Art Works
Art Works sells contemporary fine art to investors and leases it to the offices that want it on their walls. Two audiences, one DIY website that served neither. We rebranded, rebuilt on WordPress and wired the whole site into ActiveCampaign, then stayed on for the SEO, marketing and lead generation.
A rebrand and WordPress rebuild that turned a DIY website into the front door for art investors and corporate leasing clients, with ActiveCampaign integration and a marketing relationship that ran for years after launch.
The Challenge
What we were solving
Art Works is a fine art investment gallery, established in Singapore in 2011 with an unusual model: clients buy investment-grade contemporary art from mid-career artists, and Art Works leases those pieces to corporate offices, generating rental income for the investor on top of any capital appreciation. Entry level sat around SGD $20,000, and the client base ran from expat professionals to second-generation wealth.
When director Troy Sadler (18 years in the art market across New York, Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore, formerly head trader running a floor of 25 art brokers at Australia's leading art brokerage) took the business forward, the website did not match the ambition. It ran on a DIY platform, and it undersold a company asking people to trust it with five-figure investments.
The audience problem made it harder. The same site had to persuade private investors researching art as an alternative asset, corporate offices, hotels and venues looking to lease works for their walls, and event guests checking what was on at the gallery. Art Works found Chillybin through a lead generation specialist, and that framing stuck: this was never a brochure project.
Success meant a site that could carry the credibility of a regulated-feeling investment conversation, speak to buyers and leasing clients separately, and feed every enquiry into a marketing system the small team (five people, including both directors) could actually run.
Our Approach
How we tackled it
Brand before pixels
The 2016 engagement started with the brand, not the homepage. We evolved the Art Works logo towards the target market it needed to win (high net worth investors, not casual art browsers) and built a brand toolkit covering palette, type, patterns, textures and imagery style, so every later design decision had a reference point.
Structure came next, tested cheaply: a sitemap and an interactive prototype in the browser, so navigation and functionality were agreed before any visual design was applied. With several audiences arriving with different questions, that prototype stage is where the site earned its shape.
One site, several buyers
The design gave the art room to breathe (clean lines framing the works themselves) while the architecture did the segmenting: artist profiles and featured works for collectors, investment education for people in research mode, leasing information for corporate clients, and an events platform for the gallery programme. Content was written around the search terms each group actually uses, from art investment to corporate art leasing.
One insight shaped the tone: the rising generation of art buyers never went to art appreciation classes. They know what they like and respond to direct, modern communication, so the site had to respect the traditional collector without being stuffy.
Built to capture leads, then worked hard after launch
We built the site on WordPress so the team could manage content themselves, and integrated it with ActiveCampaign from day one: lead capture on the site, subscribers into segmented email marketing, and a newsletter programme for the market updates that keep investors engaged between purchases.
Launch was the start of the relationship, not the end. Art Works moved onto a Chillybin care plan for maintenance and monitoring, and the engagement grew into search engine optimisation, Google Ads keyword research across the art investment and art leasing markets, marketing strategy sessions with the directors, and content written for their blog through to 2020.
The Solution
What we delivered
Art Works got what it came for: a credible, multi-audience platform in place of a DIY site, and a marketing system behind it. The proof is in what happened next (the client kept extending the engagement, from build to care plan to SEO, advertising and content) and in their own words.
"We are amazingly proud of the work Chillybin has done for us. Shaan worked with us through a professional, well-thought-out process of website design and development. They delivered a site that exceeds our expectations and gets awesome feedback from our investors. Their commitment to quality, technical expertise, and process discipline are inspiring. We don't know anyone that knows WordPress inside and out like they do and we're thankful that we found that expertise in Chillybin Web Design. We have engaged them to maintain our WordPress website and optimise for SEO, as well as look after our marketing and lead generation and are looking forward to working with them on many new ventures in the future." (Troy Sadler, Director, Art Works Pte Ltd)
The business is still trading today as Art Works Group, with gallery, interior design and advisory arms operating from Singapore's central business district.
What we learned
Wire the marketing system in during the build, not after it. Because ActiveCampaign was part of the original scope rather than a bolt-on, every form, subscription and enquiry fed one database from launch day, and the SEO and advertising work that followed had somewhere for its leads to land.
The other lesson is about selling trust. An art investment gallery is closer to a wealth manager than a shop: nobody transfers SGD $20,000 off the back of a pretty homepage. The education-first architecture (market guides, artist track records, a clear leasing model) did more for conversion than any visual flourish, and it is a pattern we have reused for finance clients since.