Dear Zenfolio, I love you...but I may have to leave you soon. :(

My brides and other clients cannot add to a collection without being sent over to the zenfolio 'sign up here for a FREE account' page. 

This is a problem for me because:

A) It's unprofessional and confusing.  I signed up for a Premium account so that Zenfolio could be my storefront. It is confusing for clients to be redirected to another portal.  

B) I fear that my client will sign up for an account and then feel cheated that I am charging 3.50 for a photo when they see that the base cost is .29 cents ( nevermind the fact that I spent 20+ hours in Lightroom color-adusting their 1000 wedding images and need to recoup the time in the mark-up on the photo. I don't want to have to explain that each time.)

C.) It feels like my clients are being poached by Zenfolio.  This is not a good feeling.  I would like to be able to trust that my customers experience will be with me from beginning to end.  No new 'accounts' should need to be set up. I wish that Zenfolio would limit its advertising to photographers in trade venues...NOT to my clients! 

Please fix this.  This is the ONE thing that will be sending me running to the arms of Pictage...! I don't want to leave Zenfolio but as a working photographer this is a crucial point for me.  Thanks for your attention to this!  I love your service in all other ways! 

Best, AJ

w w w . a j c - p h o t o g r a p h y . c o m

 can you explain exactly what you mean when you say "brides and other clients cannot add to a collection..."  what are you trying to have them do?  that sounds like it may be part of the problem here...  if I can get some more information, maybe I can help you out here.

How can we offer the collections functionality without having some kind of an account on our system? Suggestions?

One possible workaround for you is to disallow adding to collection in the access control. This way your visitors will not even know that collections are available. 

In our experience, customers who open free account are not interested in digging for base prices, or competing with photographers. These free account are either used to access galleries protected with "member list only" or to create collections. In addition, we know that customers with free accounts almost never upgrade to paid accounts, and we are not advertising to them.

Hello Zenfolio, 

I do want my clients to be able to create collections.  I just don't want them sent to a splash page that completely takes them out of my gallery and into a full spread ad for zenfoio the hosting site.  "SIGN up for a Free account today! or sign up for a vendor account ofr 100.00 and set prices, coupons, etc!"  Ugh. its just looks tacky, like the user has all of a sudden stumbled into the back end.  

It's such a shame because I love much about zenfolio, but this is such a big problem.  Go ahead and redirect for your Free and $40.00 customers, but for the premium subscribers...PLEASE DO NOT REDIRECT TO YOUR AD. 

Thanks. :)

AJ

a big fan (except for this)

Vitas [Zenfolio]:

How can we offer the collections functionality without having some kind of an account on our system? Suggestions?

 

I understand the need for an account to hold collections.  My suggestion would be to offer this as a seamlessly branded signup page; make it look like the visitor is signing up for an account on the photographer's site. NOT for a Zenfolio account.  Further, that account should not EVER have access to the knowledge of base prices.  When you buy something from a retailer (be it online, bricks-and-mortar, or whatever), as a customer you just aren't shown what the retailer's markup is.  It's just not done.  The fact that Zenfolio allows this at all is very close to unacceptable.

This (along with the need for a seamlessly branded shopping cart and payment system) is one of those things where I really wish that Zenfolio realized better that people who sign up for premium accounts and then hook those accounts up to custom domains are really NOT looking for visible Zenfolio affiliation; they're looking for Zenfolio to host a website for them.  Everything about that website should be consistent and custom-branded with the customer's look and feel NOT Zenfolio's look-and-feel.

Frankly, Zenfolio should never be a visible entity during any interaction between the photographer's client and the photographer's website.

That's what your customers who are professional photographers are really looking for.  It's a crucial difference in view, and frankly, I just don't think Zenfolio really gets it.

Aaron Brown:

I understand the need for an account to hold collections.  My suggestion would be to offer this as a seamlessly branded signup page; make it look like the visitor is signing up for an account on the photographer's site. NOT for a Zenfolio account.  Further, that account should not EVER have access to the knowledge of base prices.  When you buy something from a retailer (be it online, bricks-and-mortar, or whatever), as a customer you just aren't shown what the retailer's markup is.  It's just not done.  The fact that Zenfolio allows this at all is very close to unacceptable.

This (along with the need for a seamlessly branded shopping cart and payment system) is one of those things where I really wish that Zenfolio realized better that people who sign up for premium accounts and then hook those accounts up to custom domains are really NOT looking for visible Zenfolio affiliation; they're looking for Zenfolio to host a website for them.  Everything about that website should be consistent and custom-branded with the customer's look and feel NOT Zenfolio's look-and-feel.

Frankly, Zenfolio should never be a visible entity during any interaction between the photographer's client and the photographer's website.

