If you're searching for art for your home or office online, it may not take long for you to get overwhelmed. If you're like me, you have a limited attention span. You probably have high standards too and get frustrated as you're forced to weed through thousands of pieces that are either cliché or just not your style. A search for art can take a lot of time—time most people don't have today.
So what is the best way to narrow down your art search? How can you save some time and get closer—quicker—to stuff you like and want to buy? It may seem obvious, but for starters, be specific in the choice of keywords you use in your search. Having some sense of what you're looking for is a good way to start. If you enter "buy art posters" you'll get thousands of links thrown back at you. But if you use specific keywords like "NHL inspired art poster" or "Toronto typography art poster", see what happens. Chances are you'll get much closer, much faster.
If you're a visual person, and if a text search doesn't yield what you're looking for, try doing the same search in 'images' on Google. Online stores like ours that are dedicated to helping make your art search simpler attach keywords to our images to make it easier for you to find what you want through alternative search methods.
What if you don't know what you want yet?
Lets say you're starting out and you're not sure what the subject of your art search will be. Maybe you won't know until you find it. Now you're back where we started, facing the great abyss of thousands of websites and millions of pieces of art. Again, this can be daunting but if you approach it strategically, your search can be narrowed down quicker.
Think about what type of store might be more in your wheelhouse. If you enter "online art store", you guessed it, you'll get buried in options. But if you think strategically and enter something like "Boutique Canadian online art store" you'll likely be shown links to sites that present smaller catalogues of niche works.
Search for sites that cater to you and your lifestyle
Online stores like ManMade Art offer a boutique experience while searching for art. Remember how I said I have a limited attention span? My experiences searching for art in the past were extremely frustrating. Wading through a massive number of websites with equally massive, poorly sorted catalogues was overwhelming. Like many people, I didn't have time to dig through endless pages of artwork that didn't offer what I was looking for.
Small catalogue sites like ManMade Art and others on the web cater to buyers that want high quality artwork but don't have hours to find it. But our approach is risky. The 'quality over quantity' mindset isn't popular with the big sites because it would mean potentially excluding some segments of the market. Small sites don't load thousands of art options with the hope of offering something for everyone. We know our catalogues won't appeal to everyone and we're ok with that. We cater to busy people with niche interests that want to find, order and receive their purchase quickly with no hassle.
The growth of small independent online art stores like ours confirms we've hit on something. Customers regularly tell us it was nice to find a boutique store featuring a manageable number of high quality, eclectic, original and affordable pieces.
That's the way we believe art shopping should be. Simple.
Wow! What a year 2017 was. I can't say thank you enough for continually supporting my quest to offer simple, clever, vintage-inspired art to the masses with a social conscience. 
Wow! It's hard to believe but two years have gone by like a flash since my passion for art became a business reality. So much has happened in the last year and a lot of hard work went into getting there, but our loyal fan base was the most important ingredient.
Want a chance to win some genuine ManMade Art for yourself—or better yet—someone special on your gift-giving list? Enter our 'Start-Follo-Win' contest, play your tweets right, and you just might just get a chance to score some major gift-giving points this year.