Step by step, from photographs to publishing it.
Listing something on Artmire takes two passes. First you create the item and describe it; then you reopen it, refine it and add the pictures.
Before your first listing you need a shipping profile. It is the first field on the form and the only one you cannot fill in from there — with none saved, the dropdown is empty and the listing cannot be created.
Items is the list of everything you have listed, published or not. Add Item, at the top right, opens the form over it.
The list is split into three tabs, with the number of listings in each beside its name:
Every listing is in exactly one of them, so the three counts add up to your whole shop. The tab you leave open is the one you come back to. Category, free text and the two switches narrow whichever tab you are in — and narrow the three counts with it, so a tab always says how many you would actually see.
Which of your profiles applies to this item — what it costs to send and where you send it. One profile usually covers many items, so this is a choice rather than a new decision each time.
Item Price is what you are selling for. Market Price is what the item is worth elsewhere — it appears struck through beside your price, and the difference is what produces the discount flash on your card.
Neither can be zero, and Market Price is not optional. If an item has no meaningful comparison, put the same figure in both rather than inventing a saving.
The two fields whose names explain the least. They are both about quantity, and they answer different questions:
For a one-off item, leave both at 1. For an edition of twelve, Max Number is 12 and Per Number is however many you would let one person take. Leave Max Number empty and the listing never runs out — right for something you can always make again, wrong for anything you cannot.
Your title becomes the item's web address. As you type, the line beneath shows the address it will get — a lower-case version of the title with the spaces turned into hyphens.
Once the item has been published, the title and the address are frozen for good. Not while it is live — permanently, even after it is unpublished again. Everything else stays editable, so the title is the one thing worth reading twice before it goes live.
Two items cannot share an address. If your title matches one you already have, you will be asked to change it slightly.
All three are required, and they are not three descriptions. Summary is the description a buyer reads on the item page. Detail is the materials — canvas, oil, wood — shown further down as Item Detail and Material, so write it as a list and not as prose. Keywords describe the item for search engines; Artmire's own search box reads your title and your summary, not this field.
Both descriptions are proper editors — headings, bold, lists, links.
Create Item saves it. It appears straight away on the Draft tab with Published: No, which is what a draft is here — there is no separate draft button.
The listing is not finished. It has no pictures yet, and it shows a grey placeholder in your list until it does. Open it again with Edit to add the Thumbnail — the one buyers see in every grid — and at least three photos. Neither can be added while creating.
Use Preview at any point to see the listing exactly as a buyer would, while it is still unpublished.
A new item is never live on creation. When it is finished, tell us so with the Ready to be published switch at the foot of the edit form — that is what puts it in our queue. How it then becomes live depends on your shop:
You can turn the switch off again while you keep working, and it costs nothing to leave it off for a week. Nobody is waiting on the other side of it — it simply says whether we should be.
Either way, the Published column turning to Yes is what tells you it is done. From that moment the title links to its real page, and buyers can find and buy it.
Why an item may not be visible
An unpublished item can be edited freely or deleted outright. A published one cannot be deleted at all — unpublish it first, or ask us.
Deletion is narrower than it looks. Once anyone has ordered an item, saved it to their favourites or mentioned it in a message, it can no longer be deleted — not even by you, and a single stranger's favourite is enough. That is deliberate: those records point at it. Write to us if something really has to go.