WEBSITE PACKAGE "ONLINE STORE" INFORMATION SHEET
The Online Store is a sales tool developed specifically for the photographer - weddings, portraits, events, sports, commercial and more - to sell their images to their customers.
You photograph the event, easily upload your images (individually or in batches of hundreds at a time) and you are ready to take orders – yes it’s that simple! It is easy to use and no knowledge of programming is needed once setup by Boots Creative.
The Online Store comes with many great features to make your business more efficient and increase revenue, just some of the key features are:
- Customised ‘look and feel’ to blend with your main website.
- Secure Galleries - you have control over the level of security for each gallery whether they are public or private.
- Automatic Watermarking of Images to assist in avoiding images being able to be downloaded
- Disable right-clicking to assist in avoiding images being able to be downloaded
- Easy Batch uploading of Images – saves time, meaning more productivity
- One Time Purchase – the Online Store runs on your webhosting so is just a one time purchase. No continuing expenses after your initial outlay, no ongoing monthly fees or commissions.
- Different Pricing Packages – customise price groups for your Wedding clients and another price group for your portraiture clients. Price groups are easily applied to galleries as you create them and there are no limits to how many price groups you can create.
Visual Appearance
The ‘look and feel’ of the Online Store will be customized to blend with you main site. The header (containing your logo, slogan and/or contact details), Navigation menu (top of page only) and footer (Copyright, text links etc) will be incorporated into the Online Store so clients can confidently shop on your site knowing they are not going to a third-party shopping cart.
Security of your Images
As a working professional photographer, placing your images online could lose you income and you may as well throw money down the drain, so security of your images is of the utmost importance and the Online Store does many things to help protect your images.
On uploading, images are re-generated before it is displayed to the browser. During this process it will place a watermark file (standard image or customized logo can be used) on the image before displaying through the browser. Also, the image scripting is set not to cache1 the images.
(1 cache ~ An area of computer memory devoted to storing data for the high-speed retrieval of frequently used or requested data).
Thumbnails also can be watermarked if you wish. Both the thumbnails and viewed images use encrypting and extra file names to hide the image path in the source codes, so even if someone was to view source, they wouldn’t see file paths.
With the Online Store, you have complete control over the level of security at a gallery level as to whether it is made ‘public’ or ‘private’. The system is set to private as the default setting or can be manually changed for each gallery. Private galleries require an access code which can easily be emailed to your clients through the Administration area.
Uploading Images
There are two ways to upload images to the Online Store galleries:
- Batch upload hundreds of images at a time through FTP – how brilliant and easy is that!
- An upload form in the Administration area allows you to upload 6 images at a time.
Either way you upload, the Online Store will create a display image, zoom image (optional), thumbnails and add a caption. You also have an option to crop thumbnails for a uniformed gallery or not.
Galleries
- No Limits on how many galleries or images you can add (you are only limited by the space on your webhosting or server).
- Sub-Galleries – create multiple gallery levels (ie. for a Wedding you could sort images by Getting Ready, Ceremony, Location Shoot, Reception etc).
- Set gallery expiration date – creates an urgency to purchase now.
- Adjust the appearance of the thumbnails by number of rows and columns.
- Create categories for your galleries to sort Wedding galleries from Portrait galleries. These categories can be used for your reference only in the Administration area or they can be made available on the customer side.
- Change the preview image for the gallery
- Change the display order of images in the gallery
Slideshow and Splash Pages Gallery (optional)
The Online Store slideshow allows your customers to view images as a slideshow presentation. You can upload music to play with the slideshow, set the speed and more options. This is a nice way to present images to your customers. The advantage – you can save time during studio consultations and have clients sit in their own home and purchase from your Online Store.
This slideshow can also be used as a splash page for the galleries. When the viewer first goes to the gallery, they will see a slideshow of images you have selected from the gallery and when it is done, it will fade out and direct them to the gallery.
Black & White / Colour / Toning Previews (optional)
You can offer black & white / colour / toning (ie. create sepia toning or blue tints etc) viewing options as well. When the customer selects the black & white from the menu, the Online Store will automatically convert the image to black & white – saving you time in colour conversions.
