This FAQ looks at more in-depth on Impressions and Add to Cart stats. Please see the I don't understand my Artist Dashboard or how to use it? if your just wanting a more basic overview of your dashboard.
What are Impressions?
Impressions is a key metric to define 'visibility' - the closest tangible metric to show how often your work is seen by others.
What does it mean? - Every time your artwork appears on screen (including searches, new feed, staff pics, home page, popular artwork page, curations etc.) as a tile/thumbnail, this counts as an impression.
This basically means every time an artwork is seen (excluding being viewed on it's on page) - it makes an impression. High Impression numbers means your artwork is appearing in feeds and searches and is visible to collectors.
This👇 is an 'Artwork Impression' where the artwork is shown as a tile amongst others -
This 👇 is an 'Artwork View' viewed on its own page -
What if Impressions are high but views are low? - If your Impression numbers are high and artwork views are low, this means the artwork is appearing in the search but not being clicked on. The usual ratio is quite low (even for popular/well known artists, who upload works almost every day, or few times a week and is around 1:100). That means for every 100 impressions, it's viewed once. It's nothing to worry about as people like to search with a wide range of factors (colour, size, media etc.).
To increase clicks/views, you can keep these points in mind -
Have well photographed images: Good lighting, good cropping, and most importantly keep the main image as the full image of the artwork. If you're putting 'in situ' image as the main image, in the tile format it looks even smaller and might get a miss instead of a click even when it's relevant.
Tag with relevant keywords: This is important for accuracy. If someone is trying to find a 'zebra' piece and roses are coming up, they'll get impressions but not views.
Dimensions check: Check, double check and triple check if the dimensions for the artwork are correct and accurate. If someone is searching for a large piece, and you've accidentally entered 300(mm) instead of 30cm, you'll get an impression but not a view.
Add to Cart
This is a key metric and shows intent to purchase. Here are a few occasion collectors might add your artworks to cart -
They're shortlisting artworks (from the one's they've already favourited) - A lot of collectors go through 100s of artworks before they come to a decision. Which means they go through various stages of shortlisting and decision making. Adding things to cart is usually the last stage of shortlisting. You add things to cart, see how much the whole thing costs and make your final decision. This means that unfortunately not all 'Add to Cart's' will convert into a sale - but that's not a bad thing. Each Add to Cart gives you popularity points meaning your artwork is pushed up the 'Popular Artworks' page.
They want to see information around shipping, returns and total payments - New collectors (new on Bluethumb), who're not familiar with shipping and return policies, sometime add things to cart and go to checkout (order page) to see the order details. They also do this to see the payment options available and make decisions accordingly.
Collectors who don't prefer creating an account (due to various reasons) use 'Add to cart' instead of 'favouriting' your artworks as a shortlisting method.
What happens when someone adds something to cart?
When an artwork is added to cart:
Others can still/also add it to cart and buy. Adding an artwork to cart doesn't put it on hold or makes it unavailable. It can be in multiple carts at any given time, and its the first person to place the order that snags the work.
If they add something to cart and don't buy it, Bluethumb sends them 3 emails (over the period a week) to remind them and see if they have any concerns (shipping, returns, payments etc.) These emails are well designed to address the major/common concerns and give the buyers the confidence to buy.
At this time being able to see which artwork in particular has been added to someones cart is only available to Pro Plan users. For more information on the elevated metrics available to Pro users please see the FAQ Bluethumb Pro Plan Overview & FAQs