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As many of you know, we already have several major updates "in the loop", and the pace of releases will speed up this spring. This post however, is dedicated to the new shopping cart / e-commerce system we are planning, so please keep comments related. We want your feedback!

As many of you may know, the integration of "e-commerce" into Imagevue is not an easy task, because it basically includes so many different steps that need to work hand in hand. Let me give a quick overview:

#1 The purchase interface in Imagevue, where the visitor actually gets to click to purchase an item or add it to cart. This may also need to include a cascade of selection options depending on attributes of the product/photo for sale.

#2 The CART itself, with an overview of the products the visitor has added to his/her cart, including all item attributes.

#3 The CHECKOUT experience, and the actual payment processing. This is a third party payment processor that needs to handle credit cards and any other payment options. This process needs all data gathered from the visitors item selections, and it will also need to forward the data to the next step -

#4 Last step, is providing the product to the customer. This is the step where, based on a transaction/purchase, the gallery owner must be able to provide the product(usually a photo) to the person who purchases it.

Since Imagevue is not capable of handling all this by itself, and also because Imagevue alone can never really be able to provide the most comprehensive features for selling pictures, we have been looking at an option:
Fotomoto.com

Essentially, Fotomoto is an e-commerce system for pictures/photography that takes care of the entire purchase process and ads some more features. If we integrate this with Imagevue, selecting items for purchase would be done through the imagevue interface, while the rest of the process would go through Fotomoto. In a nutshell, it would work something like this:

1. Visitor selects an item in imagevue and clicks "add to cart"
2. A POPUP window will appears OVER the imagevue gallery, providing the visitor with a range of options for the purchase. Options may include download-size, print-size options etc (See an example of the popup here: www.fotomoto.com/api/samples/flash/ - scroll to bottom and click "buy print"). The user may then go back to gallery for more browsing, or proceed to checkout->
3. Fotomoto handles the entire checkout experience for the visitor, including credit card purchase of course.
4. After purchase confirmation, the gallery-owner will be requested to UPLOAD a large resolution version of the purchased product to their Fotomoto account, which Fotomoto will then provide to the customer in terms of a digital download, or an actual print.

Some more important features:

# They charge 15% commission, which includes credit card processing fees and support to customers.
# Fotomoto can provide a standard "digital download" of a high-res photo to your customer, but they also provide PRINT service. Prints are of course sent to the customers address. In addition, they also provide photo books, calenders, t-shirts and much more. Basically a one-stop service for selling your pictures ... Something we dont have the capacity to provide through imagevue of course.
# A possible disadvantage with this service, is that it does not cater to Imagevue customers who are trying to sell anything else than pictures/photos. For example, if you are using Imagevue for a Teddy-bear shop, you can not use this service to sell your teddy bears. You could only use it to sell pictures(digital+print) of the teddy bears. Feedback?

For those of you are interested in e-commerce / shopping cart with imagevue, please give us your feedback on possible integration with the Fotomoto service! You can read more about Fotomoto through their Tour page here:
http://www.fotomoto.com/home/tour

Any comments or questions?
What do you think about integrating imagevue with Fotomoto to handle e-commerce?
Any features you will miss?
Anything you dont like?
Anthing you dont understand?
Do you know of any other similar services?
Please reply!

Ahhhhhhh.... I SO wanted to flog a few Teddies....

Sounds interesting
Looking forward to seeing a demo

Perhaps I made myself misunderstood ... I am actually looking for feedback BEFORE we proceed with the idea. Do you like the idea? Will it work for you? Do you approve of using Fotomoto?

I will edit the post so people understand this is more a QUESTION. If we receive positive feedback, and this covers our users requirements, we ma very well go for this solution!

I know that 15% may be just a bit too much for some people but for the security at least I think it's worth it. It's a massive undertaking setting up something like this yourself. I'm personally not selling photos but If I was I would be quite happy with the system proposed here. Let's face it, it's better than an ugly paypal button

Sounds like a great idea. 15% is not much to pay considering the service you can offer your buyers. It will also broaden options for many and i'm sure you will get alot more ideas growing from this if it goes ahead.

Many other services for selling images charge a monthly user fee so this should be very popular and should bring alot more interest to imagevuex.

How long do you think it will take before its ready to go?

Can i bring up the suggestion of a desktop application here?
...here it goes anyhow. Would love to see something that would make uploading images a simple as something like this service: http://www.dropbox.com/ (a file sharing service but for this i'm only considering it for the ease with which you can upload files/images etc). Picassa has something similar but its not as flexible and you can only upload to one folder depth. Drop box allows you to upload folders within folders - which I imagine will not be too easy to replicate with imagvuex but it would make life alot easier and especially if the folders were uploaded as albums. I think http://www.photobucket.com offers something similar to this but still not as easy to use as drop box.

Actually photobucket does not have a desk top application but it has been requested and i figure why wouldn't they do it? For now you can upload large numbers of files but they have to be within one folder to do them all at the same time (which can be a pain as far as orgnanizing images goes).


Looking forward to seeing something like this very soon.

Have you considered a self fulfillment option?

Photoshelter is a good example. They work with multiple print partners in a similar way to what you propose for Fotomoto.com, but photographers also have the option of pricing images for self fulfillment with payment via premium paypal account.

