Why No Item Previews?

Jason Dunn

I've never ordered any of the merchandise items from Smugmug (just prints), so I was looking through the options today as a customer would - and was surprised to see no previews of the items in question. The shopping cart is a slick piece of code, but a text description seems insufficient when trying to sell mugs, keepsake boxes, photo keychains, etc. The best option would be for the customer to see a live preview of my photo on their item, but a close second would be to see a blank or sample image of the item. Something other than just text.

Anyone else feel the same way? I'm a visual person (no surprise there) and I know I'd never buy one of these merchandise items unless I could see what it looked like in some fashion.

Jamfore

merchandies tab
Yes I agree. I was surprised to see the same. I would like to be able to see an example of the mug, ect.

HoyBoy

Thanks for mentioning this. I've been meaning to do the same, but forgot. I have had a customer mention this recently. She wanted to see what the photo looked like on the mug, sweatshirt, etc. Apparently when you order similar items from Costco.com you get that option.

It would certainly be nice here as well. Also, she mentioned something about not knowing the color of the sweatshirts. I didn't look into that one.

Shamguess

viewing merchandise
Actually, there is a way to see what the merchandise looks like. See this link:
http://www.smugmug.com/prints/catalog.mg#Merchandise
I imagine it would be pretty diffficult to show what the Client's actual photo would look like on the merchandise so that might never be an option. But I would think that Smugmug could make the sample images (as shown on the above link) available in our shopping carts. Why can't they do that? Looks like they are half way there already. The only option right now is to provide a link to the Smugmug page for your customers to see but then they will see the Smugmug prices. That option doesn't work for me.

Jason Dunn

Shamguess wrote:

Actually, there is a way to see what the merchandise looks like. See this link...

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm looking for - that shows the products in a very favourable light, and I'm sure we'd all see more sales if the customer could SEE what they were being offered. It's a no-brainer...come on Smugmug, where you at? :ivar