Smug Mug offerings for 2008? Help with our Goals!

MichaelKirk

Andy and SM crew,

With the beginning of a new year I am wondering if you can share with your SM customers (us) what plans and goals SM has for 2008. More directly what improvements, changes and product offerings you see actually being implemented in 2008.

The reason I ask is throughout 2007 there were many requst made (aren't there always) and the routine response was: "we are looking into it". Items such as Stock Images, Coupons, Package oferings, calendars and many more. I am sure SM has a goal plan for 2008, just like a lot of use do....we love being with SM, but have to outsource alot of items to offer what our customers want.....but would rather have it all under one SM roof!

Can you offer us what items you see SM actually implementing in 2008 and a target implementation time period (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th quarter). Obviously we are not going to hold you to specific dates, but I think it is only fair to provide your customers with the companys 2008 goals so we can plan accordingly.

Oh, and I am not saying by any means that nothing was done in 2007. SM made a lot of great chages and improvements in 2007 and your customers were greatful. Keep up the excellent work and I look forward to 2008.

Michael

Andy

Hi, and thanks for posting!

I just went through the release notes blog, reviewing 2007, and you're right there's a lot there Thanks for noticing, and the props. Yeah, 2007 was pretty awesome, and we hope 2008 is even better!

Well you are right, we get asked for coupons, packages, and discounts - and more We don't comment publicly much on what we're working on, or what's in the queue. And especially dates, even by quarter. I wish I had a better answer for you! I can tell you that these things, and Stock Photos, and adding more items to our Shopping Cart for you to sell, are very, very important to us. As well as a bunch more stuff, some that have been feature requests and some that we come up with

We know you want to know what and when, exactly... but we just don't say, I'm sorry. But we do have a long history of reacting to and meeting customer demand, innovating, and leading - and we'll do everything in our power to keep it that way!

dhlewis

Andy,

along these same lines have the Smugger powers to be ever discussed having a digital newsletter for the pro account folks. It would be a way to summarize and disiminate the most important events and changes in the works at Smugmug. You could also use it for us to cast votes in online polls for the things that are the most important to us.

I like the fact that changes are showing up in our accounts now but a newsletter might intensify the pro group into a tighter community and could have benefits for Smugmug and the pros both.

Just a thought.

caroline

Hi Dale,
A couple of months back I started a blog SmugMugMonday where I hoped to pull together as many of the interesting and important SmugMug/Dgrin news/changes that I could muster. I hoped it would be of interest to others and I wanted to do it for myself because I find it hard to keep up with the many important and interesting threads that appear during a week. Unfortunately a family bereavement knocked me off course and I haven't got back to it yet - whilst not coming officially from SmugMug it was with Andy's agreement/approval, and was not intended in anyway to be a personal blog. It was quite time consuming but if I thought it would be worthwhile I would start it again. Perhaps it would go some way to satisfying your request ?

Personally, I think the guys (and girls) do a great job, I'm not at all comfortable with the idea of polls, I don't believe they are necessary because they DO listen, and I truly think they follow up on whatever is commercially and practically possible to enhance the experience for all users. Andy and the team always give the best answer they can, all credit that they answer at all - many business wouldn't bother.

I rate SmugMug way above any other business I have ever dealt with, the Dgrin community too is something very, very special - isn't it great that we can have a discussion like this at all.

With best wishes to all,
Caroline

dhlewis wrote:

Andy,

along these same lines have the Smugger powers to be ever discussed having a digital newsletter for the pro account folks. It would be a way to summarize and disiminate the most important events and changes in the works at Smugmug. You could also use it for us to cast votes in online polls for the things that are the most important to us.

I like the fact that changes are showing up in our accounts now but a newsletter might intensify the pro group into a tighter community and could have benefits for Smugmug and the pros both.

Just a thought.

dhlewis

Caroline,

Thanks for the reply. I was not aware of your blog and it is close to what I had in mind. But as you pointed out it is a lot of work for one person to do and really would need to have others involved to give a complete overview of everything that is happening at Smugmug. It's also a lot of work for most of us who are developing our sites to go through all the posts and get some kind of overview of whats going on and everything that can now be done.

Although I do agree with what you say regarding Smugmug I have two areas where I would like to see improvements in 2008. I have seen others, post these same comments in the past so this is not new news.

The areas are;
1. Photo Packages (not an improvement a new feature!)
2. The information and resources for pro accounts are scattered in to many different places, thus the newletter idea.

This is the reason that I still advocate some sort of collection of information from the pro account holders (polls for lack of a more elegant term) is to better understand what is really important to have next. I did not mean an open poll that would allow individuals to vote multiple times and bias the results, this is what you have in open forums.

I would guess that the pro accounts are helping Smugmug to grow by creating a increasing revenue stream through print sales and exposing thousands of everyday people to Smugmug for the first time. I would also guess that this exposure helps create many new Smugmug photo accounts.

caroline wrote:

Hi Dale,
A couple of months back I started a blog SmugMugMonday where I hoped to pull together as many of the interesting and important SmugMug/Dgrin news/changes that I could muster. I hoped it would be of interest to others and I wanted to do it for myself because I find it hard to keep up with the many important and interesting threads that appear during a week. Unfortunately a family bereavement knocked me off course and I haven't got back to it yet - whilst not coming officially from SmugMug it was with Andy's agreement/approval, and was not intended in anyway to be a personal blog. It was quite time consuming but if I thought it would be worthwhile I would start it again. Perhaps it would go some way to satisfying your request ?

Personally, I think the guys (and girls) do a great job, I'm not at all comfortable with the idea of polls, I don't believe they are necessary because they DO listen, and I truly think they follow up on whatever is commercially and practically possible to enhance the experience for all users. Andy and the team always give the best answer they can, all credit that they answer at all - many business wouldn't bother.

I rate SmugMug way above any other business I have ever dealt with, the Dgrin community too is something very, very special - isn't it great that we can have a discussion like this at all.

With best wishes to all,
Caroline

caroline

Hi Dale,

I agree with your comment that my SmugMug blog concept would need to have input from other people to get a complete overview of everything that is happening. It could be actually produced by a single person provided they were being fed information consistently. Going through the threads is very time consuming and in some instances totally daunting. I have long given up trying to follow Shizam's slideshow thread currently with 1153 messages. I've no doubt there is information within that thread that would be useful to me and others but ...............:( A big beef of mine on any forum is posts that are inappropriately titled and don't give the slightest clue about the real question, this would make the job of collating information for a newsletter blog even more time consuming.

It's also a lot of work for most of us who are developing our sites to go through all the posts and get some kind of overview of whats going on and everything that can now be done.

This for me really sums up what I would like to see and also what I hoped I might eventually achieve with my blog. However, the number of hits it got in a week didn't warrant the time it took me to do it, and that in itself was disheartening. I would gladly take it on again, or share it with a group of people, because like you I still think it is needed, but as it was only read by 70 or so people each week it would seem to be wasted effort. Thank you for taking the time to reply Dale. Perhaps Andy or someone else will pick up this and give some input.

Cheers,
Caroline