| In my article "The Perfect Artwork Page", I recommended adding videos to your artwork pages to help you sell more of your artwork. Videos help for three reasons:
Videos keep collectors on your artwork pages for longer periods of time,which increases the likelihood they will buy your art. Ecommerce sites have known this for a long time, which is why many e-retailers offer product videos for their most profitable products. In fact,one study found that shoppers who view a video are 1.81 times more likely to buy than shoppers that do not.
Videos are more engaging content for collectors visiting your site on smartphones,so much so that shoppers on smartphones are 3 times more likely to view a video than shoppers on desktops. This is important, because increasingly smartphones are the dominant way collectors are visiting artist websites.
Videos are much more effective at helping you emotionally connect with collectors than copy alone,because of the way our brains process information. We're wired to respond to movement, the intonation and pitch of voices, and body language, all of which create strong emotional connections. And emotionally connecting with collectors is critically important to sales, becauseresearch has shown 90% of purchase decisions are made subconsciously and emotionally.
Videos are not only effective at increasing art sales, they are also one of the best ways to differentiate you and your artwork from other artists. That's because most artists haven't introduced videos on their websites yet. This will likely remain that case for years to come, because there are many misconceptions about video production preventing artists from jumping in and creating videos. Here are the top three misconceptions at the heart of this trend, which you should completely ignore:
You need a lot of expensive equipment to create good videos.This couldn't be farther from the truth. If you have a smartphone, you're most of the way there to having everything you need to create compelling artwork videos.
You need to be technical and spend a lot of money on video software.Again, this couldn't be farther from the truth. For example, if you're using an Apple computer you already have access to powerful and easy to use video editing software called iMovie. If you're a Windows user, there aremany free options available. And if you can create a website with FASO, chances are you can learn how to use these software packages with just a little investment of your time.
Creating videos takes a lot of time.This one is wrong, too. If done right, an artwork video can be created in just a few hours.
So now we've cleared up these misconceptions, let's talk about the steps involved in creating a video:
Write a script for your video.One super easy way to put together a script is just to repurpose your artwork description. Your script should result in a video between 1-2 minutes. Any longer and you'll lose your audience. Any shorter than this and you won't have enough time to tell your story.
Practice your script,preferably out loud, over and over again until you are able to recite it all smoothly and naturally. And time yourself to ensure your video is 1-2 minutes long.
Record your video,which can be easily accomplished using your smartphone.
Edit your videoin video editing software, where you can trim out any mistakes and edit it down to one-to-two minutes in length.
Publish your video on YouTube,where you can make it searchable in Google's search engine.
Add a link to your YouTube video on your artist website,so visitors can see and play the video right on your website.
The first time you run through this process will probably take you a bit more time. But with practice, you can get this time down to just 2-3 hours per video (especially if you stick to the 1-2 minute length I recommended).
Over the next couple of months, I'll be offering a deeper dive into each of the steps I've outlined above. By the end of this series of articles, you should be ready to start introducing professional looking videos to your own artwork pages in no time.
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