Christmas cards
thaKing
Registered Users Posts: 478 Major grins
i'm relatively new with SM and wondering how others utilize Christmas cards? i have some friends who want me to take their photos for Christmas cards...so, do i just load all photos and the client selects the photo, then the card and customizes? or, do i, as the SM account holder, create a card and offer that to the user?
as you can see, i'm not sure how to utilize this feature...any tips would be appreciated...:thumb
as you can see, i'm not sure how to utilize this feature...any tips would be appreciated...:thumb
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The card-making feature is only available to the account holder at this time. We plan to make it available to your customers as well in the future, but for now your customers cannot create cards from your account, that is why there is no pro pricing page for them.
I have seen many of our photographers create and order cards for their customers. This is how one of our pros did it with a little customization:
5x7 Cards:
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/gallery/6567253_zWv4x
4x8 Cards:
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/gallery/3848373
You can show your client the designs on:
http://cards.smugmug.com/gallery/3824198 or, you can make your own gallery of samples like they did.
How to? Have a look here: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=76819
and post any questions there in that thread.
Suport Hero
Smugmug
http://help.smugmug.com/
So - what are some other options besides Smugmug?
Canon 24-105 f/4L IS
Canon 70-300 f/4-5.6L IS
Canon 17-40 f/4L
Sennheiser MKE400 shotgun Mic
Hmmmm.... looks like Zenfolio may be exactly the ticket for what I'm looking for .... might be tough to transition all my photos and albums over there, but considering the fact that they have what I want (and what Smugmug is not willing to provide), it might be worth it.
Canon 24-105 f/4L IS
Canon 70-300 f/4-5.6L IS
Canon 17-40 f/4L
Sennheiser MKE400 shotgun Mic
The fact that it's not available as a feature right now in no way means we are 'unwilling' to provide it. In fact, in my post I stated, "We plan to make it available to your customers as well in the future". I also provided a workaround so that you can price and sell cards via some site customizing right now.
Suport Hero
Smugmug
http://help.smugmug.com/
You're absolutely right. We've said "soon" for two years now regarding the pro pricing of cards to sell through SmugMug's shopping cart. We let that slip, and I'm really sorry about that. We've put time into other features instead and once again we find ourselves coming up against peak card season without the ability for pros to price and sell cards in our shopping cart.
We're committed to adding this feature, but I want to set expectations appropriately. Here's the plan:
1) We're actively working on making cards priceable by pros and purchasable by customers through the SmugMug shopping cart. It won't happen this week, because it's lined up behind a few other features, but our plan is to have this out in time for peak ordering time on cards. Ideally it would have been out well in advance, but that didn't happen.
2) Likely at the same time (or prior to), we'll be improving the card maker so that you can specify a template and enter the cardmaker that way (instead of sifting through the small thumbnails in the cardmaker to figure out which card your customer is interested in.)
However, only SmugMug subscribers will be able to create cards still. Your customers will be able to add them to their cart AFTER you make them, but they won't have access to the card maker themselves. We realize that still puts the burden on you to enter font, position photos, and load up the design your customer chooses.
3) At some point we may add the ability for non-subscribers to create cards, but there are some considerations that make this a more complex project than it may appear. Here are just a few:
- How do we handle storing the cards non-subscribers create? We don't require (or allow) non-subscribers to authenticate so they wouldn't have any way to revisit cards they made or reorder later.
- The feature is currently built as a photo tool, not as part of the shopping cart, it would need to be permissions-dependent as well. Many cards have multiple photo slots, so we'd have to have a way to designate some photos as available for use in cards and others not. Photos could be pulled from multiple galleries, so pricing customer-created cards would be tricky.
The biggest one:
- We're a small company and the list of features we want to add for our pros is long. It's possible this feature trumps things like coupons, packages, dynamic galleries, and self-fulfillment, but currently we don't feel that's the case so we're putting precious sorcerer time elsewhere.
http://smugmug.uservoice.com/pages/17723-smugmug
I hope this helps set your expectations appropriately. I wish I could promise the world, but cards just aren't at the top of our (or most of our pros') list right now.
(That being said, we have some phenomenal designs coming soon from many new designers. So we're not neglecting this by any stretch... just not fulfilling your wildest dreams. )
-Anne
This season. That is definitely the goal.
FULL DISCLAIMER: As with all features, we hesitate to announce in advance because things may come up that prevent us from releasing it when planned. Also, we never want to rush something out with bugs in order just to meet an announced deadline. So, it'll be done when it's done... but I have my heart set on it being done soon.
-Anne
Smugmug uses that saying frequently, that it is part of a future plan, but keep in mind, even when something is active develop with staff dedicated to it, it might be two years down the road.
We absolutely have internal timelines and goal dates and I'll reiterate that the goal is to have this feature out for this holiday season, not two years from now.
Not sure how else I can spell that out. We're actively working on this feature and we realize it's time-sensitive.
I can leave out the word "soon" but it won't change the timeline any...
-Anne
Caroline