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.
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!