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Open questions on the catalogue

Every item below is something we cannot answer from the website itself, and would otherwise have to guess at. Each one has a status and a reply box. Answer them in any order, and anything you answer is saved as soon as you leave the box.

0 of 19 answered0%
Why you are being asked Nothing here is blocking the work already underway. Everything that could be done without these answers has been done. These are the points where the honest answer is that we do not know, and we would rather ask than publish a guess on a piece selling for AED 30,000.

Maker and attribution5

Google Shopping needs a brand on every product. Until last week every piece on the site carried the shop name as its maker, so none of the 361 had one. We have set the real maker on 59 products where the title says it outright, and left the rest blank rather than guess. Confirming provenance demonstrably works: once Assembly confirmed the PK11 was made by E. Kold Christensen in 1957 rather than Fritz Hansen, we could finally put a real maker and date on the most viewed product page on the site.

Open For MateenPriority
Around 200 products name no maker anywhere, in the title or the description. Is there an internal record, purchase paperwork or a buyer who could supply the maker for these?

With no maker we have nothing to put in the brand field, so these products are invisible in any search that names a designer or manufacturer. Even a partial pass on the higher value pieces would help.

Open For MateenPriority
Can you confirm the maker of the two CAB 412 and the Cab 413?

All three name a maker in their description but not their title, so we have left the brand field blank rather than guess. They are very probably Cassina, but on pieces at this price that is Assembly's call to confirm, not ours to assume.

3 products
  • CAB 412 (AED 10,760)
  • CAB 412 (AED 7,000, web address says cab-414)
  • Cab 413
Open For MateenPriority
Can you confirm the maker of the LC2 Armchair Pair?

Same situation: the maker appears in the description only. Probably Cassina, but we will not write it until you say so.

1 product
  • LC2 Armchair Pair
Open For Mateen
Can you confirm the maker of the Revers Chair?

Surfaced in a maker search but names the maker only in its body copy.

1 product
  • Revers Chair
Open For MateenPriority
Can you confirm the maker on the Barcelona pieces? Knoll, or something else?

Eight products, several at a high price. Barcelona is both a design and a widely copied one, so getting the maker right matters more here than almost anywhere in the catalogue.

8 products
  • Barcelona Chair Black
  • Barcelona Chair Dark Brown
  • Barcelona Chair + Ottoman
  • Barcelona Chair (AED 21,000)
  • Barcelona Chair (AED 18,500)
  • Barcelona Daybed (AED 35,000)
  • Barcelona daybed (AED 30,000)
  • Barcelona Table

Products we cannot write about4

37 products have no description at all and no tags we can build one from. Good photographs, nothing in writing. Two or three lines from whoever bought the piece is enough: roughly when and where it was made, what it is made of, and anything notable about its condition. We will write it up properly from there.

Open For MateenPriority
What are '02, '03, '04 and '05? Four products whose entire title is a two character number, priced AED 12,000 to 22,000.

No title, no description, no tags. We genuinely have no idea what these are, and neither does a buyer who finds them.

4 products
  • '02 (AED 16,500)
  • '03 (AED 12,000)
  • '04 (AED 15,000)
  • '05 (AED 22,000)
Open For MateenPriority
Who painted these four oil paintings?

For art, the artist is the single thing a buyer searches for. Without a name these four cannot be found by anyone who is not already browsing the site, and one of them is the most expensive item in the group.

4 products
  • My Mothers Excitement (AED 28,000)
  • Steel (AED 30,000)
  • Biological (AED 20,000)
  • Untitled (AED 6,000)
Open For Mateen
These are real pieces sitting on titles that describe nothing. What are they, and who made them?

A search result reading only 'Armchair' competes with every armchair on the internet. Once we know what the piece actually is, the title and the description can both do some work.

7 products
  • Armchair (AED 1,835)
  • Retro Armchair (AED 3,000)
  • Leather Sofa (AED 12,845)
  • Bar Stool (AED 5,505)
  • Chrome Hanging Stand (AED 2,000)
  • Piantana Floor Lamp (AED 5,500)
  • Sputnik Lamp (AED 10,093)
Open For Mateen
The remaining products with no description. Two or three lines each is enough.

Mostly lighting, where origin and decade are what buyers search on. We can write these up properly from a short note on each.

22 products
  • 3 Human Figures (AED 4,000)
  • Handmade Paravent (AED 12,845)
  • Colorful Wood Table Lamp, Small (AED 5,500)
  • Colorful Wood Table Lamp, Large (AED 7,300)
  • French Floor Lamp (AED 2,000)
  • Italian Fiber Floor Lamp (AED 2,000)
  • Italian Fiber Table Lamp (AED 1,200)
  • Lecus Febo Lamp (AED 4,404)
  • Maison Lunel Paris Floor Lamp (AED 6,000)
  • Marble Bull Sculpture (AED 5,505)
  • Metal Yellow Lamp (AED 750)
  • Natuzzi Globe Lamp (AED 3,303)
  • Perforated Metal Floor Lamp (AED 6,000)
  • Perforated Metal Lamp (AED 1,200)
  • Plexiglass Italian Lambader (AED 2,000)
  • Popart Table Lamp (AED 730)
  • Red Space Age Eyeball Wall Lamp (AED 1,400)
  • Seletti Floor Lamp (AED 7,340)
  • Snail Musicians (AED 6,606)
  • Supernova Smoky Table Lamp (AED 1,900)
  • Pair of glass petals drop wall sconces, white lattimo (AED 6,000)
  • Ava Bridge Lucite Chairs (AED 4,500)

Duplicate listings and titles5

Several products share a title, and in three cases share a price too, which means nothing in the data tells them apart. Where that is true we could not write a distinct description without inventing a difference.

