I've also been waiting years now for SmugMug to implement some kind of Australian Dollars option. In the meantime I've replicated all my work over to Red Bubble and attempted to divide my customers into two directions depending on where they are shopping from. International customers will want to use SM and local Australian customers will want use RB. It's cumbersome, because both services offer a completely different range of products. However the local AUD currency and local shipping costs are what my customers want, thus Red Bubble.
SM still offer a far better, slicker gallery and customisation options. RB just doesn't look professional and offers little to no customisation options. RB looks particularly bad when the user gets to entering payment and it drops out into a very generic looking page that looks nothing like the preceeding pages. Also the RB product range is very limited (though it does include framed prints to customers!).
So I'm stuck with this clumsy duel system. Using text to describe to my customers how to buy prints step by step, via two methods.
I keep trying to think of ways around it. For instance, is there a SM customisation option that will allow me to add a link to the "Buy" drop down menu, eg "Buy In AUD$", and then have that link redirect them to Red Bubble?
Red Bubble site: http://chockstone.redbubble.com/works
Note the dorky square thumbs, the confusing purchase option selections, a "featured" gallery that can't be hidden, and the generic payment pages. Yuk! But it ships locally in local dollars.
Smug Mug site: http://chockstone.smugmug.com
Note they do not even mention that payment is in US dollars until you're on the very last purchase screen!
So all up, something of a mess. Sales have been down badly for 2 years since I went fully on-line. I was doing everything myself (printing, payment, etc), but it was too much work for too little reward.
All,
I keep trying to think of ways around it. For instance, is there a SM customisation option that will allow me to add a link to the "Buy" drop down menu, eg "Buy In AUD$", and then have that link redirect them to Red Bubble?
I am very dissapointed that workarounds are needed where clearly it is a matter of SmugMug to implement this. Either with worldwide print labs or at the very least offer all major currencies. Come on, this is not THAT hard to code or implement ?
SmugMug, is there any roadmap that makes customers (well, and us in the end) from outside US happy ? I realise that it is "promised" for years (searching the forum here), but yet has not materialised. In fact, this thread goes back to July 2006, that is 2.5 YEARS !!!
Oh well, next week PhotoBox.co.uk goes live with their new Pro-Galleries, I may well do my sales with them and use SmugMug only as a gallery. Too say to have to divide traffic.
This is really so frustrating... I know most of your customers must be in the US, but I really don't think you understand how frustrating it is to hear from potential customers that they didn't buy prints because the transaction was in $USD.
From www.alexa.com, approximately 66% of their hits are from the US. Interestingly enough this is up from the last time I looked, a year and a half ago.
So an opinion on whether the drop off in foreign visitors is due to only have US currency ?!?
I am very dissapointed that workarounds are needed where clearly it is a matter of SmugMug to implement this. Either with worldwide print labs or at the very least offer all major currencies. Come on, this is not THAT hard to code or implement ?
SmugMug, is there any roadmap that makes customers (well, and us in the end) from outside US happy ? I realise that it is "promised" for years (searching the forum here), but yet has not materialised. In fact, this thread goes back to July 2006, that is 2.5 YEARS !!!
Oh well, next week PhotoBox.co.uk goes live with their new Pro-Galleries, I may well do my sales with them and use SmugMug only as a gallery. Too say to have to divide traffic.
Great question - I'd love to see a timeline of where foreign currency transactions in Smugmug's plans.
I'd also love to know when electronic payment will be available.
I posted this over in the customisation forum, but here's a cut and paste of my temp' solution.
Ok, so this is a bit of a work in progress, but this is as far as I've got so far.
I wanted to have a facility to embed a currency converter onto a "help" page on my site so I found some html on XE.com that they provide to link a currency converter to their site. I've modified it a bit to give it a black background and to restrict the "From" currency to US $ and changed some of the default text on the buttons, and the most important change was to make sure that the resulting convertion would open in a new window.
I'd love to find some way of getting the total $ amount currently in the cart automatically entered into the "From" field, so if any of you guru's know how please let us all know.
