NSCC

2012

Company Audit for Art

Gallery of Nova Scotia By Andre sakr, Ashley Goss, & Tony Jarmash

Wendy Tarrel

SIM

BAM-A

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Table of Contents

Evaluation of: .....................................................................................................................................2

Company’s website and domain name .............................................................................................2

Search Engine Optimization .............................................................................................................3

Online Advertising Campaign ...........................................................................................................3

Blogs ..............................................................................................................................................4

Social Media Campaign ...................................................................................................................5

Customer Conversations ..................................................................................................................5

5. Tweets ................................................................................................................................7

E-Marketing Campaign........................................................................................................................9

Website and Domain name .............................................................................................................9

Search Engine Optimization ........................................................................................................... 10

Online Advertising Campaign ......................................................................................................... 11

Blogs ............................................................................................................................................ 11

HTML ........................................................................................................................................... 12

Customer Conversations ...................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

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Company Audit for Art Gallery of Nova Scotia

Evaluation of:

Company’s website and domain name

The usability of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia’s website is mediocre. It doesn’t seem to

really have a lot of colour or stand out and the layout is very hard to distinguish which is

distracting and hard on the eyes. However, they websites has a menu on the top and links

everywhere for blogs and other things. The architecture of the website is not good at all either.

Their menu should be ordered in a different way to represent information hierarchy and

categories. They do provide a site map on their website which is helpful when searching around

the website. The site does work on different browsers giving it more usability as well as a

search box available at the top right corner of the site that is accessible on all pages. Content

doesn’t really grab the attention of the readers and you have to really look around to find what

you are looking for.

The domain name of the company’s website I think is much too long. However it is exactly what

the name of the company is which is a good thing.

The company’s website is definitely not very attractive or even helpful for that matter. A

good thing is that they do have it separate Yarmouth from Halifax, however they are not

different sites or anything, they are just different pages. When you click on the Halifax one

(which will be used as my example since we are closer to Halifax) there are more categories you

can choose from however it is really plain and seems cramped with a lot of text on a white

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background and dates. It doesn’t make me want to look at it at all! The text on the website is

much too small making it hard to read. There is a lot of information on this website, but I think

it could be shown in a better, more effective, and cleaner way. The website does show that

they have social media such as twitter or facebook, but it is at the very bottom where most

people won’t see it.

In the design for their website, they do have sign up and downloads. However they are

not clearly placed anywhere and you would need to search around to find them. They are

missing a lot of cues to make a website more creditable to visitors.

Search Engine Optimization

If you search art gallery of Nova Scotia on Google the company’s website is the top

result followed by its wiki page 2nd and in 4th its Halifax Facebook page. However if you search

less keywords such as “art gallery” it comes up 2nd to Vancouver’s art gallery or “nova scotia

art” it also comes up 2nd to nova scotia art. It seems to me that this company has definitely

optimized their search engine opportunities especially for art galleries in Canada/Nova Scotia.

Online Advertising Campaign

The online advertising campaign that would be involved with the Art Gallery is to have it

look inviting to the audience because sometimes people are interested in art but very

intimidated by art galleries if they don't collect often, by advertising in everyday publications

like newspapers, a gallery can reach a large audience and appear inviting. The art gallery of

Nova Scotia should appeal to young hipsters. It would be helpful if they took the time to

advertise in local university or college publications, especially to majors like Art History. Even if

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students don't go to art gallery with bulging wallets, they may help stir up publicity, and bring in

new target markets that are ready to buy.

The Art Gallery has to focus on the arts in general. Consumers interested in the arts

often have a hand in several different types; ask local book and clothing store owners and

restaurateurs about placing flyers or cards in their businesses. This will increase the

traffic/profit for not only the art gallery, but also for the stores that helped advertise. By

producing attractive advertising with colorful material on social networks, people will be

attracted to the ad, and have a true understanding of the attractiveness and innovative an art

gallery really provides.

The Nova Scotia art gallery should have a chance to participate in local art organizations

and events. It would be a reliable way to tap into the local art scene to join a local gallery

organization or participate in a gallery walk. Not only will it give you the chance to meet new

people, you might get some new ideas or network to gain some advertising expertise. The

advertising could also be pushed by artists in the gallery show by spreading the word of the

show out of pure excitement, and urging the advertisements of the show on their website or

blog as well.

Blogs

As far as blogs go, The Nova Scotia Art Gallery doesn’t have anything specifically

dedicated to the Bloggers lifestyle. There are no specific blogs that the Art Gallery has, and

there are no blogs that are even created by a third-party in relation to The Art Gallery. This is

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definitely a place where The Art Gallery could expand, and also a great opportunity to get some

of their art out there.

