In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Edwina Cameron, Co-founder of I Heart Wall Art. Having got tired of keeping up with the Joneses in the suburbs, Edwina and her family upped sticks and moved to the rainforest, built a shed in the garden and set up an online wall art business…as you do. With a particular focus on Australian nature, I Heart Wall Art offers a range of digital prints, canvases and framed artworks, some of which Edwina creates herself. They now employ two staff and are just about to open a showroom office space in the town of Maleny.
“Gosh we live in a beautiful country, let’s hang it up on our walls”
Edwina Cameron
Questions answered in this episode include…
- Coming from a corporate comms world, how did you upskill yourself in eCommerce?
- What is your secret to getting SEO right?
- How should someone go about finding the perfect art for their home?
The best of Australia
“We try to cover off the main Australian styles to an extent. It’s that Hamptons style that’s really popular at the moment, that kind of boho, that kind of earthy, kind of natural look, and we’ll have stuff across those ranges. But, certainly, I think the point at which our range is very different, I think, is that a lot of the focus is on nature, I think, and Australian nature and the natural surroundings that we are so lucky to have in this country. So I wanted to celebrate that.
I think that if you look at a lot of other sites that you can see a lot of places overseas, and it’s not that we don’t have those because we do as well because I do want to be able for people to find what they’re looking for if that’s what they want, but Idolizing places in Europe isn’t really what we’re about. I want people to look at our range and go, “Gosh, we live in a beautiful country, let’s hang it up on our walls.”
Instead of having a picture of the Grand Canyon, let’s put up this gorgeous picture of the Outback because it’s just as beautiful and it’s ours.” So that’s really, I guess, the crux of it. But, in saying that, we do try to cater, within reason, for differing tastes and for the most popular styles that you find in houses in Australia at the moment.”
Under-promise and over-deliver
“My philosophy with what we’re doing here has always been to under-promise and over-deliver. I deliberately started doing that because I really wanted all of the reviews that we got within the first year or two of business to be really as glowing as possible. So we started off pricing quite low. We’ve had to put our prices up because we need to pay our mortgage. But we did deliberately start quite low when we were a new business, and we did deliberately produce a product that was really premium quality for quite a low price.
That did really did blow people away, because they were getting these really nice solid timber frames, which we still do for a fraction of what they were paying at other sites. Now, it came to a point where we were like, “Okay, we’re going to have to price this more realistically.” Particularly, this year, the price of timber has just gone through the roof because there’s been big shortages. So we have had to look at that and address that. But we do price still very reasonably compared to some of the other online art retailers.
I think it’s just really been about trying to exceed people’s expectations and then really harness that burst of positivity they get and leave a good review and tell your friends about it. That seems to have worked really well for us so far.”
SEO success
“I think something that’s made a huge difference for us is naming each image as we upload them based on the keywords that someone might use if they were looking for that image. So instead of, say, product name, image four, I’ll name each image ‘abstract artwork of ocean for example. Just trying to really be mindful of using keywords in your image titles, in your product titles and descriptions, without stuffing them in there.
The only thing that I can think that sets us apart is that and there’s no shortcut to it. There’s no magic button or app that you can plug in that’s going to suddenly get you to page one. It literally has just been a whole lot of leg work and writing good descriptions, clear descriptions, making sure that your website is linked. So under each print, I’ll have, “You can buy this as a stretched canvas, click here to read what a stretched canvas is,” so making sure that it’s just laid out in a way that is really accessible.
Something that we always used to say in comms and the media industry is you need to write like you’re writing for someone in about year nine. That’s actually the level that you should be presenting your information because it’s clear, it’s accessible. If someone’s in a hurry, they can read it easily.”
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