I hope this is useful to someone.
Tim
edit:
For some reason when I pasted the code in to this forum it would only display the actual resulting currency converter instead of just the raw HTML code, wierd. So edited to give the link to my original thread.
Oh My God! I can't believe it. No currency support! I can't understand why, the software I am migrating from (Pixaria) has this and this was developed by a one man band working on his own. Most other apps I have seen also commonly support it as well. I had my credit card out and on the desk in front of me about to buy TODAY. But this changes everything for me, I can't use your application. My UK customers will not pay the transaction charge they will incur by using $USD and the ever changing exchange rate just does not make it viable to use in the UK, or elsewhere for that matter. I am sorry to say I am bitterly disappointed, you just lost a sale - and I have wasted hours of my time going through an otherwise top rate image hosting solution. I wish that you had made this fact more prominent on the website features info, it would have saved us both a lot of time. I have just checked the forum on this topic and note that there are requests for this going back to 2006. How can you have not made any progress on this, what is the problem? I was really looking forward to using smugmug and had even told all 50 of my contributing photographers about it. Now I feel like the ground had just been pulled from under my feet. I am in freefall not knowing what to do now. I even feel slightly angered by this, when will you wake up and smell the coffee? How can you expect me run a modern website with sale support that is 10 years out of date.
I fully expect that you are dragging your heels over this because of the 15% commission aspect of the sales you charge. The solution is very straight forward, use a localised payment gateway like google checkout for transactions.
I would be interested to hear your reasons for migrating from Pixaria please?
Caroline
SM is far more slick. Pixaria isn't a bad tool on the whole but basically I am tiring of the continuous updates, bug fixes and lack of suitable payment gateways (paypal only - Although it does have currency support!). I have lost my motivation with it.
I don't want to turn this thread into another topic or slag off Pixaria so PM me if you have any more questions please.
SM is far more slick. Pixaria isn't a bad tool on the whole but basically I am tiring of the continuous updates, bug fixes and lack of suitable payment gateways (paypal only - Although it does have currency support!). I have lost my motivation with it.
I don't want to turn this thread into another topic or slag off Pixaria so PM me if you have any more questions please.
No further questions thank you, its always helpful to know shortcomings of other services, I'm not into slagging of any kind.
Zenfolio has now definitively the foot in the UK market; they agreed with a local lab and are currently working on integration and foreign currency support according to this post: http://forums.zenfolio.com/forums/p/502/10253.aspx
Timeline: 2-3 month. YES!
I wish we'd see that from SM! I am still in hope for SM to get started on this hot topic
Zenfolio has now definitively the foot in the UK market
lets hope they go one more step and add other currencies also ( AUD please ) and I'll be jumping ship. Payments for Zenfolio can also be to a Paypal account with No fees also rather than by Cheque ( SM currently ).
I'll be keeping a keen eye on what Zenfolio do over the next few months
lets hope they go one more step and add other currencies also ( AUD please ) and I'll be jumping ship. Payments for Zenfolio can also be to a Paypal account with No fees also rather than by Cheque ( SM currently ).
I'll be keeping a keen eye on what Zenfolio do over the next few months
If Zenfolio change to allow $AUD, I'll forgive any other shortcomings they have and switch over.
I offer my clients the choice to order through Smugmug, or directly from me, and 80% come directly to me. This is a monumental pain in the ass, as I have to do all the legwork myself. I've also lost 5 or 6 sales this month to people who called with the checkout screen open, saying "what is the deal with $US".
It seems ridiculous to me that we cannot be given some sort of timeline, other than "we hear you and we really want to help you, but cannot just now".
If Zenfolio change to allow $AUD, I'll forgive any other shortcomings they have and switch over.
Same here.
My main reservation about SM is the lack of foreign currency support. As soon as there is a viable alternative, I'll move too. I'd love SM to beat them all to it so I can stay. I like it here! BUT... it's a major problem for me.
Redbubble is the closest thing for me in Oz, and I use that too, but it's nowhere near as slick or customisable as SM.
