Whew, it's 3 a.m. and the new shopping cart is live!

I'll limit that to one exclamation point and one smilie until we see how our customers react, but we have high hopes that aside from some tweaking it will accomplish the big goals we had for it.

The difficulty factor for this was the highest of anything we've done, putting quite a number of projects on hold. But once it's working well, it opens the door to a whole number of things like a commerce style with prominent placement of the buy button, etc.

If we seemed quiet this week, it's because the whole team was locked away answering only essential emails and forum posts to get this live.

The two big things we hoped to achieve were (1) to make adding photos to the cart much more streamlined. More pics, less clicks.

And (2) — the difficult one — help customers to understand cropping and adjust it themselves.

To help them understand cropping, there is a thumbnail with cropping lines for each item you add. The cropping lines change in real time as you select different products. Doing it without requiring Flash, Java or a plugin was tough.

Then you can adjust your own cropping in hopefully a simple way.

Here's what the cropping lines look like:



I know everyone's been concerned about the print button. Here's what the new one looks like:



The placement could be better and that's something we can tweak quickly, I think. We're also anxious to move forward with a commerce style, but we had to finish this first.

Here's what the crop tool looks like. There are two versions. The one in the shopping cart doesn't have the ratio pull-down menu seen here because the product you pick dictates the ratio. The ratio appears for photos you crop in your galleries (this replaces the old crop tool).

It has the same controls as the bulk move tool that's so popular, but you can ignore them and just use the mouse.



More on the shopping cart: http://www.smugmug.com/help/digital-prints

More on cropping: http://www.smugmug.com/help/enhancing-photos

We also added some color and contrast adjustments people have asked for.

Finally, we added quite a number of help sections, especially for pros on topics like print and display quality and we re-wrote sections on things like setting print prices to make them clearer.

Let us know what you think.

Thanks,
Baldy

congrats guys on getting it done and out the door. it's a big improvement, and a big step for smugmug.

One thing I notice is we need a new name for what we're calling digital prints. And I just ordered a postcard from manevideo's galleries as a test (great shot of fox-hunting dogs) and noticed he has no digital print sizes offered and yet the dropdown appears. Tweak needed.

Originally Posted by Baldy One thing I notice is we need a new name for what we're calling digital prints. And I just ordered a postcard from manevideo's galleries as a test (great shot of fox-hunting dogs) and noticed he has no digital print sizes offered and yet the dropdown appears. Tweak needed.

Thanks for the order... please buy more.

Erik

Baldy, that was sure fast. I complained a few hours ago, and you answered.............. in hours.

LOL, you were working on it. I have not seen it yet, but that order button looks like it would be more visible even where it is. Great!

I think I may have seen a bit of the crop tool, last week, by accident and didn't understand it, but I didn't try too hard, as I don't use it.

I had wondered what digital prints were, had no idea for a long time, finally read something here and went and added prices to mine immediately. I am always concerned that someone is going to order something, and not realize that I am not displaying the usual sizes. Like 5 X 7s. I display more like the sizes that come out of my dRebel, 7.5 X 5. So I was happy re the digital prices once I realized what they were.

Not that anyone who was ordering from me would know that.

Now, I was kind of put down a bit yesterday on what I said, but I am also a potential customer............. not a big deal, I don't make anyone's year. But I got so confused, and did not understand things like a "catelog", etc. I finally started uploading, a few weeks ago, things to Shutterfly, I understand their system, it has worked for me in the past............... No, I have not ordered anything yet, but it is just a point re some of the confusion and the ease of ordering, understanding what you are ordering, etc.

Also, I love to play with my prints there, to see what they would look like framed. I did that with my last winner of The Challenge, my only one, I could say. But I did that.............and I was so pleased at how it would look, I would have ordered the frame and print on the spot, if I could have afforded it.

I think their system is easier to use. So I am glad to see any improvements here.

I am only making comments to try to help things, I love Smugmug. Uh, where do you order that t-shirt? Maybe I can find out by logging out and going on the front page?

I do like this group and I love the smugmug page. My problems are more related to me, well, totally related to me. I have to clean up my page, too.

I did not understand about naming our own categories, and I will check that one out.

I do not have a flame suit on, it is hot enough here, I am just trying to be helpful. I am sorry that being helpful can mean that I sound critical.

I have photographs at pBase, Webshots and here. I expect this will be the only place, except that I hate to lose the ones at Webshots, they are set up for other things. But this is the place I prefer. I do like it.

Just letting you know my problems with the system, as my problems might mirror someone else's.

I love the changes.. very easy and fun to use. If I can use it anyone can.. feel free to use me as dummy user any time.

