Using Tags, Categories, and Variations to Merchandise Your Art

Art merchandising on VSUAL is simple - in just a few minutes, you can have a fully functioning store where your fans can purchase your prints and new customers can discover your art. 

Increasing sales, though, means putting the right print in front of the right buyer. We’ve included three tools in VSUAL that help you automate this task, taking the guesswork out of helping buyers discover your works: Tags, Categories, and Variations. 

Let’s take a look at each feature to see how it can help you make more sales: 

Tags

Tags are descriptive words and phrases customers can use to narrow down their artwork search on VSUAL. This allows them to find artworks that suit their preferences, decor, and style without scrolling through hundreds of artworks they’re not interested in. 

When you’re listing your art prints available for print on VSUAL, adding tags can help the right buyers find your art quickly, giving them the streamlined, customized experience they want.

Customers can search from popular tags by clicking “Tags” in the left navigation bar on the VSUAL Artworks page:

They can also perform custom searches by typing words and phrases into the Search Bar at the top of the same page:

You can use a couple of different strategies when choosing and adding tags to your artwork listings. 

First, you can use preset tags, which are popular tags customers are already using to find artworks similar to yours. This gives your art the opportunity to be discovered by buyers who might never have heard of you before. 

Second, you can create your own custom tags in your listings. Custom tags can be any word or phrase a buyer might use in a search to find a certain type of art print. This can be especially helpful if your art features a particular theme, or you want to appeal to an audience that’s interested in your unique style or subject matter. 

It’s important, though, to make sure your tags are relevant. VSUAL reviews listings for accuracy, and may flag listings or suspend accounts using irrelevant or misleading hashtags. 

Irrelevant tags provide a poor customer experience and erodes visitors’ trust. For example, if a search for “boat on a lake” returned this artwork as a match, visitors would be disappointed in their experience and unlikely to buy: 

Categories

Categories help customers choose from among your artworks by allowing you to group them in themes. When visitors land on your store page, they can select from your chosen categories to narrow down results

This store provides an excellent example of carefully chosen categories:

To set up categories for your store, simply go to your print shop page and add the same tag to every listing you want in the same category. If you are adding many artworks to a category, click on Listings and then Bulk Edit to accomplish this task quickly. 

Then, navigate to your Categories page and enable the categories you want customers to see in your shop. 

Variations

If you have several variations of a particular artwork - such as multiple prints in a series - you can use the Variations feature to group them within a single listing, rather than having the buyer click on multiple listings to see the differences. 

For example, the listing shown in the screenshot below offers “The Art of Self Defense” in “waveform,” “circle,” and “classic (lines)” variations: 

Using the Tags, Categories, and Variations features in VSUAL can help put your artwork prints in front of the right buyers. It also creates a seamless, custom experience for your customers and fans. To find out more or get started today, just visit our sellers’ page.