So your shop is open and ready for business. Let’s get some customers through the door!
Learning which artwork to attract customers with is a lot like learning which brushes to paint with. You can always experiment, but eventually, you land on using what works best. In the following article, we’ll walk through identifying which artwork or products to put in front of fans to draw the most traffic to your shop. Let’s get into it.
1 | Identify your popular work with one of these three ways
1. Measure likes & comments on Instagram & Facebook
If you’re just getting started, this is likely the quickest/easiest way to identify what resonates with your audience. Good evidence of potential best seller is an above average number of comments. If fans can’t help but respond, bets are it’ll be a conversation piece in real life. If it’s a conversation piece in real life, you’re helping a fan carve out their individuality amongst peers. That’s a win for everyone.
How your posts perform on social media is an excellent indicator of which designs and products you should focus on promoting. The number of likes, and comments especially, can let you know what customers want. –Lord of Masks (aka Camille Chew)
2. Run a very simple survey on Facebook
A quick and easy way to survey is to setup a 4-design block of artwork and ask people to rank them in order of favorite to least favorite. Repeat as many times as necessary and narrow down to the most purchasable artwork. While a quick test of likes & comments is a good indicator of interest, you may discover differences between something people love and something people would actually hang in their homes. You want to lead with compelling work that is also likely to be purchased.
PRO TIP: If you need more results, you can pay to “boost” your post so it appears in front of more people.
Once you’ve identified most commercially popular artwork, repeat the process, but with a single design across several products to find out what products people are most likely to buy.
Two other easy survey options would be 1) Survey Monkey: a free survey service that allows you to include images as part of the poll. You can email it to friends or link to the survey from Facebook. 2) Facebook Polls: for $8/mo, you can upload images and use a ranking-style survey and post directly to your FB timeline.
3. Check sales data
If you have some sales under your belt, a logical place to start is your Society6 Earnings page to identify best selling artwork and products. Click on Pending or Cleared earnings. Even with a little bit of sales info you should really quickly get a sense of your most popular artwork and/or designs.
When it comes to choosing which products to showcase on social media, I’ll check in Earnings in my S6 dashboard to see what people are buying. Sometimes I’ll see a trend in there, like a surprising number of sales of a particular design on a shirt, so I’ll choose that one to share. –Marc Johns
This is where you can find your earnings.
Check your earnings here.
2 | Pay attention and respond to trends
Current events, conversations and design trends often inform the artwork we see uploaded by our community. It’s a reflection of our times. If you’re feeling a pull to create artwork in response to current events or trends, it’s likely that customers are looking to buy artwork on the same topic.
What is presently sparking debate that people could relate to? What are they feeling, and how can you create and present something they would like right now? Just like everything in life, there are trends. Be mindful of what people are currently responding to. –Kit King
"Resist Fist" by Matthew Taylor Wilson
3 | Take advantage of seasonality, holidays, product promotions/sales and even time of day
It’s always worth considering season or holiday. This will determine what products you should, in theory, be pushing. If we’re going into summer, beach towels should be at the top of your list. If we’re in Back to School season (which begins early June), promote dorm-friendly and college related gear. Some quick Googling should return popular holidays and commercially relevant holidays. Don’t limit yourself to the big holidays either. We’ve been known to promote work for some pretty weird ones like National Alien Day.
PRO TIP: Tailor designs to a holiday or season 4-8 weeks in advance. That’ll give customers time to pick up your goods and we’ll have time to discover that artwork and put it into our seasonal or holiday-specific collections.
When I decide to promote my products, I choose to on days when there is free worldwide shipping or 15% off, as this is a small way I can help out and say thank you [to fans] by alerting them to savings. –Luke Gram
Be clever in when you promote certain merch. Take a look at what you’re trying to promote–a hoodie? Promote when it’s starting to get chilly. Coffee/ travel mugs? Make a morning post with a fresh cup of joe to make it that much more enticing. –Kit King
Hanna K.L. promoting her “YES” Throw Pillow during a Holiday Sale
To bring it full circle, the goal of this post is to help you drive as much traffic to your shop as possible by leveraging your popular work. That means you have to discover it first before you know what to promote. You’ll always be posting new work, so knowing which artwork or products turn a head will let you drive consistent traffic to your shop.
Feel free to leave questions/comments below!
Feature Artwork by Clara López
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