Social Media Campaign

Facebook : Art Gallery of Nova Scotia Twitter : Art Gallery of NS

URL:http://www.facebook.com/ArtGalleryNS?ref=ts URL:http://twitter.com/ArtGalleryNS

Friends: 2,694 Followers: 4970

On Facebook there seems to be less amounts of updates compared to twitter. When it

comes to what they post, they are both very similar, and sometimes post the exact same things.

For example, they post promotions for the Art Gallery gift shop. They also post paintings and

exhibits that are currently displayed / going on in the Art Gallery. Both pages seem to have a

constant relationship with the NSCAD, as they post back and forth on each other’s walls and

pages. They have a special “Artwork of the Week” That they post and advertise. However the

focus and majority of their posts and tweets are examples and pictures of the Art that they

have displayed.

Customer Conversations

1. The Nova Scotia Art Gallery has the following pages: facebook, twitter, and blogs these

are related to social media, and can be used as an integral part of an online marketing

campaign, the Art Gallery uses social media so they can create, and connect to the

online world. Staying connected is very important and also allows users to upload, view,

and share with the rest of the connected world. The Nova Scotia Art Gallery is lacking in

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the social media department, they need to develop a strategy to make it extra

noticeable to the audience, and keep connected by updating their social media

information. The posts that are placed on the pages have been positive and addressing

people to visit the art gallery and many posts are saying it’s a fabulous experience to see

the art.

2. The things being shared on the facebook page are previous projects people have done,

promotions, and discounts to print out and be taken when going to visit the Nova Scotia

Art Gallery, there are also many different events to attend on special days.

The things being shared on tweeter are gift certificates, new releases of art work

done by the artist in the gallery. The Art Gallery have 4,905 followers, and are following

1,654 people, so they have a wide variety of an audience

3. The key messages of the social media provided in the posts are all involving the

advertising of the Art Gallery, it allows you to access a community with similar interest

as your own, gives feedback, and helps drive both future businesses as well as

marketing strategies. The Art Gallery’s key messages are promoting the recent art

projects performed by their artist.

4. The Nova Scotia Art Gallery has positive and negative messages in nature; the positive

message allows the marketers insights into their demographic and the chance to engage

with the audience. The reaction from the posts seems to be extremely liked and

interesting to the audience. The Art Gallery allows a wide range of time to capitalize on

the creativity of their consumers to spread their message further at very low cost.

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The negative message of the Art Gallery is the lack of creativity they have for

their social media, for an art gallery you expect it to be colorful and vibrant, but

unfortunately it’s not. The connectedness can be a conduit for the distribution of

negative messages also; the conversation cannot be controlled from what is seen

at the art gallery.

5. Tweets

2 Dec-Art Sales & Rental @ASAR_Gallery

We also have gift certificates available in any denomination for those on your holiday list with a

new home to decorate!

Retweeted by Art Gallery of NS

Neil Molloy @Neilmolloy

Went to the @ArtGalleryNS last night, you MUST go check out the exhibit on “the group of 7”

awesome oils that will make your eyes weep #hfx

Retweeted by Art Gallery of NS

Quote from Facebook

“Let the gift hunting begin! Our Gallery Shop is a fanciful treasure trove of art inspired gifts.

Come and browse and take advantage of the special offer that’s just right for you!”

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The post/content/quotes I stated above are relevant to what I have been making

because they include positive/negative points, and also have key messages situated in them.

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E-Marketing Campaign

The following is our suggestions for an E-marketing campaign on The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

Website and Domain name

The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia should keep their domain name. It is easy to remember

and is exactly the name of the company as well. The only downfall is it is a bit long, but if you

were to change it to something shorter then it would be harder to remember.

However, the website on the other hand could use a bit of work. We will start off with

the entry page of the website. It is very plain other than the slides of pictures . What they

should be doing is grabbing the attention of the visitor so they will want to continue into the

rest of the website. I would say that instead of having just the banners at the bottom with

words they should change it maybe a picture instead of a banner that would be more

interesting than the current banners with small simple images.

Also after you want to leave the entry page of this website, you can choose to go to the

Yarmouth version of the website or the Halifax version of the website. This is a good feature;

however instead of have them as just different webpages off the original website, what they

should have them as are different subdomains. So customers should enter the site on the entry

and then the website should start there. What is mean by this is everything that the 2 locations

have in common should put onto the website with the domain name

artgalleryofnovascotia.com then everything that is separate, such as; contact info, events, etc.

could be put into each subdomain.

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The architecture of the website needs to be changed a bit as to show the difference in

the hierarchy of the web pages. The tabs at the top should be reordered for this in the following

ways About us followed by AGNewS to right, then Exhibitions following that, Learn to the left

of that, followed by Visit then Get Involved, then last have Shop AGNS with Contact us to left of

that.

The website should be redesigned so that it doesn’t seem so cramped, cluttered, and

boring. What I mean by this is they should add in some more colours to make things stand out

more especially on such a plain white background. Also they need to have a more organized

way of showing their content. They best way to do all this for their website would be to utilize a

tool called joomla. Joomla is a content management system that would help them organize

what is on their website in a more attractive manner.

