El Barrett Art
DIY Shopify - appearing on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year
“I really appreciated your quick responses, efficiency and patience throughout the project! It made it very easy and ended up with great results.
I would never have been able to create such a professional-looking and functioning website on my own, and it will allow me to sell online easily and with more assurance.
I would absolutely recommend you to others; you were very efficient throughout the process, but also considerate of my precise vision, supportive throughout, and shared my enthusiasm for it, which I valued a lot.
Thank you SO much for all your fabulous help. I'm very happy with how it looks and how professional it is! Definitely a bit of a dream come true."
The Cube
I was introduced to El Barrett via The Cube at the University of Plymouth, where I deliver monthly sessions on marketing and web strategy for current students and alumni of the University.
I was particularly excited to speak with El, as the referral mentioned that she would be appearing on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year in 2025.
In over twenty-five years of consultancy, I have worked with only a handful of business people and creatives who have appeared on national television. One of my past clients featured on Four in a Bed, representing their tourism accommodation business, and I recalled that such appearances often have a life beyond their debut broadcast. Each time a repeat aired (the client was never notified in advance), there was a noticeable spike in website traffic and enquiries. With this in mind, my consultation with El focused on optimising the opportunity of being featured on television.
Optimising the Moment in Time
El is a full-time student at the University of Plymouth and was keen to establish an online presence for her artwork ahead of the programme’s airing. She had begun using the Squarespace website builder but found it challenging to create a site that would showcase her work professionally.
I offered to help El prepare for the broadcast date, 19th November, by using the DIY Shopify process to build her website together. We also implemented the marketing support infrastructure needed to maximise this “moment in time” opportunity and turn it into a lasting marketing asset.
The steps in this process included:
- Building a professional-standard e-commerce website using Shopify.
- Creating a user experience that promoted sales and effectively presented her brand and story.
- Linking the website with other marketing channels to enable data sharing and future remarketing, including email and audience capture.
This setup is particularly important when a business has a one-off marketing opportunity, whether it’s attending an exhibition or appearing on a major television show such as Portrait Artist of the Year. These moments typically generate a spike in website visits; however, most visitors are not yet ready to purchase. Instead, they are curious and exploring. Without capturing their contact information, you lose the chance to re-engage them later when they are ready to buy.
Setting up email and data capture costs nothing, as it can be done entirely using free tools. To keep costs low, we enrolled El on Shopify’s three-month trial (£1 per month) and used free accounts on Mailchimp and Google.
El may or may not choose to use these marketing tools in the future, but by putting them in place, she now has the option to do so. Without them, that option, and future opportunity, would not exist. For that reason, I regard this kind of data capture setup as an essential requirement for every business.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working on this project with El, and I’m looking forward to seeing her produce her incredible art on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year.