Administration area
- Manage your customer details, orders and payments
- Create customer categories
- Sort orders by customer & view total sales per customer
- View customers favorites & shopping cart
- Invoice customer
- Setup payment options
- Apply credits to customer accounts
- Monitor last time customer was active
- Export customer information to text or CSV file
- Create & manage your galleries and images
- Set pricing groups
- Apply price groups to customers
- Manage customer email notifications and default emails
- Offer different shipping options
- Searching facility
- Visitor Statistics
- Sales Reports
- Calendar – manage consultations and photoshoots, but this is also a great feature to keep track of relevant dates such as birthdays and anniversaries for your customers, to use for target marketing
Pricing Groups
Set pricing for:
- Single and multiple prints
- Traditional packages – you enter what sizes and how many prints are included. The customer adds the package to their cart and goes to the gallery to select the images
- Custom packages are designed for products such as – select images for a; CD, DVD, coffee table book, poster, collage, etc
- Gallery items – allows you to offer on a ‘per gallery basis’– ie. all images in the gallery on CD/DVD, 4x6 prints of all images in the gallery, DVD slideshow with background music of all images in the gallery etc.
- Coupons/Discounts – can be given to customers as a dollar amount discount or a percentage discount as an incentive to purchase a minimum order value, quantity or by an expiry date.
- Quantity discounts for multiple prints
- Early Bird Discounts - will offer a discount to the customer if they order within X amount of days – ie. order within 30 days and get a 10% discount off your order. This is a system option, but can be turned ‘on’ and ‘off’ on a per gallery basis.
- Shipping
Customer Orders
When a customer ‘Checks Out’ an order is generated. These orders are kept in your Administration area where you can manage them. The Online Store allows you to create a number of payment options. Payments options can include being able to accept cheques, money orders and cash, as well as online payments by credit cards through PayPal, a standard form will collect credit card details and send to you for you where you can process it manually.
The order will show you everything they have ordered and the images will display the thumbnail, image name and the gallery it was ordered from along with quantity, price and any options. There is also a printable version of the order available where it can be printed and you can order the prints from your preferred photographic lab. Orders are sorted by New and Closed by default, but you can create your own order statuses such as processing, waiting on lab, etc.
Payment Options
There are several payment options that can be integrated with the Online Store.
Pay by Mail - this simply tells your customer that they can pay by mail and gives them your mailing address to send you a cheque or money order.
PayPal Business Standard - the most popular and convenient method to collect payments from your customers. All that is needed is a PayPal business account which is free to setup. PayPal enables you to accept credit cards (Visa and MasterCard). Unlike the bank’s merchant accounts, only pay fees when customers use the service (no ongoing monthly bank fees when the service is not used).
Standard Form to Collection Information - this standard form method basically collects the payment information and sends it to you where you can process it manually. A SSL2 Certificate is required however our pricing packages include a SSL Certificate.
(2 Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate Authority enables secure e-commerce transactions and communication of information for websites, intranets and extranets providing your online customers the security of data encryption particularly important when sensitive information is being entered and transferred electronically such as personal and credit card information.)
Shipping Options
You can offer customers to either pick up their order or have it shipped with the ability to turn either one of these off.
Shipping calculations can be charged one of two ways – they can either work on a base rate plus a dollar amount over the base rate or price levels ie. between $0.01 - $49.99 charge $5.00, $50 - $150 charge $8.00, and so on. You enter in your own variables and shipping charges.
Also you can add additional shipping charges on a per item basis. So if you want to charge more shipping if someone purchases a 16X20 print, you can add that additional shipping charge in the sizes and prices when setting the price for that item. Additionally you can also charge more shipping if you are dispatching to different States and Countries.
Email Notifications and Default Emails
When a customer registers, an order is placed, payment received, and other activities happen in your Online Store, emails are generated and sent to customers to streamline your administration process allowing you to be doing what you love, photographing. When a customer places an order, you will get an email notifying you.
One of the best default emails is the one that goes to the customer which they can forward onto family and friends inviting them to view the gallery, increasing the opportunity for more sales.
All default emails can be edited and customised to the wording you prefer in the Administration area.
Gift Registry
The Gift registry allows your customers to create their own bridal or baby registry and have family and friends visit your website and contribute money to the customer’s account. The customer will then be able to use the credit amount towards photography services or products (prints, albums, coffee table books, CD/DVDs etc.).
Encouraging your clients to use the Gift Registry service is a great way to get visitors to your site.
Sales reports
The sales report tool allows you to run reports on your orders and will break it down by total sales, tax, shipping and discounts. Reports can be run by any timeframe you need (daily, weekly, monthly or select custom dates).
Webhosting
Online Store is browser based and runs on your webhosting meaning nothing is actually installed on your computer so it is compatible with both PC and MAC. Because its installed on your webhosting – it means that if you have a computer crash, your Online Store will not be affected, therefore business and revenue continues.
The Online Store will work on the majority of hosting company’s servers. Contact us and we can check the compatibility of your webhosting. If your webhosting is not compatible, we can provide webhosting at very competitive pricing to ensure the hosting has the requirements to run the Online Store.
Please browse our portfolio and feel free to contact us for more information or to discuss what we can offer your business. |