Search Engine Optimization

What we would tell the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia is to optimize their search engine

results they need to add more basic keywords. They have great descriptive keywords such as

“Atlantic Canada Art, Maud Lewis, Sobey Art Award, ArtsSmarts, Exhibitions, Marilyn Monroe,

Halifax, Yarmouth, Contemporary Art, Historical Art, Nova Scotia, Maritimes, Art Education,

classes, and family fun”. However if they added basic keywords to them such as “art, art gallery,

Canada” then they would show up closer to the front page when people search less specific

things. This would help them out as they don’t always show up on the first page and it changes

daily for them depending on what you search. Another thing they have done that has helped

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optimize their search engine is they have search engine friendly URLs. This is something else

they have don’t have to change as they have seemed to take advantage of their SEO.

Online Advertising Campaign

The online advertising for the Nova Scotia Art Gallery is provided more on their website itself;

to improve their advertising they should have done more so on facebook, twitter. The art gallery

should also include the following to their list of online advertising: pop-ups, advertisements on

Google, and other search engines that are well-known. This would increase the traffic and

encourage people to visit the art gallery.

The art gallery needs to provide realistic imagining, and very attractive art work to catch the eye

of their target market, by using the online advertisement that I have mentioned above, the art

gallery will have great success and a wide range of customers. The art gallery should advertise

their online advertising different ways by giving promotions and discounts to tourist, students,

seniors, and military.

Blogs

As mentioned in the Audit, The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia has no blog or blog page

implemented. Implementing a blog is one of the best ways for a company to build its own voice

in the new world of social media. What we suggest is that on the main home page of the art

gallery’s website, they attach a link (just like the other ones) to either a tumblr site, or create a

blog site of their own. The point of this blog would be ideal, and would play a strategic role in

reaching out to customers and connecting with them. The blog would have daily posts, by The

Art Gallery, maybe outlining new displays or new exhibits, or possibly even just write ups about

certain pieces of artwork. The blog would not be able to accept write ups from anyone else,

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except for the art gallery itself. However, there will of course be a feature that will enable

viewers to comment and reply, this will help establish the customer relationship. Another idea

for blogging may be some sort of video blog, where the staff of the art gallery would put

together a minute or two long clip outlining some new displays, some new pieces of artwork as

well as sales and promotions they have going on. They would be able to directly upload the

videos to YouTube, as well as connect and link them to their social media sites. I.E. Twitter,

Facebook & Tumblr.

HTML

The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia uses XHTML 1.0 transitional as their hyper-text markup

language. This is an outdated version of HTML from approximately 1999. There are many

drawback and features that this version doesn’t support, that some of the newer ones do. For

this reason, and this reason alone I would suggest updating their HTML to the latest, which is

XHTML5. It will however require more work as they will have to re-format their entire current

HTML. The benefits of the newer software provide interactive tools, cleaner, more efficient and

nicer looking webpages. As for keywords within the HTML, the ones that are used are as

follows: Atlantic Canada Art, Maud Lewis, Sobey Art Award, ArtsSmarts, Exhibitions, Marilyn

Monroe, Halifax, Yarmouth, Contemporary Art, Historical Art, Nova Scotia, Maritimes, Art

Education, classes, family fun. They seem to have their basis covered however they are missing

basic words like Art, Art Gallery and Paintings. The Art Gallery should definitely use more of

these broad terms if they want to expand their Search engine optimization. As for the Meta tag,

their current one is as follows = "Art Gallery of Nova Scotia is the largest arts museum in

Atlantic Canada. Located in downtown Halifax, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia is open to the

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public and offers a range of art related exhibitions and programming." I believe this is probably

one of the best things that the art gallery has done, they have simply stated their purpose,

location and offerings in one phrase. I personally love this Meta tag description and would not

change one thing about it.

Social Media Campaign

The marketing campaign for the Nova Scotia Art Gallery has many social media

strategies, but is not very attractive and powerful to the eye of the target market. The Art gallery

advertising should have colorful, powerful, attractive, and bold font to stand out from any other

advertisement campaign. The Facebook website for the Nova Scotia Art Gallery needs more

color, less text, and more pictures this will show the audience how welcoming, and talented artist

really are. Facebook also needs to generate in conversations with the client-tell to engage in

online advertising and get ideas and suggestions from the out-side world. The art gallery has

2,694 likes, 53 people talking about them, and 768 people visiting the website. The Nova Scotia

Art Gallery needs to work on getting more traffic, by creating events, and social activities

associated with the art gallery.

Twitter needs to focus on the art galleries appeal and trends of its website .It only has

tweets of artist, and not many pictures to attract the audience like it should, the art galleries

twitter needs to have more events, and gift certificates to have people attend art shows, and

social events.