Smug Mug is a really great site and I'm sure it'll grow in leaps and bounds. The only negative comment would be that I agree with a couple of others that the message when the site is down needs to be a little more professional. Just something really short and to the point.. I also don't like the idea of a potential customer (I should be so lucky) being able to access dgrin to discuss the problem. Other than that I think the site is wonderful and I think I'll upgrade to pro... just for fun.
Well done all, having created a few web sites myself I can only imagine the bug eyed state you are all in come away, come away, before you get sucked into the monitor.. take a break.

I promise I will go dig a hole and crawl in it. Just wanted to say, first, that I am sure I could figure every little thing out on Smugmug (and the rest of the world).

If I wanted to badly enough. Sometimes I take the paths of "need to know", "least resistance" and "don't care that much". I don't know, just suspect, that others do the same.

Please do not cancel my membership for this, I love smugmug, tell others about it, my site in particular. My husband is constantly handing out cards. And I want the Tee (shirt).

[font=Comic Sans MS]Now I'v only been here for a few days but I think the changes are great. [/font]
[font=Comic Sans MS]Smugmug is a wonderful site and I'm really glad I'v joined.[/font]
[font=Comic Sans MS]The fact that Friends,family,and other can purchase photo's was by far the deciding factor that won me over to smugmug.[/font]
[font=Comic Sans MS]Thank you for all the hard work and I'm looking forward to see what's next. [/font]

Wow....I am impressed. The change is absolutely brilliant and very intuitive as well. Thanks for all the hard work!

Congrats on finally launching this big project. Must feel great!

Now, heh, my initial comments:

- Javascript cropping tool is *amazing*. Great work. It's very reminiscent of iPhoto's crop tool, only not nearly as slow! Sweet! Oh, but it'd be nice if you had a "Cancel" or "Revert" button. Not everybody is going to think to use the Back button if they want to abandon their changes. This goes for the Bulk Move tool too.
- What's up with that klunky Java crop tool? Was that always there? It's kinda crappy, esp. compared to the new one. I think you should just drop it.
- In the Shopping Cart, in Mac IE (I know, I know -- it's ancient and crappy), clicking on the images does *not* open them up, despite the Status Bar showing their URL.
- Color effects are cool.
- Along with Add to Cart and Batch Add, you should have View Cart in that box. I know -- a little more screen real estate, but the link for Shopping Cart is really kind of buried amongst those other items.

That's all I've got for now. Congrats!

--Darryl

Wow, I had this dream that we went live with the shopping cart and people actually liked it.

Then I woke up and remembered we had gone live, but still hadn't heard if anyone liked it or not. :)

The feedback we're getting here is great. Darryl, those are great suggestions (especially a "view cart" icon!! I can't believe we didn't think of that, but then, this is why smugmug's so great - you guys tell us what you want :)

We are, of course, on smugmug/dgrin chat if anyone would like to talk about it. We did all our final development work there the last two days, and it was super handy. Having more of you there to give us feedback would be even better. :)

Thanks,

Don

Good feedback, everyone! I'm feeling better this morning because, so far, knocks on wood, the response has been excellent.

First, I didn't mention it but I was very concerned about speed. We chose larger thumbnails and you've probably noticed how we fade out part of the thumb (the part lost in the crop), both of which make the page bigger. What would happen when we got orders for 100+ prints in a batch?

We spent a lot of time testing that and poor onethumb had to do a lot of optimization and fancy tricks.

This morning we're getting huge orders, much bigger quantities than we've been seeing on average. It could be just a statistical abberation *or* it could be that batch add is doing what it was supposed to do: taking away the frustration of adding many photos to your cart.

Only one order has had a cropping problem this morning so far. Dunno if the customer didn't notice the crop lines, was too busy, too intimidated by the crop tool, or didn't grok the concept of cropping. We'll be watching these like hawks.

One customer doesn't like the big new obtrusive add button.

We take the silence in our help inbox to be a very good sign...

No worries about the passionate, forceful feedback in here about outages, the outage page, etc. If I were you and experienced those outages after just doing a customer shoot, I'd feel the same way and say the same things.

Darryl, I kept feeding back bugs for IE on the Mac, some of them very nasty, until we finally....gave in and decided we'd have to circle back on that browser. Man, what a pain it is. Sorry for the things that slipped through. We just tried to limit the damage to annoyances.

Nearly the death of us, though, was IE 6 on Windows. Why they won't fix the most glaring JavaScript and CSS bugs, among other things, is beyond me....

