Our website is located at www.1st-art-gallery.com and we are looking to
convert it into a database driven site, preferably with osommerce.
Our site today attracts 5000 visitors a day, uses 1.2 Gig of disk space and 120 gig transfer a month. Our site is
ranked very well and we built it ourselves, in house, so we know what we are doing, what we want, and how much it should cost.
Here is what we need, I will spell out everything that pops into my head and explain our business so you will
understand our needs, what we need and why we need it.
We sell handmade oil paintings which are made right here in Hungary by reproduction artists so we can basically paint
any photo into any painting, in any size that the customer wants. Our web site is new, about 1.5 years old. The mother company is doing this off
line for many years, and sell wholesale for hotel chains etc. That means that we can have an endless number of items in our database (all the
famous painters paintings etc) and each of them we can paint in any size. WE will do the work of adding the items to the database since it is an
endless work, in the end of the project we should have 25,000 items. Each item needs to have a number of standard sizes (these are the sizes of
standard frames by the way, to make it easy for people to frame the painting later), AND the original size of the painting, AND an option to have a
custom size (like in this page
http://www.artmall2000.com/art_products/art_large.asp?prodid=2947&cat=Flaming%20June) which can be in the original aspect ratio or not.
Something like this:
Choose Size:
(40 X 50 cm) $169 / (€ YYY)
/...
Custom Size:
Select Size (inch):
x
Keep Original Aspect Ratio.
This is the very heart of the site, the individual pages for each painting, which will include also info about
the painting, original size, name of artist, current location, which country the artist came from etc. The paintings needs to be crossed linked to
other items ("People who liked this painting also liked XYZ"). The paintings needs to have many identification fields for use of the search option
and sorting: Artist name, subject, Art movement, year of creation, dominant color, country of origin, style, and a list of keywords. The key I
think will be to organize all these lists, http://www.oceansbridge.com made a great job, and should be
used as a base to what we want for our site: Always, next to each painter name / movement name, small reprehensive images should be shown.
We want to make the site interactive as possible, as real art community.
Beyond an art forum which will be run by our experts, and "art news" section
(feed from NY times maybe and other news entered manually from the admin
area) we want to make people interact through the page. We have an idea of
how to do this: People will have a reason to interact in the page and with
others through a "point" system. People will collect points which can be
redeemed later for dollars, like whenever someone buys paintings (say 1 point for
each $10 spent) - this is obvious. But we want people to be able to earn point also
by posting in the forum (which will be moderated) answers to questions,
adding news to the news area, and by writing a review for a painting. (this
can be done by tweaking the "add your comments to this item" module).
(again, all these comments and news or posting needs to be moderated and
online only after approval, or people will just write junk).
There are going to be a lot of functions on the site, the key is to make
everything simple and the pages not too heavy with information. I think that
the main area of the individual paintings pages needs to be clean and
simple, and then around it, in a small distance, all the added functions - mainly
previously watched painting, crossed link paintings and links to parts of the page, forum, news, etc.
The sorting needs to be automatic, showing a small photo of the paintings
found + name and artist, maybe two per line, 20 per page (?), with clear number of
pages found for search results on top and bottom, with option to view all
results in "slide show" OR download results to customers computer for off
line browsing. Paintings can be clicked to get to the online page of the
painting to place the order. (PDF / PowerPoint file? whatever can be done more easily.)
When clicking on "Style" - I am looking for what will be the best option
here because if a customer clicks for example "impressionism" he will get
3000 results. These results need to be sorted or by artist or colors or by
all the other options that we will have, OR randomly. (?)
Photos uploaded to the page would be the largest photo that we have. The
system needs to resize the photo automatically for the individual paintings
pages, for the search result pages etc. In the individual paintings page,
the painting can be clicked for the largest file available. Water mark needs
to be embedded on any photo uploaded to the page.
Advanced search:
Input line: "Keyword (s) , then under it check boxes and / or scroll down
menus to refine the search:
Colors: (colors with check boxes next to them - customer can choose multiply
colors)
Style / Art movement: (impressionism, etc) (check boxes)
etc etc....
so people can search for: "angle", in "new classical" style, with red
dominant colors. (for example)
Option to save a search ("add to favorite search") added in "my gallery".
