dwterry
Jul-05-2007, 07:04 PM
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