Aperture/Website/Shopping cart ?

[Bluemist]

Hi I am currently in the process of creating a website...and I may be purchasing Aperture soon...I guess what I want to do is allow client proofing (password protected) and ordering (and preferably payment) online.

*I want to maintain control of the printing at the professional lab of MY choosing (ie. no smug mug etc etc)
*I want to have the money deposited directly into my account.

Now I guess what I am wanting to know is- has anyone done this using Iweb and Aperture and something else added for the ordering and payment part of the process.

I know in Aperture I can create webgalleries for clients (I know you can password protect in Aperture) to proof the photos and I know there's a plug in where they can "approve" shots but what about the ordering and payment aspect?

I'm trying to investigate a few options but am wondering if anyone has any ideas or have achieved what I want. No I don't want to buy a Blu Domain template etc before anyone suggests it :)

Bluemist.

[blackshadow]

Not sure what Aperture and Iweb will do but JAlbum will do what you ask with the right template and it's free!

[docfav]

I like Printroom.com myself. The RedSox, American Idol, Denver Broncos and other companies use it. There is a free version also. It allows you to make sure you have the right photo up before printing as well. It also does password protections.

I'm liking it more and more each day.

Doc

[AdrianeCale]

I use the EOS Template in combination with Jalbum. I've never heard of Aperture (well, not in the sense we're discussing here) but I found EOS a few years ago, so I never had to find something else.

EOS is $100 on time charge. You get access to the template files and the yahoo group that will help you with the customization of the template. You can have several different pricing plans, different colors for your galleries, and it's all done with CSS. There are several different payment options, I personally prefer paypal. All the orders are emailed to you, and you get to choose the lab your work is printed at.

http://eos4you.com/home/templates.html

[Gary_Evans]

Another vote for the EOS template, although I use mine with Breezebrowser.

I take money via PayPal and Nochex which I think is a UK based company, but in the templates set up you simply turn on and off the options that you want to use. Looking at mine I have turned off Linkpoint, Paymate, Mal's e-commerce, SECPay, PSIgate, eway, MerchantAnywhere and Skipjack so there should be one of these that suits your location.

Set your own products, prices etc etc.

Once purchased you will never have to pay anyone a percentage of sales or upload fees again.

[AdrianeCale]

Yeah, eos is AWESOME!! It's actually adapted for many different gallery creators, not just Jalbum or Breezebrowser. You can even use it with Photoshop CS and it's upgrades.

I purchased EOS over 2 years ago, and it paid for itself the first time someone placed an order. When I think about all the money I've generated from it and not had to pay commission to some unknown entity that was making money off my work, I praise the Google search gods for pointing me towards it! It's absolutely wonderful!

[tim]

EOS works, but it's a pain in the butt to configure, especially if you're not good with computers or configuration files. I've been using it for two years but I plan to upgrade. Photo shopping cart (http://www.picturespro.com/) is easier to use for the photographer and the customer, and has more features. It costs twice as much as EOS, but IMHO it's worth it. I'll be upgrading to it before summer.

[LowerO]

I recently set up a new site using Jalbum and the fotoplayer skin. I developed my own main pages and then call the Jalbum/Fotoplayer setup for the galleries. It's a fantastic solution with an integrated shopping cart. If you understand XML it's a doddle to configure, and there's an active online help community. Only potential drawback is that Fotoplayer's a Flash based gallery and some people will say "not everyone has Flash"! My response is that although Flash isn't installed when you first fire up your PC, it's on over 98% of PCs - that's good enough for me.

[tim]

Last night a customer came to see me, they couldn't see any photographers sites that were done in flash, I got the booking as they could see my site and loved my work. They told me they could usually see flash content too.

[Gary_Evans]

I get a lot of bookings from clients who simply cannot be bothered to wait for a flash site to do its stuff.

Flash may be on 98% of computers, but a high percentage of that 98% will book someone whos site works fast.

Personally I am not into fancy effects, I am purely interested in selling my services, and in that respect flash would be a hinderance

[LowerO]

I only use flash for the galleries - that's what Jalbum and Fotoplayer are built with - the rest of my site is good old HTML. Having looked at a number of "critique my website" threads pure Flash sites take far too long to load and don't work with search engines effectively.

[Gladiat0R]

im purchasing photo shopping cart soon. i think it's fantastic and i'm yet to see an aussie photographer with a decent cart like it. hopefully it give me some nice sales heh.

[tim]

im purchasing photo shopping cart soon. i think it's fantastic and i'm yet to see an aussie photographer with a decent cart like it. hopefully it give me some nice sales heh.

I have few tips for people who do online proofing:
- Hand out cards at the event giving the URL of your proofing system, and maybe put on the cards how long it usually takes for the photos to be online. I use a single card for all events, but you can do custom cards for each event if you want to. If you have passwords to see proofs you should probably do custom cards for each event.
- Give a discount for the first 2-3 weeks the photos are online. Setting a deadline motivates people to purchase quickly, if you don't a lot of people forget about the photos and don't bother ordering at all.
- Online payment makes it really easy for people. I use PayPal, but also accept cash, cheques, and credit cards manually. It works. Payment is always in advance.
- On your ordering site tell people the standard delivery period is 28 days, that way you can collect a bunch of orders and do them at once. Print orders take a surprising amount of time to process, order, repackage, and send out, if you do them individually you'll waste a bunch of time. People don't seem to mind this at all, i've been doing this for years.

That's all the tips I remember for now.