Portia Snow Studio
Portia Snow is a talented, local fine artist looking to increase sales through improving her online presence and accessibility.
Working closely with Portia to flesh out her business goals, our team of three used market research, UX/UI design, content strategy, and e-comm research & design to discover a solution to her user's pain points while delivering a product that met her overall business objectives.
Timeline: 4 weeks
Portia Snow Studio 2.0
For 30 years, Portia has been immersed in her creative process: painting, photographing, and sculpting
Shifting focus toward maintaining a website feels daunting, which is why she has largely neglected her online presence
Wanting to increase sales, she knows that leveraging her website is integral to that growth
The image below was the extent of what her original site offered: Six static images and a contact link. No paintings or sculptures were represented.
In order to increase sales, Portia Snow Studio must have a simple, easy-to-maintain way to make her art accessible to existing and potential collectors online.
Market Research
Understanding the art market
We needed to know the ins and outs of the art market in order to evaluate earnings potential, and to discover the obtainable market that would be most realistic for Portia Snow Studios to tap into.
Total Addressable Market
Global wall art purchases: auction, dealer, gallery & individual sales
Serviceable Addressable Market
Global fine wall art purchases: gallery & individual sales
Serviceable Obtainable Market
Global fine wall art online purchases: gallery & individual sales
$48.5B
$31.03B
$6.3B
Understanding the target market
Once we knew our serviceable, obtainable market, we needed to dial in on what segment(s) of the market we needed to target.
Surprisingly, our research found that MILLENNIALS, not Gen X or Boomers lead the market in both value and volume of purchases.
Unlike Boomers, Millennials and Gen X are bypassing the dealer, finding and purchasing art through social media and online sources. Traditional ways of buying art through dealers and auctions are falling by the wayside, so for artists to tap into the market, they must now have a social media presence and offer online purchasing.
Key findings
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largest segment of growth: collectors under 40
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largest segment of online purchases: Millennial & Gen X
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biggest spenders: women
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biggest sales factor: platforms that provide prices
Learning from our competitors
Investigating direct and indirect competitors allowed us to see what was contributing to their successful sales, and to pinpoint opportunities that we could take advantage of when designing our own solutions.
We discovered that to rise above the online mix, we could take advantage of several feature opportunities, including:
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an option to zoom in to view details of the art
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offering a variety of prices, prints, and sizes
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and offering exclusive and limited edition pieces
User Research
Interviewing our users + gathering insights
To help us validate our market research findings and to gather additional insights, we sent out a survey through social media channels to collect quantitative data.
From the 105 surveys received, we chose 5 users within the target market to conduct in-depth interviews with, in order to collect qualitative data.
“I like knowing how the art is created. I want the story.”
“Instagram is how I keep up with new art from artists.”
“The majority of pieces I purchase are not originals.”
“I’d be more likely to purchase a more expensive piece if there was a payment plan.”
“I’d need a return policy before I bought online.”
Synthesizing our data
A value proposition canvas proved a useful tool in helping us to synthesize the information gathered from our market research, survey, & interviews, in order to discover hidden insights and define the parameters of the product.
Definition
Clarifying user needs
Extracting the key findings from our value proposition, we aligned them with our user needs based on our target market, to give us the right guidelines for our design.
If users were given increased opportunities to interact with Portia's work, along with the option of purchasing both originals and prints online, it would result in increased engagement and sales.
How might we...
Defining personas
There were two clearly defined types of users within the target market: established art collectors and art lovers at the beginning of their art-buying journey.
Ideation & Testing
Prioritizing features
We zeroed in on the features our research deemed necessary, and prioritized those with the biggest impact and that best fit within our constraints.
Telling the story
Before we started sketching, we needed to know our user's story to help us visualize our art buyers' journey more clearly.
To do this, we storyboarded our Art Lover Persona's expectations when searching for, finding, and purchasing art from Portia Snow Studio.
Sketching out the user's journey
While sketching for design solutions, we used our storyboard to map a clear path for our users, and aligned it with the main screens & features they would need in order to shape our minimum viable product.
Testing our lo-fi design
We created a lo-fi design from our sketches and gave our testers 3 tasks to accomplish, which they did with 100% success:
TASK 3: View your shopping bag and check out
TASK 2: Find a mixed media print and add it to your shopping bag
TASK 1: Find an original painting that is for sale and add it to your shopping bag
Design Solution
Style guide
We learned from our competitor analysis that it was important for the art to be front-and-center, so our style guide was created with a minimalistic design and neutral tones so as not to compete with the artwork.
Hi-Fi prototype
On the home page, we’re welcomed with a background image of Portia’s art which will rotate through three different examples of a painting, a mixed-media piece, and a photograph. At the bottom, we can click into the gallery to immediately see all of Portia’s pieces.
The shop page allows us to see only those pieces that are currently for sale in original canvas or signed and numbered print format. From there, you can select a piece you like for more details, add it to your favorites, or add it to your shopping bag.
Once you have the pieces you love added to your shopping bag, checkout is quick and easy.
Our research indicated that more people would make a larger purchase if they could use financing or set up a payment plan, so we added that option to the checkout process.
When the payment has been processed, users are encouraged to take a photo of themselves with their Portia Snow original art to be shared on social media.
Reflection
With the basics of an e-comm website set up for Portia, the next step is to focus on the more in-depth features, such as our exciting idea for a QR code scanner that will allow users to scan the code on the art piece’s title plaque at the gallery and access Portia’s creative process, story, and purchase options directly on their mobile device.
Next Steps
Key Learnings
Market research is imperative to designing the right solution
We made an assumption at the very beginning that our target market would be Boomers and maybe some Gen X. Had we not studied the market first, we wouldn’t have known we were off course and would have ended up with a product that was not effective for our true user. Conducting market research first is imperative to orienting the product to move forward in the right direction at the very start.
Build the foundation first
As much as we wanted to incorporate innovative ideas into our product, like the QR scanner or the AR simulation, we had to focus on building a solid foundation first. When starting a product from scratch, it’s easy to become sidetracked by flashy, exciting features. Learning to prioritize within given parameters is key to yielding successful results that fit within the project's constraints.