Any chance we can have an update as to WHY it's such a big issue? What about WHEN or even IF this will EVER be looked at?
I'm no programmer but surely you could set it up so you nominate where you are and the purchasing module just uses whatver the local currency is. I know it's more complicated than that with regard to taxation laws/regulations but at least let us know what the barrier is and someone in the know might have a viable suggestion to get foreign currency transactions to get off the ground.
AS much as I hate paypal.. even being able to fullfill the order via Paypal where paypal does the conversion. The current paypal "hack" requires the extra steps of fulfillment
Any chance we can have an update as to WHY it's such a big issue?
Just time, energy and programming resources. That's it. One day we hope to be able to tackle the multi-currency thing. I'm sorry we don't have it now, and I'm sorry it's been a long-requested addition to the site, and that we've disappointed some of you folks. You can be sure that it remains something that we want to do - and we're searching for the right way to do it, given the rest of our workload and our sorcery resources.
So let me try to get it all. What are other options?Pixaria, Zenfolio, IFP3.com and what else. What we realy all need is a tool that allow as to sell better and spend more time on doing what we should do- photographing.
SM Is a nice tool but with the all my time I had spent customizing it and putting new photos and all that, it just doesn't seem to work fine with me. Which site is best to sell images to no US customers?
I have to say I was very impressed by my visit to Zenfolio. I am very bothered by thought of having to open a new web site but it looks so good and the trial version is giving me impression that I will not have to spend that much time to customize it as I did with SM. but what the most important is the discusion about the same issue as here which looks that with zenfolio might finish quiet soon (here 3 years). Zenfolio and curencies
With the other site you mention, you don't have anywhere close to the same options in customizing. And you've customized quite a bit.
This is very true, there is no HTML or CSS editing at Zenfolio. However walled gardens aren't all bad all the time, Miro's site looks quite eh.. different in IE6 compared to Firefox. I'd like to be able to customize my site without coding, knowing that it'll look good for all viewers, and I think that's what is coming for Zenfolio.
Just time, energy and programming resources. That's it. One day we hope to be able to tackle the multi-currency thing. I'm sorry we don't have it now, and I'm sorry it's been a long-requested addition to the site, and that we've disappointed some of you folks. You can be sure that it remains something that we want to do - and we're searching for the right way to do it, given the rest of our workload and our sorcery resources.
How about as a first step electronic payment? That should be relatively easy to implement.
At present if I get a cheque in US dollars I am charged hefty bank fees and it takes 28 working days for the money to be cleared into my account. Electronic payment would solve this problem immediately.
Gbp
Hi It seems that the software can only be fully functional in the US. From this thread the wait for the function has gone on for years now.
I would like to be able to show the £ instead of the $ and to be paid directly via paypal.
I know nothing about coding so please forgive the naivety of the question, is it really so very difficult to change a symbol in your code for non US customers?
Gbp
Hi It seems that the software can only be fully functional in the US. From this thread the wait for the function has gone on for years now.
I would like to be able to show the £ instead of the $ and to be paid directly via paypal.
I know nothing about coding so please forgive the naivety of the question, is it really so very difficult to change a symbol in your code for non US customers?
Hi It seems that the software can only be fully functional in the US. From this thread the wait for the function has gone on for years now.
I would like to be able to show the £ instead of the $ and to be paid directly via paypal.
I know nothing about coding so please forgive the naivety of the question, is it really so very difficult to change a symbol in your code for non US customers?
Roy
I appreciate priorities for sure.
I will try to look at the PayPal option as a newbie to css etc but why can't there be an option in the code to show £ and not $.
Surely this can't mess with your code if uk users, and others, have to use paypal!!?
How about as a first step electronic payment? That should be relatively easy to implement.
At present if I get a cheque in US dollars I am charged hefty bank fees and it takes 28 working days for the money to be cleared into my account. Electronic payment would solve this problem immediately.
If SmugMug implemented electronic payment of foreign currency it is most likely that THEY would then be charged a fee by their bank. There is obviously more to this than we are aware.
I appreciate priorities for sure.
