We are often asked how to further optimize the sale of photos or how to optimally set up the online gallery. Unfortunately, there are no general rules with which you are guaranteed to multiply sales – ultimately, it always depends on the individual situation and the client.
Here are some tips and experiences from long-time clients.
1. Limit duration of customer access
You know that … the longer a photo shoot or event has been, the smaller the amount of ordered pictures. Here you can easily intervene with your online gallery. Through an automatic expiration date your customer gallery has a time limit. If you have stored the email address of the clients, an additional email will be sent to the clients 2 days before the gallery expires as a reminder. From experience, a period between 2 and 3 weeks is well suited.
2. Turn guests into clients
Many photo studios already use the option of giving access to the online gallery to several people at weddings and other events. For example, if you have photographed a wedding, you can create the client before the shoot and give the bride and groom 20 to 30 business cards with the individual access. They can then distribute the accesses among their guests. You benefit because you reach new clients. The guests benefit because they don’t have to wait until the bride and groom return from their honeymoon to show the pictures. The guests can easily select and order the pictures themselves. The bride and groom benefit because they don’t have to worry about the guests’ pictures.
3. Voucher actions
With vouchers you can achieve a great benefit with minimal effort. For example, if you have photographed an event, you can create a voucher for 5 percent, which is valid for one week. Optionally also with a minimum order value of 20 EUR. If you tell your clients about this at the event, the success is sure to be great.
4. How do your clients want to pay?
Many clients prefer online stores where they can flexibly decide how they want to pay. In addition to the advance transfer, which is often used, it can be quite interesting to allow your clients to pay via PayPal or SOFORT Überweisung, for example. Both payment methods mean that the client does not have to worry about anything now. The images are already produced.
5. Give readable passwords
Sounds too simple, doesn’t it? But a password that is called *=@I.,tghKiO can easily be entered incorrectly. We recommend using a password consisting of letters, numbers and 8 characters in length. Make sure that the letter “O” looks very much like a zero (0), and a lowercase “L” looks very much like a one (1). If in doubt, simply omit these characters.
6. Fewer images = more sales
It is of course tempting to give the client a huge selection of images and several photo formats to choose from. However, it can happen that clients are overwhelmed by this and lose the overview. You can’t say across the board whether you should post 20, 50 or 200 images for a portrait shot – but experience shows that clients are less interested in the images on the last page than on the first.
7. Set photo formats optimally
If you offer portrait images from 10 × 15 to 30 × 40 prints, you are certainly interested in the fact that clients do not exclusively prefer the small formats. You can remedy this with just one mouse click. In each price group, you can specify the preferred photo format. For example, if it is the 15 × 20 photo, your client will see this pre-selected. Just try it out.
8. Free shipping delivery
Small gifts keep the friendship. This is also the case with shipping costs. Our experience with many online stores shows that free shipping is incredibly appealing to clients. It is ultimately a hurdle taken in the ordering process, because the client no longer has to worry about shipping prices. If you wish, you can also set shipping to be free only after a certain order total.
9. A lot does not always help
Here, too, less is simply more. Portraitbox provides you with a wide range of functions. However, it does make sense to disable one or two functions if they are not understood by the client or are distracting. For example, if you have set an event as a public gallery, you can usually turn off the lightbox, otherwise all the images will be here in no time anyway.
10. Individual design
In the online gallery you have many design options. You can customize the look of the gallery to your corporate identity.
