How Online Ceramics Keeps Its Cool
by Anne Dickson
Marilyn G. Anderson
In many ways, the process of putting up a website is the very opposite of selling your wares. In other senses, however, it can be just as satisfying. In the case of the Ceramic Tile Museum website, it’s the reverse. And since the first edition of the site, it has been a model of online success for the museum and for the ceramics industry.
CeMi was first created in June 1999 as a way to catalog ceramics from across the United States. Its most recent edition, the seventh, was launched in 2007. It was at this point, in fact, that CeMi began to attract visitors from all over the world. Ceramic Tile Museum’s website is not only an online catalog, but it has become an important tool for all businesses in the art of ceramics. For any small business in ceramics, this is a great website.
To start, you should consider this. In the case of Ceramic Tile Museum, a business without a website would be limited in terms of what it could accomplish. On the other hand, if CeMi had a website, it would not only give a great look to what the organization was doing, but it would give its customers a way of expressing their needs and wants in the most convenient and satisfying manner.
Ceramic Tile Museum’s Website
And to begin with, the first version of the CeMi website was an online catalog. The second edition of the site went in a completely different direction. In the original version, the site was in its simplest form, simply one page with the ceramics from each maker listed in alphabetical order. A second page, which was available during the first year of CeMi’s existence, provided a link to a shopping cart, allowing visitors to purchase the goods listed on the first page.
When CeMi became more interactive, it expanded the number of pages and the number of categories. The third edition provided its readers with a “what to buy