Sort by Artist name OR Painting name OR Country , OR Art movement OR Period
(the time it was made).
List your art:
A system where individuals can register and then pay to upload their
original art to the page.
They can upload a photo, and fill out information, the same info that we
will fill to the reproduction paintings: artist name, title, dominant
colors, key words etc, and then the original painting will be added to the
database and show up in the search results. In the original painting page,
there will be an option to contact the artist. The artists will have an
account, will be able to remove or add paintings, depending on the account
they have. (as more they pay, they can list more paintings: $20 a month -
1-5 paintings. $40 a month: 12 paintings. $60 a month - 20 paintings. Etc...
When the painting is listed in the search or sorting results, it is marked
at original art. The painting page will need to look a little different
because there will be only one size (the original size) and the painting can
be bough only directly from the artist. The artist will be able to write his
biography, upload his photo, etc... as we will write for the old master
artists. Painting uploads and biography etc, will be moderated, on the
registration page there will be rules of what is allowed and not etc.
Artists will be notified by email when they paintings/biography etc is
approved and online.
My gallery: in this section registered users can see their:
"Paintings I bought"
"My favorite searches" (searches can be saved - "Save this search")
"Leave a testimonial"
"Schedule a customer service call"
"My favorite paintings"
"My favorite artists"
"My Art points".
The system emails to customers which have an item in their wish list but
did not go to checkout once in a few weeks.
Previously viewed items - a box that shows 3-4 last viewed paintings.
Crossed linked items - under each painting in paintings page. The system needs to learn which
paintings are related to each other or by crossing the info of that painting with other related artists/styles/colors. Also to show 1-2 crossed
linked artist.
Crossed linked artists - in Artists pages, same as above but for artists.
Gift Certificates - (We need our wish list to work as in http://www.oldmasterpiece.com , we would like you to design the gift
certificates as well, it needs to be fully automatic, be sent to receiver
etc, as on that page. Same options)
New Releases - Automatically shows newly added items and artists.
Top Sellers - Systems tracks the most viewed paintings and lists them. Also,
next to each painting
Today's Deals - Rotating paintings in a discount.
On line tracking, integrated with UPS, TNT, DHL and FedEx. Customer gets
order #, then can check progress online, shipped or not etc.
Support: on line ticket system, online help.
Newsletter
Membership which creates a different set of prices, keeps track on past
orders, reward "points" for buying etc.
Wholesale account, which creates a different set of prices.
Automatic html email follow ups - 2-3 days after purchasing, designed as our
website. (Just an idea.. I need to think what is the value here)
Newsletter template
Newsletter engine and wrapper
We need all the "usual" features of any ecommerce website:
Wish list - emails to customers which have an item in their wish list but did not go to checkout.
Gift Certificates - (We need our wish list to work as in http://www.oldmasterpiece.com , we would like
you to design the gift certificates as well, it needs to be fully automatic, be sent to receiver etc, as on that page. Same options)
New Releases - Automatically shows newly added items
Top Sellers - Systems tracks the most viewed paintings and more sold paintings.
Today's Deals - Rotating paintings in a discount.
On line tracking, integrated with UPS, TNT, DHL and FedEx. Customer gets order #, then can check progress online, shipped or not etc.
Support: on line ticket system, online help.
Newsletter
Membership which creates a different set of prices, keeps track on past orders, reward "points" for buying etc.
Wholesale account, which creates a different set of prices.
Automatic html email follow ups - 2-3 days after purchasing, designed as our website. (Just an idea.. I need to think what is the value here)
Newsletter template
Newsletter engine and wrapper
Interactivity:
"Art expert" Forum - where people can ask questions: (moderated)
Any other ideas are welcome.
The site is a gallery but should also have many info pages, and give a feeling of an info source AND a high end gallery. The braning is important,
you really need to know how to do something like this and we will work on it together. We need to be able to add static pages in the info area,
like articles etc.
The paintings are prices by size, but we will need to have for the future a few "price groups" and to be able to associate each group with
different pricing, just in case this will change.
We want to be able to use the database later for other web sites which will have only some of the artists and different prices.