 

I totally agree.  I must have missed this in the TOS when I signed up.  I figured I paid my $100 and Zenfolio gets a percentage of my sales that should be enough.  I do not like my clients being asked to check out Zenfolio after my checkout.

"In our experience, customers who open free account are not interested in digging for base prices, or competing with photographers. These free account are either used to access galleries protected with "member list only" or to create collections. In addition, we know that customers with free accounts almost never upgrade to paid accounts, and we are not advertising to them."

 Well, that being the case, I think the suggestions above are good ones.  If the folks who use collections don't upgrade to paid accounts, then why bother offering that as an option? 

 I turned the collections option off on all my galleries.  Kind of a shame, as it would make ordering easier.  On the other hand, I really don't want to tip my hand regarding my costs/profits, either.  It would be really nice if this suggestion was taken into account.  Aaron is absolutely right.

 I would say to op to turn off collections first. Its been my experience cheap people are just as content with a watermarked slideshow if its free. If they arent addign to collections and coming back showing the slideshow time and again they might by more. I still think that a premium account should have NO link/affiliation to zenfolio whatsoever, and I would be willing to pay an additional fee for this, although not too much more. I have had to explain markup to more than one customer who did go digging. They never understand..

ok I haven't run into the situation, but I would think most reasonable people understand the markup costs in pictures.  I mean there are not too many people in the world out there that havent gone and had their own pictures turned into prints somewhere.  It doesn't seem to me that it should be that big of a surprise to customers.  Unlike when you go to best buy and purchase a usb or similar cable for $30.00, you may not realize that best buy just bought it from a supplier for less than  $1.25...  those things are surprising... but prints?  everyone knows some place to get them for $0.19 each so they shouldn't be shocked to find out that your $5.00 price for a 4x6 is marked up.  But like I say, I haven't run into this situation before, and maybe people don't really think about it, which is really possible.

That said, I can see that it would be nice to be able to have a free account just be free and no frills other than making collections to order easier.  And a special sign-up page that didn't show all the other options for sign-up so the customer would just sign-up, make their collections, order and be done with it.    But I also understand ZF's need to promote itself to gain a greater user base.  So I guess I said I understand everything, but really didn't take a side here. hmmmmmmm....  I guess I won't either because whatever happens with it, I'm ok cuz some changes would be nice, but if not, I'm ok with it as it is.  (alot of talk for nuthin' eh? hehehe)

It is interesting for me to learn that some photo buyers care enough to dig for information. This makes me think that it would be next to impossible to hide everything. Mpix site has all the prices, and it very easy to find Zenfolio - Mpix partnership information. Should we really design the service around customers who are not willing to put a value on artistic aspect of photographer's work?  

mpix offers an option for drop shipping without their logo on the box or invoice and without the original base price on the invoice.  and zenfolio offers this option to us in turn...  why not go that one step further and get rid of all of zenfolios branding for the premium account?  if mpix can do it without fear of losing a possible future customer then so can zen.  if the potential customer can't figure out a connection between my site, zenfolio and mpix then they shouldn't be able to figure out the base prices.

in april i shot a wedding.  the bride (and her mother) ended up so confused by the zenfolio sign-ups and shopping cart dialogue on the zf page that i ended up having to give her printed proofs instead of getting her to order online.

I also agree. On many other hosts there is a "light box" facility which works exactly the same way as the collections on Zenfolio but you sign up on the photographers site. It is all seemless and there is no mention of the host at all.

 I have just run into this problem with my first wedding clients since using Zenfolio - my clients had to create a Zenfolio account then a collection which is fine but then I have to manually go and get their username to find the collection? Is there a better way?

 Maybe a backend option to display the collections your photos are in would be useful?

 Alex

This is obviously a problem, Zenfoilio,  with your Premium account customers. Some reassurance that we are being heard and the situatation is being addressed would go a long way. This problem combined with the inability to set a variety of prices for the same image is enough to make me reconsider my allegiance to Zenfoilio. MPIX is a great lab and I really like the concept of this hosting service but you have got to wake up and HEAR what your customers are demanding. We do not want our customers that we draw to our site directed to your free account and MPIX pricing. It does not matter whether they have to dig to find it or not. Some customers will dig, some won't. Still we don't need anything to encourage or make it any easier for them to do so.

Amy

 Just for fun I thought I would add that mpix base prices are even cheaper that zenfolios. Whose doing is that??

Vitas [Zenfolio]:

It is interesting for me to learn that some photo buyers care enough to dig for information. This makes me think that it would be next to impossible to hide everything. Mpix site has all the prices, and it very easy to find Zenfolio - Mpix partnership information. Should we really design the service around customers who are not willing to put a value on artistic aspect of photographer's work?  

 I agree with you, but you're still not dealing with the lack of a seamless experience (in multiple aspects of the site, like the cart, as i've commented on in other posts). That seamless experience is what's really important here, and that's what he feels is broken.