Why Build Another Online Gallery?

My background is in theatre, and I have a well developed aptitude for the appreciation of visual art, but no formal training or expertise. The idea for the site came from my frustration with browsing for art on the web. I like to surf around until I find a work that intrigues me, then I save it as my desktop background to enjoy for awhile. As I'm sure you know, there are numerous online galleries, but none of them are very browser friendly. They require a lot of clicking around through lists and text before ever getting to the art, and then it is usually a single work by an artist. I tried to build a site where it is easy to see a lot of art. If the art looks good, and the site is pleasant for the viewer to manipulate, the site should sell more art. That was my thinking. That, and that the site should be a co-op of sorts, where the member artists can use their collective presence to increase exposure, sell more easily, and, as a group, build favorable relationships with area businesses. I think we have the basic structure by which to build a great website that can become a valuable resource for future art sales.

I took six months and several thousand dollars to develop the structure of the site with its interactive database and "back-end" business management tools. We are now in our website marketing phase. This involves adding content (artists) and building links to other websites, as well as developing what are called "inbound links" (individuals or web businesses with our link saved on their sites). According to the "experts" on search engine optimization (SEO), these are the main things that attract the attention of search engines and increases a web site's ranking. And when attempting to sell online, there is nothing more important than page rank with Google and Yahoo, except, of course the content of the site. A site must, after all, appeal to viewers. We have been "live" for just a month and have managed to get a rank of 2 with Google. I think this is a good start; at least we "exist", but we are still invisible to anyone browsing for art on the web.