Open For MateenPriority
Six separate products are titled only 'LC1', at three different prices. What distinguishes them? Leather colour, condition, single against pair?

A search result reading just 'LC1' tells a buyer nothing, and Google sees six near identical pages competing with each other. The prices say they are clearly not the same piece, so there is a real difference we could be describing.

6 products
  • LC1 (AED 12,000)
  • LC1 (AED 13,000)
  • LC1 (AED 13,000)
  • LC1 (AED 14,500)
  • LC1 (AED 14,500)
  • LC1 (AED 14,500)
Open For MateenPriority
Knoll Wassily Black is listed twice at the same price, AED 10,000. One piece listed twice by mistake, or two separate chairs?

Identical title and identical price, so nothing in the data tells them apart. If it is one piece listed twice, that is a stock problem rather than an SEO one and worth knowing either way.

2 products
  • knoll-wassily-black
  • knoll-wassily-black-1
Open For MateenPriority
Gavina Cesca Chair is listed twice at AED 4,000. One of the two web addresses says 'pair'. Is one a pair and one a single?

If so, saying 'Pair' in the title fixes it outright, and the same price for a pair and a single is worth a second look.

2 products
  • gavina-cesca-chair (no description at all)
  • gavina-cesca-chair-pair
Open For MateenPriority
Wassily Gavina Cognac is listed twice at AED 11,000, and again one address says 'pair'. Pair against single, or a duplicate?

Same as above. These three are the only products on the whole site whose descriptions we could not make unique, because nothing in the data distinguishes them.

2 products
  • wassily-gavina-cognac
  • wassily-gavina-coppia-cognac-pair
Open For MateenWhen you can
These share a title but differ in price, so we have assumed they are separate pieces. Can you confirm that is right?

Lower priority than the three above, because the price difference already suggests they are distinct. We would just rather not assume.

6 products
  • Barcelona Chair, AED 21,000 and 18,500
  • Barcelona Daybed, AED 35,000 and 30,000
  • Gavina Wassily, AED 11,000 and 8,000
  • LC7 Beige, AED 9,000 and 7,500
  • Gavina Wassily Chair, AED 13,000 / 11,000 / 8,000
  • Simav Anatolian Carpet, AED 14,680 and 13,946

Photography1

Image weight is the main thing slowing the site down, and it is the one speed improvement available that needs no development work at all.

Open For MateenPriority
Are the original camera files still available for the products photographed as PNG? 325 of the 1,246 product photographs on the site are PNG, across 179 products, and 88 of those files are still named 'Screenshot'.

A PNG is several times heavier than the same picture as a JPEG, and page weight is the main reason the site feels slow from outside the UAE. The 88 named 'Screenshot' were captured off a screen rather than exported from the camera, so they will also look visibly soft next to the rest of the catalogue. Re-exporting them is the single biggest speed gain available, and it needs no development work.

Likely catalogue errors2

Two things that look like simple mistakes. We can fix both at our end, we just want to be sure nobody set them deliberately.

Open For Mateen
A product titled 'CAB 412' at AED 7,000 has the web address cab-414, and there is a separate 'Mario Bellini 414 Cab' elsewhere in the catalogue. Which is correct, 412 or 414?

The title and the address disagree, so one of the two is wrong. They are different chairs, and a buyer searching for either will land on the wrong page.

Open For MateenWhen you can
'Master Degree' is an oil painting but carries the tag 'Anatolian Carpet'. Can we remove that tag?

The tag was filing a painting into the rug collection. We can remove it at our end, we just want to confirm nobody added it on purpose.

Copy questions for Sara2

Two points where the site copy is yours and the decision should be too.

Open For SaraPriority
The homepage now has a proper headline for search, which it did not have before. Making that work meant promoting one line of existing copy into the main heading, and it replaced your wording in that block. Are you happy with it, or would you rather phrase it differently?

It currently reads: 'Vintage furniture and collectible design in Dubai, curated for the stories each piece carries.' It keeps the voice and the meaning, but it is your copy and your call. We will change it to whatever you prefer, as long as it still names what the business sells and where it is.

Open For Sara
On the sourcing line, you asked how long it should run. Does the answer below work for you?

Length is not the constraint, repetition is. Say the same thing on every page and Google treats it as boilerplate and discounts all of it. If each category says something specific about how that particular category is sourced, it can be as long as you like.