Sales Reports Need More Power

coach-al · October 6, 2005

Hi,

The good news is that I've had a few hundred different sales in the past few months so Smugmug is working out well for my business.

The bad news is when you have a few hundred sales (or more) the sales report is very inadequate. At a minimum (which should be pretty easy I would think) would be able to select a date range so that I don't have to wait for the first few hundred sales to download to see the one new sale.

Also, it would be real nice to have sales by gallery.

Bottom line, can you make the sales reports smarter and more powerful?

Thanks, Al

coach-al · October 14, 2005

No replies?
I see that quite a few people have read my post but noone has anything to add? The sales report, as is, is hugely cumbersome once you start having a lot of sales. Could someone from Smugmug please tell me if giving the sales report selection capability by say dates and galleries is something we can expect in the near future?

Thanks, Al

Ben · October 14, 2005

Hi Al,

At the current time, I would highly recommend utilizing the "download" link at the top of the page. It will give you a csv file that you can use in Excel (or the free OpenOffice alternative, or anything else along those lines), which will allow you to sort, graph, manipulate the data to your heart's content.

I wouldn't be surprised if we made more robust sales tools in the future, but I can't promise anything right now. Sorry!

-Ben

Techman1 · October 14, 2005

Al,

I just saw your post and I too would like to see this type of detail especially by gallery. I'm just starting (unfortunately, several people indicated to me tonight about problems with the site today), but I'm hoping my sales will be picking up fast. With that in mind, I know that detail sales analysis will help in the long run.

Is this on the "to do list" somewhere already?

Thanks for bringing this up!

Fred

iceman17 · October 14, 2005

This may be a dumb question but how does one check his/her sales .Is this just for pro users or can power users see it as well.Ive looked all over my site and cant see anything that resembles a sales figure.

..ice

tmanchester · October 15, 2005

coach-al wrote:

Hi,

Bottom line, can you make the sales reports smarter and more powerful?

Thanks, Al

I might just settle for one that worked right now. My sales report on the web page gives me a different total than the downloaded file viewable via Excel. They admit there is a bug in it, but also admit they're too busy to fix it.

I suppose I can see why, but pro users with large volumes need (deserve? have earned?) a better tool.

For ex: totals by gallery would be very, very helpful.

tmanchester · October 15, 2005

Ben wrote:

Hi Al,

At the current time, I would highly recommend utilizing the "download" link at the top of the page. It will give you a csv file that you can use in Excel (or the free OpenOffice alternative, or anything else along those lines), which will allow you to sort, graph, manipulate the data to your heart's content.

-Ben

Ben,

That csv file is buggy. See smugmug's reply on the matter:

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

It looks like there is a bug in the spreadsheet you downloaded. For
example, if you look at order 55169 in the spread sheet it is showing
quantity 2 for an estimated profit of 10.20. For some reason rather
than displaying the correct profit of 5.10, which is the profit for 2
4x6 prints at your custom price, it is doubling the estimated profit
and showing 10.20.

However, if you look at the order on line, it will show the correct quantity and profit. I have sent a not to our engineers and let them
know about this bug.........I'm sorry for the incovenience. It shouldn't be a terribly hard fix, but our engineers have a lot on their plates right now. I'll put the request in, but I couldn't give you a timeline.

If this is a known fault, why would you suggest people use a buggy tool?

Andy · October 15, 2005

iceman17 wrote:

This may be a dumb question but how does one check his/her sales .Is this just for pro users or can power users see it as well.Ive looked all over my site and cant see anything that resembles a sales figure. ..ice

it's a pro account feature, and it's available in the control panel.

coach-al · October 15, 2005

re: Download link

Ben wrote:

Hi Al,

At the current time, I would highly recommend utilizing the "download" link at the top of the page. It will give you a csv file that you can use in Excel (or the free OpenOffice alternative, or anything else along those lines), which will allow you to sort, graph, manipulate the data to your heart's content.

I wouldn't be surprised if we made more robust sales tools in the future, but I can't promise anything right now. Sorry!

-Ben

Thanks for responding Ben.

Yes, I have used the download link at times and find it useful, although now that I hear about bugs that's another concern. The download link is a step in the right direction but it certainly takes a lot of effort on my part to get the information I am looking for. I used it the other day when a customer wanted to reorder but didn't want to go through the galleries to find their pictures. I was able to send them all their picture links pretty easily which was great.

A sales report that allows you to select by date range and gallery certainly seems like a reasonable request to me. And, I would think Smugmug would be all in favor of giving tools to it's pro users that allow them to increase their sales, thus increasing your sales. Just a thought.

