How are pro prints delivered?

Leah

Hi! I am new to dgrin, and haven't yet signed on to SM (although I am itching to!). I have been trying to figure out how pro prints are delivered to the customer.

As I understand it, the customer is able to order from a pro directly from the pro's site. Are the prints then delivered to the customer's door, or to the photographer? I would like to be able to proof the finished product and package it myself. Is that possible?

This way, the customer has the sense that I am providing the service and have complete control over the finished product.

BTW, I am throughly enjoying what I read in this forum, and have learned so much! It astounds me that so many are willing to help educate others. :thumb

Mitch

Leah wrote:

Hi! I am new to dgrin, and haven't yet signed on to SM (although I am itching to!). I have been trying to figure out how pro prints are delivered to the customer.

As I understand it, the customer is able to order from a pro directly from the pro's site. Are the prints then delivered to the customer's door, or to the photographer? I would like to be able to proof the finished product and package it myself. Is that possible?

This way, the customer has the sense that I am providing the service and have complete control over the finished product.

BTW, I am throughly enjoying what I read in this forum, and have learned so much! It astounds me that so many are willing to help educate others.

Hi Leah,

Welcome to dgrin, I'm kind of new here myself.

I'll give this a shot.:D

Prints are sent to the customer from the lab. Unless someone who has been around here a lot longer jumps in to correct me, this is the way it works.

Now as I see it you have two options if you want to proof the prints.

Remove printing from your gallery and have the customer order prints from you. You place the order, proof the prints, send them off. The problem is collecting the money from the customer.

Order a sampling of your prints before making the gallery public. This way you are better able to get an idea what the customer will receive. True you can not proof every order, but if there is a problem with the prints the customer can have them reprinted. Also true the prints are sent by the lab with their logo and info on the envelope.

Just to let you know I have ordered some of my pictures and I was very happy with the quality.

Hope this helps.


Mitch

Nikolai

Leah,
Welcome to dgrin!

While the all-knowing moderators and SM ppl are still asleep, I'll try to give you a headsup.

If you're using SM' shopping cart then prints will go directly to customer.
They only way to proof them would be to make an order yourself first, before you make your work availalble for a general public.

However, you can totally disable the SM shopping cart by setting all your prices to $0.0.
You'd have to put some text/html/script in your own pages.
It would be a *way* more work, but it's doable.

HTH

Cheers!

PS
And if you want to save on your smugmug signup, here's the $5 coupon for you: X5j1MYZpHBFgA :

Nikolai

Mitch,
You beat me to it:-)
It's funny, we both put almost identical replies:-)
Cheers!

Leah

Nikolai wrote:

Welcome to dgrin!

While the all-knowing moderators and SM ppl are still asleep, I'll try to give you a headsup.

If you're using SM' shopping cart then prints will go directly to customer.
They only way to proof them would be to make an order yourself first, before you make your work availalble for a general public.

However, you can totally disable the SM shopping cart by setting all your prices to $0.0.
You'd have to put some text/html/script in your own pages.
It would be a *way* more work, but it's doable.

HTH




Cheers!

PS
And if you want to save on your smugmug signup, here's the $5 coupon for you: X5j1MYZpHBFgA :

Wow, thanks to both of you for the info! After reading so many of your posts, I feel like I'm talking to celebrities .

I will definitely use the coupon. Thanks so much.

Now, I'm wondering if I can take the credit card info from my customer and then submit the order to SM myself? Are there any problems with doing it that way?

Cameron

Leah wrote:

Now, I'm wondering if I can take the credit card info from my customer and then submit the order to SM myself? Are there any problems with doing it that way?

That would probably work, but you'd still have to find a seameless way to allow your customers to select the prints they want. Also note that smugmug will reprint any order that your customer is dissatisfied with at no cost to YOU or THEM. I'd second the recommendation to order prints of some of your own images so you know what your customer will be getting -- that will make you less apprehensive about the final product. By using smugmug's ordering system you're saving yourself a lot of time and effort and the customer will likely get the prints more quickly. It's a trade-off - you lose some control but for many it seems to be worth it.

Leah

CSwinton wrote:

That would probably work, but you'd still have to find a seameless way to allow your customers to select the prints they want. Also note that smugmug will reprint any order that your customer is dissatisfied with at no cost to YOU or THEM. I'd second the recommendation to order prints of some of your own images so you know what your customer will be getting -- that will make you less apprehensive about the final product. By using smugmug's ordering system you're saving yourself a lot of time and effort and the customer will likely get the prints more quickly. It's a trade-off - you lose some control but for many it seems to be worth it.

Got it. It is sounding better and better to allow the customer to place the order when I think about the time I'd be saving, not to mention the risk I have of messing up and ordering the wrong size or number of prints.

And, I did not realize that SM would reprint at no cost. So cool.

Thanks to all! ~Leah

Nikolai

Leah,

Leah wrote:

Wow, thanks to both of you for the info! After reading so many of your posts, I feel like I'm talking to celebrities .

I will definitely use the coupon. Thanks so much.

Now, I'm wondering if I can take the credit card info from my customer and then submit the order to SM myself? Are there any problems with doing it that way?

You're welcome!

One of the reasons of SM success (I think) is the shopping cart and associated cusomer service. You can forget about all the hassles related to the order fulfillment. The price you pay for ordering images for yourself first and using SM cart later will be saved 100-fold simply by the amount of time you'd have to spend dealing with the orders yourself.

I want to let you know that some pros are switching to SM for no other reason that to get read of order fulfillment and realease this time and efforts for what they like and trained to do - take the pictures.:-)

Good luck with whatever your decision is!

Cheers!

mercphoto

Nikolai wrote:

One of the reasons of SM success (I think) is the shopping cart and associated cusomer service. You can forget about all the hassles related to the order fulfillment.

I would second that. Smugmug is my website developer, the maintenance crew, my shopping cart, order fulfillment, money collector and customer service. For that I gladly pay the $100 per year and 15% per sale. I would also second that you order a print or two yourself to see how the color and detail come out. You should then have high confidence in the remaining images in the gallery.

landrum

mercphoto wrote:

I would second that. Smugmug is my website developer, the maintenance crew, my shopping cart, order fulfillment, money collector and customer service. For that I gladly pay the $100 per year and 15% per sale. I would also second that you order a print or two yourself to see how the color and detail come out. You should then have high confidence in the remaining images in the gallery.

I'll THIRD that! ?

I LOVE not having to do anything with the orders! It saves SO much time that it is worth the nominal fees involved! I was doing all the ordering myself before I went with the pro account (I wanted to have my own packaging, etc, etc) and it was a PAIN! Before I started using them I ordered prints of each finish and of various sizes to "test" them out. You'll be very happy with the quality.

Welcome!