Pro Sales requires Pro Ordering Capability
dwterry
Registered Users Posts: 209 Major grins
We really, really, really NEED a better ordering system on smugmug!
With wedding customers, there is generally a large number of pictures being ordered. But ordering the pictures is fraught with difficulties and aggravation. Starting from the moment that a customer wants to "decide" what pictures to order, all the way through the ordering process itself.
Let's say there are 600 pictures online to choose from in, perhaps, 10 different categories (bride and groom, portraits, cake cutting, candids, etc).
And let's say the bride and groom plan to purchase about 80 of them. What do they do?
They visit endless pages of images looking for their favorites. How do they know which ones are their favorites? Well now ... you would think that, seeing as how they are on a computer, the computer would HELP them. You know ... flag their favorites so that they don't have to remember them. But no. They are forced to do things the old fashioned way. They write down their favorites somewhere (recording which album and which image they liked most).
But they've somehow managed to pick 150 favorites. That's no good, they can only afford 80. So they need to narrow it down. Now what? One by one, they re-visit each and every image in their list ... by 1) finding the album it was in, and 2) finding the page it was on, and 3) finding the image.
Now, fast as smugmug is (thank you very much), it STILL takes time to find and view their favorites. So chalk up aggravation #1.
And how do they decide which ones NOT to purchase? By somehow repeating this process, comparing one image to the next, back and forth, deciding which they like more, which they like less, until they finally get to the number of images they want to purchase. Aggravation #2.
So much for computerization.
Why not give the customer the ability to "shop" for their images? Let them find THEIR favorites (not the "site" favorites, but the favorites that they want to SPEND MONEY on). Let them "rank" their favorites, 1 to 5 (not Yes or No). Doing so would more quickly narrow down their purchase list to just what they want.
So, they've managed to find their top 80 pictures. But wait ... Have you ever tried ordering 80 pictures? More? It becomes painfully slow to do *anything* once your cart has any significant number of images in it. Just moving back and forth between the cart and the albums takes nothing short of forever. Aggravation #3.
So what if you want to adjust the cropping on one of the 80+ images in your cart? Click adjust ... wait 18 seconds for the image to appear. Click save. Wait 28 seconds just to get back to your cart. What if you had to do this for 80 pictures? We're talking nearly 80 MINUTES just to adjust crops, and that doesn't count the time spent actually "doing" something (like deciding what crop works best). Aggravation #4.
I feel sorry for my customers. Most often I have my wedding customers submit their order directly to me. This at least saves them the pain of going through the shopping cart.
What does it mean to you, owners and operators of smugmug? Lost sales. Lost income. Because now, instead of my customers paying you, they are paying me. I *do* like that it costs me less (i.e. I make more per print) if I do the work. It seems only fair. Heck, it takes me hours to submit their orders when I use smugmug to do the printing. But wouldn't it be nice if the customer could do it quickly and easily and if smugmug made a profit along the way?
Anyway, enough of my diatribe. I'll save the other rant (Packages, please, packages) for another day.
Thanks for listening,
David
http://www.dterryphotography.com
With wedding customers, there is generally a large number of pictures being ordered. But ordering the pictures is fraught with difficulties and aggravation. Starting from the moment that a customer wants to "decide" what pictures to order, all the way through the ordering process itself.
Let's say there are 600 pictures online to choose from in, perhaps, 10 different categories (bride and groom, portraits, cake cutting, candids, etc).
And let's say the bride and groom plan to purchase about 80 of them. What do they do?
They visit endless pages of images looking for their favorites. How do they know which ones are their favorites? Well now ... you would think that, seeing as how they are on a computer, the computer would HELP them. You know ... flag their favorites so that they don't have to remember them. But no. They are forced to do things the old fashioned way. They write down their favorites somewhere (recording which album and which image they liked most).
But they've somehow managed to pick 150 favorites. That's no good, they can only afford 80. So they need to narrow it down. Now what? One by one, they re-visit each and every image in their list ... by 1) finding the album it was in, and 2) finding the page it was on, and 3) finding the image.
