart with our most popular paper in all sizes. Additionally, we’ve taken this even one step further – the custom framing options chosen as your default will show right on the page. This can also be added to the cart with just a single click! Even more so, if your default selection is on canvas, the page is smart enough to automatically select the canvas tab as the default display for the customer (more on that later). Of course, all of the Imagekind customization options are still just a click away.
Product Tabs
We wanted to have an easy way for customers to see all the various product choices in a simple interface, yet allow full range of options to be shown. We also wanted to make sure that these vital options show “above the fold” (which means without having to scroll down in common screen resolutions). After testing various designs, talking with customers, artists, designers and experts in user experience, we believe the new tabs really are the best option to achieve this. Each product type (Prints, Canvas, and Greeting Cards) has its own tab, plainly visible to customers. If your artwork is not available for sale on one of these products (like greeting cards), the tab doesn’t even show. And, depending on how you customize your “default choices”, the tabs will automatically select the correct product on first load of the page.
Framed Display
In addition to making it easy to purchase a print with a single click, we also wanted a similar feature for framed items. So, for starters, on the prints and canvas tabs we now show a thumbnail of your item with your default frame selection. You'll also notice that we include thumbnails of the frame materials, making it a cinch for shoppers to know exactly what they are getting. If you have not yet made any default choices for your artwork, we will show your work in our most popular configuration for framed prints as well as framed, stretched canvas. And, if available, the new page even shows the same frame around the stretched canvas on the “canvas” tab (note that not all frames are available for canvas framing). If your default choice was a stretched canvas, we automatically default the customer to the “canvas” tab on first page load with your options shown, just as you have configured it. And to make sure shoppers know that they get the best with Imagekind, we have links explaining our product quality as well as our return guarantee clearly visible in the purchase area.
One of the superior advantages of Imagekind is that we offer all the high quality options you could only get in a traditional frame store, but at lower price. However, we haven’t really been great at communicating this to you, or your customers. So we have taken the time to collect the pricing for the identical configurations we offer from a number of stores on the west coast, and are now exposing those as averages to give a point of comparison to your customers. Being averages, these numbers will never perfectly match your local frame store experience, but they should come pretty close (assuming you can get the exactly same frame and mat). You should notice quite a savings when choosing Imagekind!
Browsing Your Art
Just a couple of weeks ago we added the ability to browse to the next and previous gallery on your galleries page. And, as promised, today we are adding similar functionality to the Artwork page! A “previous” and “next” button on the newly designed page allows easy browsing of all your artwork, by stepping through the images in a single gallery.
Odds and Ends
And to round things off, we also added a couple of smaller bells and whistles to the page, while leaving space for future additions and new features. We are now showing the subject, genre, medium and other classifications of your image, as well as also displaying the top four color classifications as well. The colors are determined by a complex algorithm that pulls out the number of times that a color occurs in a piece. As always, tags, comments, and additional works by you are still shown. And finally, we also improved the overall performance of the page which is sure to make it quite a bit speedier to load!
Cleaner Design
Overall, you will notice that the new design is a lot cleaner, more customer-friendly, and also quite a bit faster. These are huge improvements that we know will make a positive impact on the entire Imagekind experience, for both artists and customers.
We hope you like all the new changes, and promise that we’re far from being done. We are always coming up with more ideas than we could possibly do all at once. So stay tuned, as more features and improvements will follow soon. While we have done our best to test these enhancements in various environments and situations, please let us know if you find anything out of place that we might have missed. For comments, praise, feedback and more discuss here.
Edited by emilyrose About 7 months ago.
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