I will try to look at the PayPal option as a newbie to css etc but why can't there be an option in the code to show £ and not $.
Surely this can't mess with your code if uk users, and others, have to use paypal!!?
Hi Roy, I'm sorry, I don't have more to say than I already have, I wish I had a better, different answer for you!
I appreciate priorities for sure.
I will try to look at the PayPal option as a newbie to css etc but why can't there be an option in the code to show £ and not $.
Surely this can't mess with your code if uk users, and others, have to use paypal!!?
It's not just "using paypal"... Or more truly, perhaps it is JUST that. Users that implement paypal payments on Smugmug are NOT using the built in smugmug shopping cart in any fashion, so changing the display currency in the cart would be pointless, since the only payment option if using Smugmug's built in functionality is their own CC processor.
Personally I still have prints handled by Smugmug (using the built in shopping cart, in USD, and printed and sent from the USA), but I have disabled digital downloads from my recent galleries and exclusively offer those through a paypal system where I receive an email from paypal with the order details and I send off the digital image myself.
It's an ugly, ugly compromise but it honestly looks like all we're ever going to get. Smugmug, if judged by it's actions and current comments on this topic, appears to be perfectly happy to focus on US centric pro features.
The new coupons and packages that we are being promised for example will only work with the built in cart and I am probably going to miss out on being able to make use of them.
Smugmug's a business, and in their situation I would prioritise the features that appeal to most of their users and it just seems this means features for non-US based photographers are never going to be developed. It's not wrong, and I completely understand, but it sucks if you happen to be a non US based Smugmug user.
Comments
All,
I've also been waiting years now for SmugMug to implement some kind of Australian Dollars option. In the meantime I've replicated all my work over to Red Bubble and attempted to divide my customers into two directions depending on where they are shopping from. International customers will want to use SM and local Australian customers will want use RB. It's cumbersome, because both services offer a completely different range of products. However the local AUD currency and local shipping costs are what my customers want, thus Red Bubble.
SM still offer a far better, slicker gallery and customisation options. RB just doesn't look professional and offers little to no customisation options. RB looks particularly bad when the user gets to entering payment and it drops out into a very generic looking page that looks nothing like the preceeding pages. Also the RB product range is very limited (though it does include framed prints to customers!).
So I'm stuck with this clumsy duel system. Using text to describe to my customers how to buy prints step by step, via two methods.
I keep trying to think of ways around it. For instance, is there a SM customisation option that will allow me to add a link to the "Buy" drop down menu, eg "Buy In AUD$", and then have that link redirect them to Red Bubble?
You can check out my website here:
http://www.chockstonephotos.com
I try to herd my customers in two directions...
Red Bubble site:
http://chockstone.redbubble.com/works
Note the dorky square thumbs, the confusing purchase option selections, a "featured" gallery that can't be hidden, and the generic payment pages. Yuk! But it ships locally in local dollars.
Smug Mug site:
http://chockstone.smugmug.com
Note they do not even mention that payment is in US dollars until you're on the very last purchase screen!
So all up, something of a mess. Sales have been down badly for 2 years since I went fully on-line. I was doing everything myself (printing, payment, etc), but it was too much work for too little reward.
Michael Boniwell
http://www.chockstonephotos.com
http://chockstone.smugmug.com
SmugMug, is there any roadmap that makes customers (well, and us in the end) from outside US happy ? I realise that it is "promised" for years (searching the forum here), but yet has not materialised. In fact, this thread goes back to July 2006, that is 2.5 YEARS !!!
Oh well, next week PhotoBox.co.uk goes live with their new Pro-Galleries, I may well do my sales with them and use SmugMug only as a gallery. Too say to have to divide traffic.
Zenfolio : they have announced a partnership with a UK lab. Not named, and not live yet, but promised for this year.
Nextproof : they have multi-currency and self-fulfilment.
http://photos.frankcourtney.com/
Wedding Photographer Dublin
So an opinion on whether the drop off in foreign visitors is due to only have US currency ?!?
