20 March, 2017

Time for a Makeover…

So, we decided to give The Image Connection a makeover!!! The new design and layout brings a fresh new feel to the site along with some new tweaks and refinements along the way.

Hope you like it…

Mobile Friendly…

Mobile phones and tablets have quickly become the devices of choice for consumer browsing and shopping…and it will only continue to grow more and more in the near future.

Making sure our site has all the features you need in order to maximize your sales potential is our number one goal.

We are happy to announce that your customers can now view and order from a phone or tablet!

Staying ahead of the curve is not easy but that's our commitment to you with The Image Connection. Stay tuned for more new, exciting features.

Did You Know…

We have a service called Studio Control. When an order is placed by the consumer, Studio Control orders go directly to the studio…not to Century Color. This service is perfect for photographers who like to do final cropping, retouching, color corrections, etc. before the images get printed. The commission for Studio Control is only 6% as opposed to the 12% commission for Full Service.

02 March, 2017

Say Goodbye to PayPal…

After 5 years of using PayPal as the gateway for payments on THE IMAGE CONNECTION it was time for a change. While PayPal is one of the largest and most recognized payment processing companies, it had many issues and security checks that made processing credit cards very difficult.

It seemed that PayPal’s first goal was to try to sign up as many consumers with PayPal accounts as possible as opposed to making it easy for the consumer to pay by credit/debit card. We received several calls complaining that PayPal wanted consumers to sign up for a PayPal account in order to make a purchase. While this was not the case, the PayPal checkout form was very misleading causing this confusion.

PayPal would only let you use a credit card as a PayPal visitor 15 times or let you charge up to $4000.00 using a credit card for the life of the card. When it didn’t accept the card for one of these reasons the default error message was "We’re having technical difficulties please try again later". Great message to cause an even bigger problem…consumers would try back later only to be rejected again…

Make a Good First Impression…

You just posted a new senior gallery and you’re excited to have your clients see their images as soon as possible. So, after you have completed the upload of images and made your gallery "active", The Image Connection will automatically send out an email to the student and parents letting them know their images are available. Within minutes of posting, your clients can be looking at and sharing their images with family and friends. And, to tease them a little, the first image in their gallery is there for them to see…

Track your views…

In your Image Connection reports section is a report called "Gallery List". This report shows all your active galleries. One of the key reporting features shows how many times a gallery has been viewed, how many orders have been placed from this gallery and the total dollars of the sales from the gallery. Great information for sure!

Some galleries can be viewed 50 times with no sales…what are they waiting for? It can be very frustrating seeing how many times a gallery has been viewed but hasn’t generated any sales. But that’s a discussion for another day.

We’ve added a key filter to this report that will allow you to display only galleries with "no views". It’s safe to say galleries with "no views" will generate no sales…very profound!

If you have sent out information letting your customers know that their images have been posted and after 2 weeks there have been no views…it certainly indicates there may be a problem. Maybe they never received the information you sent out or it was directed to the wrong person in the family. Whatever the reason…by monitoring this report you can potentially nip a problem in the bud. Try an alternative way of sending out the information to this family…maybe a postcard or a telephone call. Remember "no views" equals "no sales"…

Did You Know…

you can personalize the bottom of your clients invoice? That’s right…in your IC Admin there is a section where you can add your own studio message. Maybe you want to say Thank you or let them know when they can expect delivery of their order or maybe you want to offer them a family portrait session. The choice is all yours!