Originally Posted by darryl Congrats on finally launching this big project. Must feel great! Now, heh, my initial comments: - Javascript cropping tool is *amazing*. Great work. It's very reminiscent of iPhoto's crop tool, only not nearly as slow! Sweet! Oh, but it'd be nice if you had a "Cancel" or "Revert" button. Not everybody is going to think to use the Back button if they want to abandon their changes. This goes for the Bulk Move tool too. - What's up with that klunky Java crop tool? Was that always there? It's kinda crappy, esp. compared to the new one. I think you should just drop it. - In the Shopping Cart, in Mac IE (I know, I know -- it's ancient and crappy), clicking on the images does *not* open them up, despite the Status Bar showing their URL. - Color effects are cool. - Along with Add to Cart and Batch Add, you should have View Cart in that box. I know -- a little more screen real estate, but the link for Shopping Cart is really kind of buried amongst those other items. That's all I've got for now. Congrats! --Darryl

How's this for service? Mac IE thing - fixed. View Cart - added.

Thanks for the suggestions! Keep them coming!

Don

[font=Comic Sans MS]LOL Man you guys are fast......................................LOL great job [/font]

Originally Posted by onethumb Thanks for the suggestions! Keep them coming!

Okay, I'm pumped, I'm excited, I'm jazzed -- this is great. Perfect timing as school starts next week and I take school event pictures. I really am thrilled, no kidding!!!

I played with it for a while and it looks just wonderful. I'll get my wife to play with the site later and capture her comments. She's more in tune with what my average user might think, so it'll be interesting.

My few and minor comments:

1) Baldy already caught this, I think -- if I don't offer any prints in a particular category like the digital sizes, it shouldn't show up in the drop-down.

2) Now I want to offer ALL the products instead of just the print sizes I knew would fit before without cropping. This means I really, desperately need a quick way to enter all the prices for a gallery based on a markup. For example, enter 5.00 or 25% in a box on the "set prices" page and click go, and all the prices are marked up appropriately (and which I could then go tweak further if I wanted). That would save me TONS of time. (I can't just set the prices once for my site because I price things differently in different spots.)

3) You might want to put some kind of little comment on page 1 that says something about being able to adjust the crop in step 2. I personally tried to fiddle with it on page 1 before I moved on to step 2 to see where it should really be done.

4) Allow pros the option to turn off the color change choices in step 2. I think they're really cool, but for my clients who all probably have really bad monitors, I think they're going to be happiest taking things the way I have them set already. And that will also make for one less possible point of confusion for them.

5) You can't go to step 3 and immediately hit the "previous" button to go back to step 2. The form wants fields filled in before you can move on. This makes sense when going on to step 4, but not when going back to step 2.

6) I would guess you'll want a "remove" button next to the pictures on step 1. Entering 0 for quantity and then updating will throw off a lot of my users, I'm sure.

That's it. Once again, I'm not making these comments because I'm unhappy! You guys came through and I'm very, very happy. Good work!!!!

I want to work at SmugMug.

Kudos. Wow. Holy Konnichiwa. Diggit.

I see more and more great things coming down the pipe!

Awesome. Kick A! Woof! Shabow!

<-- Tears of happiness.

A few more comments, this time fairly serious ones.

1) I route my customers through http://pictures.crooks.net (soon to change) to find my shots, using the custom hostname feature. When trying to go view your cart, this apparently causes a problem with the security certificate because pictures.crooks.net doesn't match the certificate name. A big, scary box pops up with a security warning. Not good.

2) Then moving from step 1 to step 2, I get told I have an empty cart! It looks like it's probably a cookie problem since on step 1 I'm at pictures.crooks.net, and then in step 2 I'm at smugmug.com.

Life would be dull without some bugs to fix, right? :-)

I like the new shopping cart. Having the buttons "add to cart" and such look much more like other e-commerce sites, rather than the old "order prints and gifts" button did. Very nice!

The only suggestion would be to still place the add to cart, etc. above the picture, near the top of the screen, not at the bottom. Easier to find if people don't need to scroll down first. My only suggestion!

Actually, this sounds more like a fairly well known IE bug. You mentioned using our hostname feature, but have you set up the DNS correctly on you end? Some hosts "forward" or frame your site instead of properly setting up a cname record. IE will not allow cookies from sites that are framed from a site different than the one setting the cookie, thus the cart (or other items) appear that they are broken.

Take a look at the help section to see if what I am saying makes sense:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/professional-accounts

JT

Originally Posted by {JT} Actually, this sounds more like a fairly well known IE bug. You mentioned using our hostname feature, but have you set up the DNS correctly on you end? Some hosts "forward" or frame your site instead of properly setting up a cname record. IE will not allow cookies from sites that are framed from a site different than the one setting the cookie, thus the cart (or other items) appear that they are broken. Take a look at the help section to see if what I am saying makes sense: http://www.smugmug.com/help/professional-accounts JT

I tried it in both Opera and IE with the same result. Most of my testing was done with Opera, but I remember trying it with IE also and the same two things happening.

Yes, I do have things set up as a CNAME record: "pictures CNAME www.smugmug.com"