Andrew
Source: http://forums.zenfolio.com/forums/t/61.aspx?PageIndex=8
Best regards,
Markus
Great question - I'd love to see a timeline of where foreign currency transactions in Smugmug's plans.
I'd also love to know when electronic payment will be available.
Ok, so this is a bit of a work in progress, but this is as far as I've got so far.
I wanted to have a facility to embed a currency converter onto a "help" page on my site so I found some html on XE.com that they provide to link a currency converter to their site. I've modified it a bit to give it a black background and to restrict the "From" currency to US $ and changed some of the default text on the buttons, and the most important change was to make sure that the resulting convertion would open in a new window.
Anyway, here's the link to the thread http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=118142
I'd love to find some way of getting the total $ amount currently in the cart automatically entered into the "From" field, so if any of you guru's know how please let us all know.
I hope this is useful to someone.
Tim
edit:
For some reason when I pasted the code in to this forum it would only display the actual resulting currency converter instead of just the raw HTML code, wierd. So edited to give the link to my original thread.
Tim
Dear Smugmug
Oh My God! I can't believe it. No currency support! I can't understand why, the software I am migrating from (Pixaria) has this and this was developed by a one man band working on his own. Most other apps I have seen also commonly support it as well.
I had my credit card out and on the desk in front of me about to buy TODAY. But this changes everything for me, I can't use your application. My UK customers will not pay the transaction charge they will incur by using $USD and the ever changing exchange rate just does not make it viable to use in the UK, or elsewhere for that matter.
I am sorry to say I am bitterly disappointed, you just lost a sale - and I have wasted hours of my time going through an otherwise top rate image hosting solution. I wish that you had made this fact more prominent on the website features info, it would have saved us both a lot of time.
I have just checked the forum on this topic and note that there are requests for this going back to 2006. How can you have not made any progress on this, what is the problem?
I was really looking forward to using smugmug and had even told all 50 of my contributing photographers about it. Now I feel like the ground had just been pulled from under my feet. I am in freefall not knowing what to do now.
I even feel slightly angered by this, when will you wake up and smell the coffee? How can you expect me run a modern website with sale support that is 10 years out of date.
I fully expect that you are dragging your heels over this because of the 15% commission aspect of the sales you charge. The solution is very straight forward, use a localised payment gateway like google checkout for transactions.
Disappointedly
David
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
SM is far more slick. Pixaria isn't a bad tool on the whole but basically I am tiring of the continuous updates, bug fixes and lack of suitable payment gateways (paypal only - Although it does have currency support!). I have lost my motivation with it.
I don't want to turn this thread into another topic or slag off Pixaria so PM me if you have any more questions please.
No further questions thank you, its always helpful to know shortcomings of other services, I'm not into slagging of any kind.
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
Timeline: 2-3 month. YES!
I wish we'd see that from SM! I am still in hope for SM to get started on this hot topic
In hope for EU and UK lab integration,
Markus
lets hope they go one more step and add other currencies also ( AUD please ) and I'll be jumping ship. Payments for Zenfolio can also be to a Paypal account with No fees also rather than by Cheque ( SM currently ).
I'll be keeping a keen eye on what Zenfolio do over the next few months
Monte
If Zenfolio change to allow $AUD, I'll forgive any other shortcomings they have and switch over.
I offer my clients the choice to order through Smugmug, or directly from me, and 80% come directly to me. This is a monumental pain in the ass, as I have to do all the legwork myself. I've also lost 5 or 6 sales this month to people who called with the checkout screen open, saying "what is the deal with $US".
It seems ridiculous to me that we cannot be given some sort of timeline, other than "we hear you and we really want to help you, but cannot just now".
Same here.
My main reservation about SM is the lack of foreign currency support. As soon as there is a viable alternative, I'll move too. I'd love SM to beat them all to it so I can stay. I like it here! BUT... it's a major problem for me.
Redbubble is the closest thing for me in Oz, and I use that too, but it's nowhere near as slick or customisable as SM.
Any chance we can have an update as to WHY it's such a big issue? What about WHEN or even IF this will EVER be looked at?
