Name of your website?Hummingbird Lane Art Gallery
Your name?
Amy Strickland
Your Location (city, etc)
Historic Dahlonega, Georgai, home of the first American Gold Rush
Hummingbirdlaneartgallery.com is just a small sample of the artwork of over 200 artists. New work comes into the gallery daily, and our website is your worldwide connection to what the artists in the Southeastern US are working on for you!
Hummingbirdlaneartgallery.com is just a small sample of the artwork of over 200 artists. New work comes into the gallery daily, and our website is your worldwide connection to what the artists in the Southeastern US are working on for you!
What inspired you to launch your own website?
We were inspired by the numerous responses we received from our guests at the gallery. Everyone wanted to know when new work arrived, what was happening in Dahlonega, and with our artists. Our response was to build an interactive site that gave a wonderful taste of the gallery, enticing you to come to Dahlonega to experience this sensory extravaganza for yourself.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
WWW.Hummingbirdlaneartgallery.com is our first site!
How did you decide on a name for your website?
It is named after our business. While the URL is a bit long, we hope that the people who visit us will bookmark it as one of their favorites and come back often. So far, that's been the case!
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We don't offer artwork on sale, on line. Our mission is to offer fair prices on original artwork, and to entice you to come into the gallery. We're not competing with sites that offer artwork for sale on line. We believe that artwork is a direct connection to one's soul, and cannot connect 100% with it's proper owner, except in person. So, our on-line gallery is meant only for pleasure, information, and a resource to the working artists that we support and represent.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Our goal is to build our website and have it be a point of reference for tourists and locals alike. We're really excited about launching our wedding registry, and are building a new site that will connect the general public with all the businesses in Dahlonega who are working hard to be the perfect hosts and hostesses to our wonderful visitors. We're working with the Lumpkin County Chamber of Commerce to provide the best on line resource for all of our visitors.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
We believe in what we're doing, and have seen growth because of it. Our investment in time is only beginning, and our money is well spent!
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
We're constantly looking for the most innovative ways to enhance our customer's experience, and work hard to meet those needs. If we had unlimited resources, we would have a POS system that could offer basic products from the gallery to our customers.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Rich people problems! We have people waiting in the wings to help us grow, so YES!
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
None - we are so fortunate to have the web designer that we have: Phillip Lovelace of Pixelflips.com. He has made the whole process exciting and completely possible to dream up ideas and make them a reality. There are so many products that he's made available to us, simply because of his knowledge and experience. I've been headache free because of Phillip!
What has been your biggest challenge?
Finding Phillip!
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Oh, so many methods! We started with a mailing list of our customers, and have put our website onto our business cards, which promotes a lot of business. As well, we bought several domain names to simplify our customers' searches. I believe we're only at the beginning of marketing our site, so we've only just begun!
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
I used to be a lot more fluent in working on the tools I had available to me. I'm not as fluent any more, so I'm not able to do as much myself as I thought I would be. However, the products available these days are amazing, so my expectations have been far surpassed from my own actual knowledge.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
We've already seen the benefits of our website, so I can't imagine that we're working in that type of a vacuum. We believe that we're all experiencing hard times these days, and that our website is a tool working towards the common goal. We're not only going to keep our website working and updated, we're thinking of new ways to use the WWW to enhance not only our business, but the businesses in our community.
What is your website address?
Hummingbird Lane Art Gallery
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