Self fulfilment of photos

cperkins

Is SmugMug any closer to allowing Pro's to use the built in shopping cart, receive an order from the customer, and fulfil it how ever and with whom ever they want. Still allowing coupons and packages would be great and adding on the ability to use paypal at the checkout would also be a plus.

I am leaning towards switching to ifp3.com as their carts allow for self fulfilment, paypal, and digital downloads. The process is a little different but they don't take 15% of every sale, it allows me the choice of delivering the pictures myself.

I use Bayphoto for my prints and although most of the time the prints are fine, I have had some issues where the prints were correct. ie. too dark and I had missings cards, and text not printed correctly. So I would like to see the prints before they are delivered.

So far I have been very happy with smugmug but I would like to have a little more freedom with my shopping cart/prints

Thanks,
Chuck Perkins

Traces of Texas

I would also be willing to pay to be able to use Smugmug for the front end and order management but fulfill the order myself. It would be such a feeling of security to be able to see the print before it ships to the customer.

Andy

This is great feedback, thanks

ColoradoSkier

This has been requested numerous times, and is on the suggestion list for voting at http://smugmug.uservoice.com/forums/17723-smugmug (currently ranked 7th). Andy has also been on here to say that they know this is important to people, so I would expect it to arrive at some point.

jfriend

ColoradoSkier wrote:

This has been requested numerous times, and is on the suggestion list for voting at http://smugmug.uservoice.com/forums/17723-smugmug (currently ranked 7th). Andy has also been on here to say that they know this is important to people, so I would expect it to arrive at some point.

There are some tricky things with self fulfillment. Today Smugmug has both the credit card relationship with the customer and the responsibility to ship the goods to the customer. They are in complete control of satisfying the obligation of a purchase that was done with a credit card. That work well.

With self fulfillment, things could get messy because Smugmug will charge the customer's card and credit your account (assuming you've help up your end of the bargain), but they have no idea if you actually fulfilled the goods to the customer's satisfaction. So, when the customer complains, Smugmug has to end up in the middle of trying to resolve that dispute. It's a similar problem that paypal has - and we all know how well paypal dispute resolutions work. It's a big mess.

I hear that people want this and I hope Smugmug figures out a decent way to offer it, but I also wanted folks to appreciate that it isn't easy to do right where everyone stays happy and it's not a huge amount of overhead for Smugmug.

mbellot

jfriend wrote:

There are some tricky things with self fulfillment. Today Smugmug has both the credit card relationship with the customer and the responsibility to ship the goods to the customer. They are in complete control of satisfying the obligation of a purchase that was done with a credit card. That work well.

With self fulfillment, things could get messy because Smugmug will charge the customer's card and credit your account (assuming you've help up your end of the bargain), but they have no idea if you actually fulfilled the goods to the customer's satisfaction. So, when the customer complains, Smugmug has to end up in the middle of trying to resolve that dispute. It's a similar problem that paypal has - and we all know how well paypal dispute resolutions work. It's a big mess.

I hear that people want this and I hope Smugmug figures out a decent way to offer it, but I also wanted folks to appreciate that it isn't easy to do right where everyone stays happy and it's not a huge amount of overhead for Smugmug.

John,

I'm not sure its the wisest thing for SM to stay in the middle of a self-fulfillment transaction. I think an alternate (PayPal, Google checkout) form of payment would be a requirement since they (SM) have no control over the printing and delivery.

It would be nice to see, but I can definitely see some not insignificant business hurdles.

jfriend

mbellot wrote:

John,

I'm not sure its the wisest thing for SM to stay in the middle of a self-fulfillment transaction. I think an alternate (PayPal, Google checkout) form of payment would be a requirement since they (SM) have no control over the printing and delivery.

It would be nice to see, but I can definitely see some not insignificant business hurdles.

That would certainly be easier for Smugmug payment-wise, but they they'd have to integrate their cart with paypal or Google Checkout. Doable, but probably not something they're excited to do.

I'd also worry that paypal and Google checkout are perhaps not what the majority of buyers want. I know a lot of people who buy on the web with credit cards, but do not do paypal, either because it has a suspect reputation or because they just aren't that advanced.

MadisonPhotography

self-fulfill
Exposure Manager makes it so easy to do this it is the reason they get all of my sports work. I can easily add borders, self-fulfill items to customers and have the option of using my available sales balance to pay for it....come one SM, it's not that hard..

mbellot wrote:

John,

I'm not sure its the wisest thing for SM to stay in the middle of a self-fulfillment transaction. I think an alternate (PayPal, Google checkout) form of payment would be a requirement since they (SM) have no control over the printing and delivery.

It would be nice to see, but I can definitely see some not insignificant business hurdles.

pilotdave

MadisonPhotography wrote:

Exposure Manager makes it so easy to do this it is the reason they get all of my sports work. I can easily add borders, self-fulfill items to customers and have the option of using my available sales balance to pay for it....come one SM, it's not that hard..

How does EM deal with guarantees and returns when it comes to self fulfillment? Do customers know they are ordering direct from the photographer and not through a lab?

Dave

MadisonPhotography

EM self fulfillment
A couple of ways. I can use EM to process my photos in self-fulfillment and it's 100% satisfaction applies. I use WHCC for some self-fulfillment and they also have the same policy.

In addition to that I offer the same thing. I really don't want a customer thinking they got "okay stuff"..

What self-fulfillment really does for me is allow me to "surprise" my best customers with gifts. I may find an image in a gallery that they didn't buy but that I really like. I may apply an event logo, or crop in close and send them a gift without any notice. I can't tell you how far that goes in building a long lasting relationship rather than a sale..

pilotdave wrote:

How does EM deal with guarantees and returns when it comes to self fulfillment? Do customers know they are ordering direct from the photographer and not through a lab?

Dave

jfriend

MadisonPhotography wrote:

What self-fulfillment really does for me is allow me to "surprise" my best customers with gifts. I may find an image in a gallery that they didn't buy but that I really like. I may apply an event logo, or crop in close and send them a gift without any notice. I can't tell you how far that goes in building a long lasting relationship rather than a sale..

Is there any reason you can't do this (surprise gift) with Smugmug too?

Dano

jfriend wrote:

Is there any reason you can't do this (surprise gift) with Smugmug too?

Not if you want to include the prints in the same order.

jfriend

Dano wrote:

Not if you want to include the prints in the same order.

Oh, I see.

MadisonPhotography

believe
I love the way SmugMug looks, my customers love the interface and frankly I like the way my galleries look on SM better than on EM...

The customization on SM is great whereas EM still as that Soviet Agricultural look to its site but that may also be due to my lack of html knowledge.

In the end I'd love to be able to do on SM that I can on EM..both have great support, offer great service and products but EM allows me to process and control my images a little better..and that's what I need..

jfriend wrote:

Oh, I see.