• New look for MyArtClub.Com
• One thing for you to do...Featured Artist's Short Promo Text (Your elevator speech!)
• New web site capabilities
• Upcoming Events

Spring time is here. Time for a new look at MyArtClub.Com! In the spirit of spring renewal and growth, we are delighted to inform you the MyArtClub.Com main pages have been "spruced-up" Come and see!

While not changing the individual artist or art group pages, we have made changes to the publicly viewed home and search pages. Our goal is to provide more features for you, to better aid visitors to connect to artists, to more easily find what they want, and to improve appearance and organization of the site.

Let us know your comments. With major changes errors can occur. If you uncover any problems we apologize for any inconvenience and would appreciate hearing about the difficulty.

Read on to learn more about our new look, and added features!

One thing for you to do...
Featured Artist's Short Promo Text (Your elevator speech!)

The MyArtClub.Com home page continues to prominently display a 'featured artist'.

To promote the featured artist with further details, we have added a new field of text just beside the image.

Why a separate field of text? The big advantage is for the visitor to have instant access to interesting key information about the artist. The intent is that on the home page the words as well as the work can draw the visitor to the artist's site to learn more about the artist.

This is meant to be short, only approximately 75 words. In many circles of business this short promotion is called "the elevator speech". Read on to see what this term means...

Imagine getting on an elevator with your dream customer, gallery owner or museum art curator. You have just a few seconds between stops on the elevator to give the customer your pitch. What would you say? What is unique about you and your artist journey? Put exactly that text here. In fact you may just find you can use this pitch in many other places.

Login and look under Artist Pages, under Basic Artist Data for a field marked "Artist Promo:A brief (300 character) promotional summary of the artist used on the Featured Artist and New Member Display functions. Featured Artist Promo Text" to enter.

New web site capabilities

The website has new features and layouts designed to make the site bring you more traffic and customer interest, The following will be explained in more detail:

1) Home page has new art and new artist links
2) Find Art saved searches and alerts for registered guests
3) Find Group page now shows featured artist images
4) Members page sections are expanded
5) "Tabs" and "Bread Crumbs" added to Members areas
6) Files of various types can now be loaded in text fields as "Objects"

1) Home page has new art and new artist links

The MyArtClub.Com home page has been redesigned to speed the download and to provide more ways to feature the artist.

More links and less actual art is the way we accomplish this. To increase the links we have added:
1. "Recent art listings" Artists that load new works will show up here.
2. "New Members" lists artists that have recently joined and loaded up their site
3. "Search tool" - lets users enter a keyword to search the MyArtClub.Com database.

2) Find Art saved searches and alerts for registered guests

With MyArtClub.Com now featuring over 3,500 works of art and over 100 new artworks added each week, we want to create ways to serve the artist's customer more personally and easily. So we came up with to new features we hope will keep bringing traffic back to the site:

"Art/Artist Preferences". Visitors can now login as a "Registered Guest" inside MyArtClub.Com to save Art/Artist Preferences for personal quick retrieval. This lets visitors keep the specific search criteria on file for their next visit. Visitors can save several searches to see directly what they want to see quickly and easily!

"Custom Alerts". Visitors can be alerted by email as often as they like from weekly to bimonthly. If new art during this period for their "Art/Artist Preferences " criteria is loaded on the site they receive an email as an invitation to login to see the new works.

3) Find Group now shows featured artist images

With more groups using MyArtClub.Com we wanted to show samples of art from the groups in a fashion similar to the find artist section.

Since the art groups have a featured artist on their main page, we have posted that featured artist on the Find Group page. The specific art will change regularly, and now is selected not just from MyArtClub.Com members but also from the gallery posting of the group.

4) Members page sections are expanded

The Members section has been redesigned to group together all the information that is relevant for the artist or group member. Most prominent is still the login feature.

Additional sidebar links feature information on how to join, frequently asked questions, resources and links of interest for artists etc.

5) "Tabs" and "Bread Crumbs" added to Members areas

Part of our redesign was intended to make it easier than ever to build your site. You will note the use of top Tabs: Home, Artist, Art, etc. These are useful to quickly navigate and to let you see where you are.

Ever heard of Hanzel and Gretel and how the used bread crumbs to show the trail they too? Our site now features that too! So you can see where you are and jump from page to page more easily we added "breadcrumbs" to the top of each page. Plus to make reference more convenient, each page has a name.

Here is an example of a breadcrumb:

Main Member Menu Page - -> Maintain Art - -> Maintain Art Menu

The page title is shown in Bold Caps just below: MAINTAIN YOUR ART

6) Files of various types can now be loaded in text fields as "Objects"

Ever thought you would like to post a copy of that promotional brochure, map to your studio, maybe some studio pictures, or an order form? MyArtClub.Com introduces a new easy way for you to do it!

Almost any file type can now be added to your site. When you log in, you will see a tab marked Object. You load the file up very much like an image. The site then gives you some code to copy into your text, and voila, you now have an icon for your file. Visitors just click on the icon to open the file.

As this effectively expands the ways you can consume stored file space on our server, we now offer the site at your option on a stored space measured basis. You manage the total size of your images and object files.

Prices are still the same, but instead of 10 images per unit added, you get 1.4Mb of storage. If you are careful and just keep all your images to 100 kB in size, you could effectively get 14 images for the price of 10! Or keep 10 spaces and add 4 objects.

Get the idea? If this interests you, please have a look on line for more info. Login and look under "Main Member Menu Page - -> Maintain Account - -> Manage by Size of Space Used" Or let us know. Be aware that this approach is a final decision. Not that you need to, but it means instead of 10 images being the guideline, 1.4 Mb is the guide.

Upcoming events

May 27 to 29, 2005. Many of you may be planning to attend Painters at Painter's annual celebration of art at the Painter's Lodge, Campbell River. It is once again a sold out event, but if you are lucky enough to be attending, we hope you will look out for us.

Cam and Peter and our wives Heather and Terry all plan to be there - look for white shirts or ball caps with the MyArtClub.Com logo. Please say hello - we'd love to see you!

Well that is it for this issue, and the spring cleaning! Thanks for reading - hope you enjoyed it, look forward to seeing your latest art on the Internet!

Peter Newell and Cam Anderson,
MyArtClub.Com

Do you have any comments or suggestions?
Please write to us at: Webmaster @MyArtClub.Com

P.S. Previous issues of this newsletter are available on the MyArtClub.Com under the Member's Help Section.