Online Ordering Questions

[janet_mootz]

I have a small studio and I am trying to create on easy way for customers to

order their images online(and not cost me a bundle). I use Frontpage for my

website and was trying to use a work around of the customer using the feedback

option when viewing their gallery then listing the items they wanted then I

would email them the total. Needless to say this doesn't work well, mostly

because the email feedback triggers the users browser to bring up their email.

This is not always configured correctly so they usually just end up calling me

and placing the order over the phone.

 

So now I am looking at an inexpensive alternative. Smugmug looks very

reasonable but I am worried about the quality of their prints. Right now I use

MPIX and I am happy with their printing and prices.

 

Can anyone tell me what their experience with SmugMug has been like? If not

what are some good alternatives?

 

 

 

Thanks!

Janet

[jim_marby]

Janet,

 

I use Photo reflect.com. They charge 18% of the sale price but you can raise your prices on there to offset it. 18% is a little steep but there is no upload fee, no monthly fee and you can leave your photos there as long as you want.

 

If you are doing a large volume of internet sales you'd probably do better with one of the other services but for a small studio, like mine, Photo reflect works the best.

[zofia]

Janet, if you do a search here for SmugMug you will see that most people are pleased with

their quality. I just signed up for their free trial, and so far, so good! I'm going to purchase

the professional package when it's up. The best part is you can do a lot of customization.

Some people even use it as their home site. My only gripe so far is that it takes a while to

upload photos to the site. Why not do a trial run, have some printed, and see for yourself?

Good luck, Z.

[tonylarcombe]

Janet,

 

I use smug mug, and have done for over a year now. I was unhappy in the beginning with the quality of the prints I have to be honest, but once I'd spent some time configuring my screen and PS to truly represent the colours correctly the prints are now looking great and I have no problems (or my customers) with them. They are a great company, very helpful, I had two phonecalls last week, one from smug mug and one from their lab to resolve a printing issue with me, my own fault for cropping too tightly on a group photo, and hence the 4x6 came out a bit squashed, so before they printed they double checked with me to confirm exactly what I wanted.

 

They are also very good with customers and have no problem re-printing (for free) for unhappy customers, and sometimes even converting the photos themselves to correct issues prior to printing.

 

All in all, my customers and I are happy.

[janet_mootz]

Thanks for your responses so far. I think I will sign up for the SmugMug free trial.

[david_schilling___chicago_]

Another vote for smugmug.

[james_taylor11]

I was in the same place you are several months ago (I still wish mpix had a service like smugmug). I decided to try exposuremanager.com. So far I have been happy with the service. I uploaded some prints and placed an order through mpix and exposuremanager. the photos were close (these were 4x6 and 6x9). I'm going to try them for 6 months and then take another look at what's out there (you can pay by the month instead of the year).

 

Just another alternative to look at -

 

James

[gulnara]

Love the smugmug.

[danallen]

I use Labprints. Been pretty happy with them. They have good and bad points though. My biggest problem with their service is the.05 cents for every picture uploaded and the fact that the longest you can keep an event online for is 2 months. If you want it to stay up longer, then you have to re-pay the .05 cent cost. That REALLY sucks!

 

That's because we handle our own payment proccessing. If you go the route of other services, you can pay a flat 18% fee, but you still handle print fulfullment yourself. (they only host, and do NOT print!)

 

On the upside, The site is easily navigated and not horrible to look at. You can't customize it with much branding though. The big advantage is that it's integrated though their own workflow software. It works very nicely and is very simple to use.

 

The only real reason that we retain Labprints is the mix-n-match ability on their packages. I haven't seen that ability on any other service yet. If I find a service that does that AND fulfills my orders, then I will likely switch.

 

I will still keep the album designer software. I love how easy it is to design really nice album pages and the price of $150 was much cheaper that all the other professional tool I found out there.

 

Dan