Thanks,
Tim
I'm no programmer but surely you could set it up so you nominate where you are and the purchasing module just uses whatver the local currency is. I know it's more complicated than that with regard to taxation laws/regulations but at least let us know what the barrier is and someone in the know might have a viable suggestion to get foreign currency transactions to get off the ground.
AS much as I hate paypal.. even being able to fullfill the order via Paypal where paypal does the conversion. The current paypal "hack" requires the extra steps of fulfillment
Just time, energy and programming resources. That's it. One day we hope to be able to tackle the multi-currency thing. I'm sorry we don't have it now, and I'm sorry it's been a long-requested addition to the site, and that we've disappointed some of you folks. You can be sure that it remains something that we want to do - and we're searching for the right way to do it, given the rest of our workload and our sorcery resources.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
SM Is a nice tool but with the all my time I had spent customizing it and putting new photos and all that, it just doesn't seem to work fine with me. Which site is best to sell images to no US customers?
www.mirophoto.com
smooth photography of...
Zenfolio and curencies
www.mirophoto.com
smooth photography of...
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Malte
This is very true, there is no HTML or CSS editing at Zenfolio. However walled gardens aren't all bad all the time, Miro's site looks quite eh.. different in IE6 compared to Firefox. I'd like to be able to customize my site without coding, knowing that it'll look good for all viewers, and I think that's what is coming for Zenfolio.
Ofcourse they have no video.
Malte
How about as a first step electronic payment? That should be relatively easy to implement.
At present if I get a cheque in US dollars I am charged hefty bank fees and it takes 28 working days for the money to be cleared into my account. Electronic payment would solve this problem immediately.
Hi It seems that the software can only be fully functional in the US. From this thread the wait for the function has gone on for years now.
I would like to be able to show the £ instead of the $ and to be paid directly via paypal.
I know nothing about coding so please forgive the naivety of the question, is it really so very difficult to change a symbol in your code for non US customers?
Roy
Roy Palmer - Digital Images
http://www.digital-images.org.uk/
Hi It seems that the software can only be fully functional in the US. From this thread the wait for the function has gone on for years now.
I would like to be able to show the £ instead of the $ and to be paid directly via paypal.
I know nothing about coding so please forgive the naivety of the question, is it really so very difficult to change a symbol in your code for non US customers?
Roy
Roy Palmer - Digital Images
http://www.digital-images.org.uk/
I appreciate priorities for sure.
I will try to look at the PayPal option as a newbie to css etc but why can't there be an option in the code to show £ and not $.
Surely this can't mess with your code if uk users, and others, have to use paypal!!?
Roy Palmer - Digital Images
http://www.digital-images.org.uk/
If SmugMug implemented electronic payment of foreign currency it is most likely that THEY would then be charged a fee by their bank. There is obviously more to this than we are aware.
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
It's not just "using paypal"... Or more truly, perhaps it is JUST that. Users that implement paypal payments on Smugmug are NOT using the built in smugmug shopping cart in any fashion, so changing the display currency in the cart would be pointless, since the only payment option if using Smugmug's built in functionality is their own CC processor.
Personally I still have prints handled by Smugmug (using the built in shopping cart, in USD, and printed and sent from the USA), but I have disabled digital downloads from my recent galleries and exclusively offer those through a paypal system where I receive an email from paypal with the order details and I send off the digital image myself.
It's an ugly, ugly compromise but it honestly looks like all we're ever going to get. Smugmug, if judged by it's actions and current comments on this topic, appears to be perfectly happy to focus on US centric pro features.
The new coupons and packages that we are being promised for example will only work with the built in cart and I am probably going to miss out on being able to make use of them.
Smugmug's a business, and in their situation I would prioritise the features that appeal to most of their users and it just seems this means features for non-US based photographers are never going to be developed. It's not wrong, and I completely understand, but it sucks if you happen to be a non US based Smugmug user.
Cheers - Neil G
www.nzsnaps.com
http://www.nzsnaps.com (talkiet.smugmug.com)