Al

tmanchester · October 15, 2005

sales

coach-al wrote:

Thanks for responding Ben.

I would think Smugmug would be all in favor of giving tools to it's pro users that allow them to increase their sales, thus increasing your sales.
Al

That has been my contention all along. (Another way would be to let us have the addresses of our customers, but that's another topic all together.)

As a recovering white collar worker with 17 years of marketing experience, I must confess I am puzzled by the meager tools we are given to grow our business, and in turn, smugmug's.

coach-al · October 17, 2005

Summary of new features desired
Hi guys,

On the sales report, I'd like to see:

1. Date range
2. Select on galleries
3. Sort on galleries
4. Also - it would be very useful to have some way to indicate how active the gallery is compared to how many photos are in it. For example, if there are 10 photos but there have been 1000 views that gallery is really more busy than one with 500 pictures and 1000 views, but when you look at the sales details charts they would look equal. No big deal if you only have 3 galleries but when you have a few hundred galleries it is a big deal.

I used to do a lot of programming. These requests shouldn't be that hard to do. It seems to me that Smugmug makes the most money from the most successful photographers and should be trying to help them the most AND attract more. The sales report improvements would be a big step in the right direction.

Al

Andy · January 16, 2006

tmanchester wrote:

Ben,

That csv file is buggy. See smugmug's reply on the matter:

If this is a known fault, why would you suggest people use a buggy tool?

Hi Thomas,

The error was fixed a while back:
http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/2005/11/27/new-features-november-27-2005/

Along with a reversal of the order in which the online orders show, something that was requested specifically by you during our chat.

We've still got some work to do on the other requests you made though!

coach-al · January 16, 2006

Hi Andy,

Just wanted to say thank you for reversing the order in the sales report. Simple change, made my life a lot better. Now if you could make the rest of those changes.:))))))

later, Al

Andy wrote:

Hi Thomas,

The error was fixed a while back:
http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/2005/11/27/new-features-november-27-2005/

Along with a reversal of the order in which the online orders show, something that was requested specifically by you during our chat.

We've still got some work to do on the other requests you made though!

tmanchester · January 16, 2006

Andy wrote:

Hi Thomas,

The error was fixed a while back:
http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/2005/11/27/new-features-november-27-2005/

Along with a reversal of the order in which the online orders show, something that was requested specifically by you during our chat.

We've still got some work to do on the other requests you made though!

Juat to be clear, it wasn't fixed at the time of my post, or when Ben was recommending it. It was fixed more than a month later according to your link.

Andy · January 16, 2006

tmanchester wrote:

Juat to be clear, it wasn't fixed at the time of my post, or when Ben was recommending it. It was fixed more than a month later according to your link.

Nobody's disputing that, Thomas. Thanks!

Andy · January 16, 2006

coach-al wrote:

Hi Andy,

Just wanted to say thank you for reversing the order in the sales report. Simple change, made my life a lot better. Now if you could make the rest of those changes.:))))))

later, Al

Thanks Al - and so glad that you got some good diving shots - thanks for posting back to that thread

renstar · January 16, 2006

To tack on to this, I know sales tracking is a pro only feature, but it would be nice for the rest of us (or even just power uses) to be able to see if sales are being made (not necissarily great detail, maybe # of small/medium/large prints per image). This would allow us to see if anything we have is maybe worth upgrading to pro so we can set the price. Not that I have much to sell right now (renstar.smugmug.com), however, this makes business sense and it would probably be useful to many other users. --russ

Andy · January 16, 2006

renstar wrote:

To tack on to this, I know sales tracking is a pro only feature, but it would be nice for the rest of us (or even just power uses) to be able to see if sales are being made (not necissarily great detail, maybe # of small/medium/large prints per image). This would allow us to see if anything we have is maybe worth upgrading to pro so we can set the price. Not that I have much to sell right now (renstar.smugmug.com), however, this makes business sense and it would probably be useful to many other users. --russ

Hi renstar, thanks for asking. There's not a way for us to do this, I'm sorry. We only provide reporting to Pro-level subscribers.

I wish I had a better answer for you.

All the best,

Silkyone · May 11, 2006

Smug Reports Lacking......
In SmugMug.....

We have several different galleries and could use a more detailed report of all our sales.

> By Date
> By Gallery

These are two that would be very helpful in seeing the results of our work.

Danny

Andy · May 11, 2006

Silkyone wrote:

In SmugMug.....

We have several different galleries and could use a more detailed report of all our sales.

> By Date
> By Gallery

These are two that would be very helpful in seeing the results of our work.

Danny

Hi Danny,

Have a look here: http://www.smugtools.com/SmugSales/Index.htm

Sales Reports Need More Power

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