Help our customers understand cropping please

jfriend

I have proof-delay on and I regularly review the prints that are ordered from my site even though most are only marked up 1 cent for tracking purposes. I am constantly amazed that 99% of the print sizes that are ordered that don't perfectly match the aspect ratio of the print just have a default crop and many of those are bad.

Clearly people ordering prints are not paying attention to cropping properly. Here's the latest one that came through today. It's an 8x10 print on a 3:2 image with the default crop that cuts off part of the head. If I hadn't been paying attention (this was one of 34 prints in this order), this likely would have been a reprint at Smugmug's expense. Clearly the customer never saw what the crop would look like or didn't know what to do about it. I fixed it in proof delay, but what about all the prints that are ordered from family accounts with no proof delay monitoring?




What can be done?

Andy

jfriend wrote:

What can be done?

You tell us

We have help pages galore. We've more prominently featured the crop tool now in the shopping cart. We've improved the crop tool immensely (it now shows the wrap area, for example, on mounted canvases).



By the way, you're doing exactly what pros should be doing, with proof delay. I wish I could force it

DrDavid

Andy wrote:

By the way, you're doing exactly what pros should be doing, with proof delay. I wish I could force it

That's one of the settings I *always* turn on when I'm doing sites for others. I **ALWAYS** turn on a 7 day proof delay for all galleries.. Also, I typically turn on Auto color unless it looks *great* on my screen. But, since most people don't calibrate, Auto is almost always better.

David

Andy

One idea from Jfriend:
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=864828&postcount=9

All of our prints have associated cropping pages:

http://www.smugmug.com/prints/4x6-prints
http://www.smugmug.com/prints/5x7-prints
http://www.smugmug.com/prints/8x10-prints
http://www.smugmug.com/prints/8x12-prints
http://www.smugmug.com/prints/11x14-prints
http://www.smugmug.com/prints/4xd-prints

Andy

John, I just noticed that this


didn't make it into our new cart. Do you think that was useful

jfriend

Andy wrote:

John, I just noticed that this


didn't make it into our new cart. Do you think that was useful

The culprit size for my 3:2 image is nearly always 8x10 and the shots that other people order prints of are nearly always vertically oriented shots of people (often sports). The default crop pretty much never works because I shoot tight enough that heads get cut off in the default 8x10 crop. I don't want to give up tight shooting because that's what works best for web viewing which is still the primary use of the photos.

The only things that come to mind now are:

1. Making the cropped display even more obvious - visual improvement. This latest order came from the new cart so it wasn't good enough for this person to get it.
2. Making it more obvious that the 8x10 prints need manual crop adjustments. Perhaps some special text in a different color that says you really ought to manually adjust this crop and here's where you click to do it.
3. Requiring that someone ordering a print size that mismatches the image aspect ratio by more than x% confirm the crop is OK in a separate workflow step as part of finishing the order. My experience is that more than 75% of the 8x10 orders are messed up so I wouldn't mind forcing all customers to review and approve the crop settings for 8x10 orders (16x20, etc...). You'd literally make a screen that shows the cropped image and asks if this is the best crop. If they say yes, you go to the next 8x10 image ordered or process the order if there are no more. If they say no, you walk them through the crop adjusting process to adjust that one until they are happy with it.
4. Another variation of the above step would be to NOT offer an auto crop if the size mismatch is greater than x% and just require that they set the crop manually as part of the process of adding that item to the cart and picking that size.

I think my favorite option is probably option 4. Auto-crop is very unlikely to work when the aspect ratio mismatch is as much as an 8x10 ordered from a 3:2 image. So, I'd like the buyer to be forced to specify the crop as part of the process of putting an 8x10 in the cart. Done right, it could be even quicker than setting the crop now because you'd be walked through the screen to do it.

I'll think about it further.