Art Without Barriers: Incognito Art Show's new online experience

Background

The Incognito Art Show (IAS) is Australia’s biggest and most inclusive not-for-profit art show with a mission to support arts organisations, provide emerging artists with professional pathways, and to inspire and develop a new generation of art collectors and supporters. To accommodate for the show’s extraordinary popularity, in early 2024 they embarked on a journey to enhance their online experience on Shopify in collaboration with Convert Digital.

View the site here.

The vision and a twist

The Incognito Art Show isn’t an ordinary art sale; anyone is able to submit artwork, meaning the talent ranges from amateur and emerging artists to some of Australia's most well-known industry names. The IAS exists to:

• Financially support arts organisations

• Provide emerging artists the opportunity to become professional artists

• Inspire and develop a new generation of art collectors and supporters

Every piece of artwork (A5 in size), regardless of artist, is sold for just $100. The twist? The artist’s identity remains anonymous at all times. Only once an artwork is bought will the artist’s name be revealed to the buyer on the back of the artwork.

The show’s unique model provides greater access to art-buying for those without the usual means to do so, as well as democratises art selection; buyers buy what they truly love. Plus, profits raised go towards funding programs that support artists working with disabilities, including the incredible team at Studio A; a social enterprise initiative for talented artists with disabilities.

Eyes on another sell-out show

It’s been a huge growth journey for IAS. Since launching in 2021, they have seen amazing success not only with the number of artworks purchased, but also the amount of artwork contributed to the show. From 2023 to 2024, the show unexpectedly grew by ~250%, with 18,000 artworks submitted and set to be sold. Every year prior had also been a sell out.

In order to ensure another sell-out show, IAS needed to capitalise on this traction to ensure the buying experience was both seamless and effective. However, their existing site was basic and struggled to handle their exponential growth.

Their website's design and navigation was hindering their ability to effectively showcase and sell their unique products. They needed an expert service to improve the user experience and support their small team, lean budget, thousands of SKUs, basic tech stack, and unique campaign timeline. Help was needed, so they reached out to the team at Convert Digital.

“Incognito is dedicated to providing an exceptional experience for our artists and buyers. With Convert Digital's partnership, we've been able to deliver a digital platform that aligns with the size and scope of our event, even with our limited resources.”

David Liston (Co-Founder, Incognito Art Show)

The Project

The main goal of the project was to create a platform with the right technology and features to drive as many art sales as possible within a specific timeline, and Convert Digital worked closely with the IAS team to deliver on this objective, focusing on three key priority areas:

1) Enhance the website's UI/UX to make it easier to navigate artworks by number and subject

Incognito buyers spend many hours over many days creating their wishlists in preparation for the sale. To accommodate the growing number of visitors, the onsite experience needed to be seamless. The Convert Digital team redesigned the website, enhancing its aesthetic appeal, while implementing Searchspring search and merchandising, and Swym wishlist.

2) Promote framing and merchandising services by showcasing framing previews and details on the product pages

To increase sales and average order value, the Incognito team decided to offer framing services, which customers could include while purchasing artwork. By showcasing framing options and details on product pages, they provided buyers with a complete solution for purchasing and hanging their art. This approach proved successful, as sales and average order values increased significantly.

3) Supporting a seamless customer journey through each key phase

Developing a website that supported a seamless customer journey was essential to support Incognito’s key campaign phase: pre-show, onsite sale and online sale post-show.

"When Convert agreed to partner with us, we met with their team. They brought along a project manager, business analyst, front-end and back-end developers, designer, and solution architect. We immediately connected and mapped out key dates and goals. This gave us great confidence in the foundation of a successful partnership."

Ed Liston (Co-Founder, Incognito Art Show)

Key phases and tech stack

Incognito Art Show's campaign timeline revolves around three unique phases.

Phase 1: Curation, Pre-Show & Wishlist Building

During the curation and pre-show phase, IAS promoted the event through various channels including email, social media, PR, and more, partnering with Avid Collective and JCDecaux. This helped build hype, inform buyers about the show, and encourage them to create wishlists using the Swym wishlist app.

Phase 2: In-Person Sales

The IAS team processed wishlists in real time during the week-long in-person event and sold work in person using Shopify POS.

Phase 3: Online Sales

Not only did IAS work closely with Convert Digital for their new site build, they also enlisted the support of leading tech partners, including Yotpo for SMS.

"This year, Yotpo aimed to provide more meaningful support and became the official SMS provider for the Incognito Art Show," said Kara Sahota (Partnerships Lead APAC, Yotpo). "SMS is essential during peak sales periods, especially for highly anticipated events like this art show. Because of its immediacy and high open rates, it is ideal for time-sensitive promotions. Unlike email, which can easily get buried in crowded inboxes, SMS delivers a more personal and direct experience, effectively creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity that drives faster customer action."

Incognito Art Show’s search and merchandising, powered by Searchspring, is designed to boost click-through rates and average order values. Enhanced search relevancy uses custom attributes like medium, category, and colour to help customers easily find what they want. Filters on search and collection pages refine results, while merchandising rules prioritise in-stock artwork. Searchspring also applied a randomised order for A/B testing, incorporating custom data work. Additionally, on the product detail page (PDP), Searchspring’s recommendation engine powers an upsell carousel that highlights frame options when customers purchase artwork, helping boost add-on sales.

"Searchspring has been a proud supporter of the Incognito Art Show for the second year running, a cause our team are passionate about," says Kate Massey (Head of APAC, Searchspring). "With over 18,000 artworks available we worked closely with the Incognito and Convert Digital teams to focus on making the large catalogue discoverable for shoppers. An enhanced online search experience complete with advanced filters and sort options helped shoppers navigate to their favourite artwork styles with ease, and with pieces selling fast the automated merchandising kept available items elevated to the top in real-time."

‘’The Convert team helped build a lot of these relationships and ensured that we met these deadlines and could quickly transition what they needed to between phases. We had a team proactively monitoring our website, acting when needed, and providing support so we could instantly inform them of any issues that arose.’’

David Liston (Co-Founder, Incognito Art Show)

"It’s been really important for the team at Convert Digital to support a corporate social responsibility project like Incognito Art Show. We were so excited to collaborate on such a worthy cause, and work closely with both Dave and Ed Liston to deliver a brand new online experience to support the show's future and help accelerate YOY sales growth.”

Andrew Waite (CEO & Founder, Convert Digital)

Results

Not only does Incognito Art Show now have a sparkling new Shopify site that supports their unique campaign timelines – their new seamless customer experience ensures they are properly set up for success for 2025 and beyond.

The results IAS has experienced year-on-year following the launch of their new site speaks for themselves...