How to better explain my business?

Hey Will, It did take a bit for me to figure out what what your interesting site was about. I think a slogan and short, well defined enunciation of your purpose would be helpful. I'm not a marketeer, but here are a few ideas that might get you pointed in the right direction:

• Expose Yourself! (Provocative)
• See, Show and Sell your Creative Works
• The powerful, easy to use 'eBay' for the art community

I'm sure you can define yourself better than this. Start with what people already know and connect that interest to how your site is useful to them. Get away from the generic names (what is utopic?) and focus on a name, short slogan and a few sentences on your home page that grabs artists and buyers attention on the value and benefits of using your site.

You might consider two different portals, as you have two separate users in mind. You could create one portal for artists to sell their art and market it as just that and a second portal which would be the art market part. This way you can appeal to both ends of the transaction and market them separately.

Hope this helps, Lizeth Lucid Strategies

What problem are you solving for your visitors?

Put the answer to that question in SIMPLE ENGLISH.

You should be able to explain this in 30 seconds - at most.

Keep asking friends to critique your summary and keep editing it till you get it right.

You might even consider hiring a professional writer to help you.

Then - get your landing page lined up with your summary and positioning.

Make sure you're following key bloggers in your segment (look on Tecnorati.com who are likely to be interested in your site and find ways to help them understand the unique value of your site - they'll help you.

I'd also take a look at other site implementations for inspiration. http://www.fine-art.com/ is an example.

One thing that strikes me is that once you enter into an artists page, it's a one way proposition. There is no "global" navigation that could get you to related artists, art, etc. In addition, each microsite is visually different - making one feel that you have left the initial site and gone off somewhere else.

fine-art works hard to break the site into three distinct offerings. from their site:

• Art Marketplace. The Internet Art Database is a Fixed-priced art listing service. This is the core service of d'ART.

• Art Links Web directory. This selective directory helps you find the essential art-related sites on the Web.

• The Community at d'ART News and discussion forums. Use this area to research and interactive with other enthusiasts or with the artist directly.

Perhaps a closer look at the user types on your site, what messages need to be presented to them, and where such messages need to be placed would help partition your site.

good luck!

I think Lizeth's answer is definitely on the right track. Although you don't even need two different portals.

Think about amazon.com or ebay.com. The public face / front door is ALL about the buying experience. There is absolutely no mixed message on either one; the sites appear to be 100% about connecting buyers with what they are looking for. Someplace, often hard to find, there are little links for 'authors' or 'sellers' where they can get into the back office functionality they need to list their items and service sellers. Those links expose enormous amounts of functionality that is important to the sellers -- but only because they know that if they jump through the hoops their stuff, too, will appear seamlessly in that attractive public interface where it can meet up with the buyer's of their dreams.

And as for the global navigation -- it might be hard to do but perhaps you could implement a sort of visual pandora where a person can define a 'channel/gallery' based on one or two artists that they know they do like and you can have, maybe in a little side bar, a changing display of vaguely similar works they might like to find out about.

Wow, Thanks everyone for such a warm response. Here are some thoughts that I had based on everyones input.

To Lizeth Gomez: that is a great idea. I think you are understanding my problem / frustration. There are 2 completely separate users I am trying to appeal to with one page, which conflicts against itself. when you say "two different portals" do you mean 2 different websites" which would than be connected to each other?

To jimg: there is a global navigation where you can find every artist: http://www.utopicstudios.com/search.php you said: "In addition, each microsite is visually different - making one feel that you have left the initial site and gone off somewhere else." William: This is what I am striving for. The concept that I am working on, is for each artist to have their own website, but at the same time be connected to one network. Giving the artist the benefits of their own website and the benefits of being automatically connected to an art community for exposure. The problem that I am having, is explaining this confusing and complicated concept in an easy to understand language.

I do like the idea of having a small navigation within the microsites.

Thanks for every ones responses, please send some more ideas!

What it sounds like to me is, you need a powerful executive summary of your business. The ExecutivePlan offers a number of incredible resources for writing a more powerful, effective and memorable executive summary.

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