The reason for this is many fine art photographers prefer to make their own prints. While Fotomoto looks like a great option they appear to be limited in terms of papers (no byartas or high textured mates that I can see ????), and it gives photographers no real control over quality.

I'm not saying I wouldn't use Fotomoto. It looks very interesting and if the quality is great I could definite be enticed.

But I wonder if it would be difficult to include a mechanism for us to sell images we make ourselves.

Keep in mind, around 5% will always go to credit card processing. Besides, I don't think you will find any solution/partner that provides integrated services any cheaper. Strictly speaking, if we don't use any 3rd party integration with imagevue, we can only 1. Make the cart in Imagevue and 2. Checkout to Paypal(5%). Then the part where owner sends the picture to customer, has to be handled manually of course. Where is the reassurance to customer? Where is information about what size he gets etc? Obviously there are no options for print (Imagevue cant handle that of course, and we cant create a shopping interface for those owners who want to print themselves either ... Too many unknown parameters).

I don't think visitors will want to buy a picture unless it seems to be some service that indicates it will handle the entire process. I certainly wouldn't just click to buy a picture in Paypal with no more details on the end ...

If you gonna provide prints or sell pictures in any other fashion, you will be looking towards 15% or more commission anyway I believe. Besides, pictures for download/print are non-tangible from the owner perspective, so the 85% left to the owner doesn't need to cover any other cost.


I think we can't give an exact date for now, but lets say later this spring for now if we do proceed. Desktop application? Sure, this is very interesting, but please lets keep it in a separate topic!


Just for the record, the service you mention has some nice features, but they are all hosted on their servers, and they charge 10-30% commission and require up to 549$ per year. Because everything is hosted on their server, they can make it like this. How do you expect Imagevue to handle the part of providing the product as a digital download? I mean, what you are asking is to make a similar service like photoshelter, which probably has spent years to develop? E-commece for photos is what they do, and developing their gallery comes second. I can tell you bluntly this is an impossible task for Imagevue.


I am not too familiar with prints, but I was of the impression most of you wanted to provide pictures primarily for download? After seeing the complexity of options when selling photos, I am more convinced than ever that Imagevue can't replicate this without using some partner.

Here is another example btw:
http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/
Try click the "download" button at bottom, and you will see there is room for customization. Also, try to add multiple photos/products to test out the actual CART system.

Thanks for feedback, and still hoping for more!

Hello all,

We just wanted to let you know about a few thing:

- On top of everything mentioned here, we do the customer support for all prints and products used by Fotomoto.
- Self Fulfillment is one of the features we have on our to-do list (with high priority). However, we spent more then 6 months checking different print partner (we don't do the print ourselves), and I want to invite you to test our print (and package) quality. We use different partners for different products.
- We are adding several new products, including different paper types, canvas prints, etc.
- Using Fotomoto's control panel, you have full control over which photos are for sale, and the available sizes for the photos.

By the way,

Here is one of users' post about our print and shipping quality:

http://www.richard-vanek.eu/journal/1459/

Understand.

I wasn't considering digital downloads (no interest in offering them), and have no idea re: the complexity of implementing a simple paypal checkout along side a 3rd party system.

I only thought it was an idea worth mentioning as (in my experience) many people will pay more for traditional wet prints or custom prints direct from the photographer. Of coarse, I'm talking gallery sales & maybe that wouldn't translate online.

Thanks for the thorough answer. Looking forward to see how this plays out.

We appreciate your feedback - A simple paypal checkout system is simple, but the other parts are not. Not if you want a seemless, trustworthy process for the buyer at least. What "3rd" party are suggesting here? At best, that would include the owner having to handle 3 separate services: imagevue + payment processor + print service, and this would require managing all "items" through different control panel interfaces. Not to speak of the visitor having to flutter between different websites.

I see your point that maybe a niche of photographers (for example wedding photographers) already have a source of printing, and may want to use their own services. Let us think a bit about this one ...

hi,

i really would like such a feature of an e-commerce system. though i am not a technical experienced user i donn ´t know how difficult it would be to offer the possibility to implement the fotoservice of your own choice. lets say i rather would like to use a different fotoservice then i just would have to add the "details" in the adminarea and it would work with every service (or lets say a couple of different ones).
but i guess every service is different so it would be difficult to implement such an "open" standard?

thanks,

marco

By third party I meant Fotomoto, or which ever service you might choose to implement.

Personally, my biggest concern about Fotomoto (assuming the quality is good) would be the lack of choice in papers. Many photographers are very picky about print media. This is one reason I always create my own, or use a local vendor I know and trust (which will also ship for if needed).

Having said that, I understand your need to work within what resources allow and to develop a consensus amongst IV users. I imagine Fotomoto might be an excellent option.

& Maybe they will offer more options as time passes.

I'm sure it would be an especially great thing for those selling high volume, events, or downloads (as you mentioned).

It looks as they may ship worldwide. A definite plus.

Googled user reviews and don't see any bad press re: IQ.

Found this: http://support.fotomoto.com/fotomoto/to ... processing

Fotomoto uses Bay Photo for printing. They have a good rep. They may add more vendors with more options in time.