Turn pain into profit with Direct Fulfillment order processing
My time is worth big dollars. And so is yours.
It’s late at night and I’ve just finished collating a pile of email and fax (yes some people still use fax) customer reprint orders. There’s also a couple of handwritten orders too – handwritten by me as customers ring to order prints usually while I’m shooting other jobs.
To an amateur or non-professional, the process of collating orders sounds easy; find the files, burn them to DVD, make a list of who wants what and at which size. Go to the printer. Run the credit cards. Count the money.
If only it were that easy.
Fulfilling orders can take me hours, sometimes even days. Truth is many photographers actually reduce their income by staying away from jobs like event, sport and school photography because such a massive time commitment to order fulfillment is required after the shoot.
And no matter how many times customers are reminded of the cut-off date for ordering there will always be some that arrive late. Typically when I’ve just got back from the printer. Then the the phone calls start, “My reprints haven’t arrived yet? Where are they? Do you think they’ve been lost in the post?”
“No, I think you should have a little patience! You only ordered two days ago.” Of course I only say that in my head.
Customer orders can be an absolute minefield. But I’ve found the way around the mines; Direct Ordering.
If you’re an event, sport or school photographer you may cry tears of joy after reading on. Imagine no more collating orders, running to the printer, customer credit card issues and òwhere are my photos’ phone calls.
Direct Ordering is just one of the many time saving and profit enhancing services offered by Photomerchant.net. It works like this;
- Upload your images to your Photomerchant.net gallery
- Enable the òshop front’ system with a single click
- Set your prices or margins to whatever you want
- Let your customers know about your shop front.
My customers then do their ordering online and at a time that’s convenient for them. They can select quantity and different sizes all on the one order and pay by whatever means they want. The best thing, or one of the best things, is that their order goes into the print queue when they click submit. Customers can get their prints in just a few days directly from the printer with receipts showing my business name. It’s just like I did all the work myself, but I didn’t.
Photomerchant.net printers are world class and use best practices in their operations. The quality of the work is superior to that I was previously supplying and customers are happier and they aren’t paying any more than they used to.
From a profit point of view, research shows that when people order online they order substantially more and that makes perfect sense because online ordering is so easy. Think of it like this, which would you rather do; write down a bunch of file names or numbers on a form, then add the quantity and different sizes, calculate the price for each photo, add them altogether, then add postage, credit card details and send the order off, or click and submit?
Ordering online is simply and easy for customers so they are far more likely to purchase more photos and in larger sizes. Plus, even with my older customers who prefer the paper method of ordering, I simply process their order through my shop front. They get their prints faster and I’ve done a fraction of the work I used to. That means I’ve got more time to work on marketing my business or spend time with my family – both things that wee missing from my work/life balance before using Direct Fulfillment.
But the very best way to experience the massive time and cost savings that Direct Fulfillmentcan deliver you is to sign up now for a free trial. Start right now and your next photography project might be the first one that delivers you greater profits.