Now, fast as smugmug is (thank you very much), it STILL takes time to find and view their favorites. So chalk up aggravation #1.
And how do they decide which ones NOT to purchase? By somehow repeating this process, comparing one image to the next, back and forth, deciding which they like more, which they like less, until they finally get to the number of images they want to purchase. Aggravation #2.
So much for computerization.
Why not give the customer the ability to "shop" for their images? Let them find THEIR favorites (not the "site" favorites, but the favorites that they want to SPEND MONEY on). Let them "rank" their favorites, 1 to 5 (not Yes or No). Doing so would more quickly narrow down their purchase list to just what they want.
So, they've managed to find their top 80 pictures. But wait ... Have you ever tried ordering 80 pictures? More? It becomes painfully slow to do *anything* once your cart has any significant number of images in it. Just moving back and forth between the cart and the albums takes nothing short of forever. Aggravation #3.
So what if you want to adjust the cropping on one of the 80+ images in your cart? Click adjust ... wait 18 seconds for the image to appear. Click save. Wait 28 seconds just to get back to your cart. What if you had to do this for 80 pictures? We're talking nearly 80 MINUTES just to adjust crops, and that doesn't count the time spent actually "doing" something (like deciding what crop works best). Aggravation #4.
I feel sorry for my customers. Most often I have my wedding customers submit their order directly to me. This at least saves them the pain of going through the shopping cart.
What does it mean to you, owners and operators of smugmug? Lost sales. Lost income. Because now, instead of my customers paying you, they are paying me. I *do* like that it costs me less (i.e. I make more per print) if I do the work. It seems only fair. Heck, it takes me hours to submit their orders when I use smugmug to do the printing. But wouldn't it be nice if the customer could do it quickly and easily and if smugmug made a profit along the way?
Anyway, enough of my diatribe. I'll save the other rant (Packages, please, packages) for another day.
Thanks for listening,
David
http://www.dterryphotography.com
0
Comments
I agree with you 100%. Smugmug is working on a new cart interface, but that still leaves packages, etc open.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=64984
I just recently signed up for a trial with Exposure Manager and their price sheets, packages and volume discounts are in another league. You can totally brand the entire print process, including packaging and even include things in the package. There are a few things about EM that are not quite as customizable as smugmug, but with regards to selling, there is really no comparison.
check out my site and look at the packages. You can also select images as you go through the gallery with the check mark and then "order products from selection".
http://scwalter.exposuremanager.com/
(warning, this site may not exist after another 10 days if I chose not to go with EM).
-Scott
scwalter.smugmug.com
I wonder if it would be possible for smugmug to send these kinds of announcements to our email instead of simply posting here on dgrin? I very seldom come here (only when something isn't working right). So I'm sure I miss out on a lot of conversations. But who has time in their day to visit tons of websites to keep up with everything that is happening? It'd be easier if the announcements came to us, instead of us having to go find the announcements.
Hi David,
This is a great post, lots of excellent stuff - I'm going to make sure everyone sees it. Thank you for taking the time to share what's important to you with us.
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Another thing: packaging. I ordered some 5x7s to test out smugmug's printing, and the little envelope they came in was bent and didn't seem very tough! The pictures weren't bent, but... well, it's just not the way I want prints to be delivered to my clients.
I'm looking forward to the changes ahead! I must say that I am pleased with smugmug, overall.
I use the proof delay feature and have discovered several instances of customers ordering the OOF shots. It would be nice if the Pros had the power to delete or change individual photos on the order.
Currently we have to try and contact the customer, hope they return the message in time, explain the situation to them and then they have to cancel the entire order and reorder. Or the entire order has to be canceled through Smumug and reordered.
I would much rather proof and delete myself and then later explain to the customer why they didn't get a certain photo. I think this is a better option than having someone spend $20 on an out of focus photo and be upset.
is this the best place to make requests for the new cart features? Also...is it too late to get requirements considered?
Anybody tried the multiple photos option? I like the way all the images in the gallery appear for selection as thumbs....it makes the ordering part simple....but the cart still seems to drag when selecting sizes and other options
Tom
Tom
http://avman.smugmug.com/