We will work out all details later, the point is that everything should be easily customized by us in the future. If I will need to jump over to
your office for you to teach me how to do this, I will do it. I will probably have to, unless it is really easy.
I think this is enough for you to know how much work it will be, most features are absolutely standard and come with osommerce.
We would like to have the site and later sites hosted in one place, in a virtual dedicated server type of account, like we have now. We will need
for the other sites IPs with a different C class. WE WANT to make sure that this database and functions can be used later for the constructions of
other web sites, with the same database.
Please see these samples of payouts to better understand what we need:
The base of the design needs to be http://www.oldmasterpiece.com , and even nicer, with a flash batter
on the top, and more movement. But this site looks too corporate, we would like something better.
Most functions that we want can bee seen at: http://www.oceansbridge.com
Recently views Items: The system needs to track what the customers views before and present it in a special box.
Related Items: The system needs to generate "Related items" list that is generated automatically by following customers behavior. (Like in
Amazon.com)
custom orders & Portraits / Artists / Art Movements (Periods) / Collections / Colors / Theme /
Most favorites / Gift certificate / Art Forum & News / Testimonials / Contact us
Custom orders : Takes to the custom orders page (Click here for
Layout Page for custom order >> takes to a thank you page. )
Needs to be generated automatically, and to include small photo of each artist. (In the database, we will be able to set one painting as the "top"
painting of the artist and it will be used next to the painters name)
Collections: List as in:
http://www.oceansbridge.com/art/customer/collections.php (can be found also in
http://www.globalgallery.com (Architecture Collection, Blakeway Panoramas, Contemporary Collection, Limited Edition Collection, Millennium
Collection, Petite Format Collection, Staff Favorites Collection, Top Tens Collection, Vatican Library collection, Vintage
Advertisements, Willoughby Collection.)
Colors : As in http://www.huntfor.com/absoluteig/colors.htm THIS PAGE MUST BE MADE
BEFORE WORK ON DATABASE start, to make sure it will work properly and so we know how many fields we have. We should use same colors as on this
page. .
All these lists needs to be generated automatically from the database! All items needs to have fields as "Color", "Theme", "Collection", "Art
Movement". If item is created with new field name (Like when a new "Theme" is given, then a new theme group is created. We will try to give most
categories before you will start to work on the page. "Colors" field will need to be worked out in advanced and a menu as in
http://www.huntfor.com/absoluteig/colors.htm to be made)
In each sorting of list of any kind, the result needs to be created automatically. It needs to include a small photo next to it
Most favorites as in http://www.oceansbridge.com/artist-biography/index.php
How to Order/Help - Special page for ordering help
In stock paintings:
Another category, "paintings in stock" - the only deference is that there will be only one size (the size we have) and the individual painting page
needs to be a little different to make clear that the painting is in stock and ready to be shipped.
SEO:
We will need to decide together what will be the best title and keywords of the individual pages. We need to build the database so our other web
sites will use different titles. For example, I will need our first site to target "oil paintings" so the subject line should read "Oil
paintings - Artist name - Painting title". 2nd web site "Oil Painting Reproduction - Painting Name - Artist" etc.. OR, first the artist name,
then title... etc. I will need to hear your advice on which key words to target. All pages needs to be indexed and option to create HTML catalog
and site map automatically as database grow. Page titles and Mata tags taken from the database and paintings / artists info.
All the painting should have as a name tag the painting title so it will be shown in the image search engines.
The top pages of "Art Movements" and "Artists" need to target the Movement or artists name as a keyword so html pages need to be generated under
each movement with the reprehensive paintings of the movement with appropriate tags to search engines will pick up the movement top page as
an "authority" page.
Google dropped most of this sites Title and we should know what to do to avoid it.
Search by colors (and in the advanced search / search results) sort by colors. This are the colors to be and how it should look like (around this
idea, unless you have a better one):
.
In the admin area, there should be the option to mark to which art movement the painting belongs to and this list can be used for other purposes
(sorting etc).
This is just to show you what we will have to build for the simple navigation, ,along with sample paintings next to each name, which is
reprehensive for the movement. Same for artist names. The artists names page should be generated automatically since new paintings and artists will
be added daily.
Americana