Enhance Your Storefront
3 Tips for Enhancing your storefront before the holiday rush
If you’re interested in generating additional income during the holidays (and honestly, who isn’t?), ensure your storefront is primed and ready for the holiday rush. Keep reading for three ways to help you and your clients get the most out of your custom storefront!
1. Offer a Variety of Products
Did you know you can offer more product options than standard paper prints and digital downloads? In fact, you can offer a LOT more! You are in complete control of your storefront. If you aren’t already, consider offering an assortment of the following product types:
Lab Products - We’ve partnered with several of the most renowned photo labs so that you can offer your clients a curated selection of premium products. Thanks to our partnerships, you don’t have to have an account with each of the individual labs to offer their products, you can simply select which products to import and we’ll take it from there! If you’re curious about which labs are most popular by order volume, we covered that in Part 3 of our 2023 in Review Blog Series!
Custom Products - With an Instaproofs Storefront, you can also offer custom product options with your specific clients in mind. For example, you can create custom product bundles and provide unique products by the craftsmen of your choice.
Digital Products - Clients love the gift of immediacy, which makes digital downloads a go-to option. In addition to offering full-gallery downloads, you can also sell individual image downloads or custom “packs” of images, allowing clients to select a certain number of images to download. These options make great alternatives to full-gallery downloads, so consider offering multiple digital products to give your clients variety.
“Other” Products - Think outside the box by offering your clients product options other than the photos themselves. Options such as gift certificates and press-printed greeting cards are particularly popular during the holiday season. If you do add these product options to your storefront, make sure you feature them in upcoming marketing communication so your clients know they’re available.
Bonus Tip: When you’re selecting products to include on your storefront, consider holiday shipping deadlines (don’t worry, we’ve compiled all of them for you here). Note: We will continue to update that page as we receive additional information from our lab partners!
2. Optimize Your Pricing
Now’s the time to consider your pricing and make sure it’s optimized in time for holiday shoppers. Here are a few ways you can do this:
Leverage Unlimited Pricing Sheets - Pricing sheets are used to define the pricing for your prints, single-image downloads, category downloads, and single-image products & packages. Creating multiple pricing sheets allows you to charge different amounts for different galleries and/or images.
Determine Pricing for Lab Products - With an Instaproofs Storefront, you set the price for lab products. You can choose a specific price yourself, or apply a certain percentage mark-up to each product automatically.
Review Your Shipping Rates - In a previous blog post, we reviewed the average shipping rates charged by labs and by photographers in 2023. We found that photographers generally charge less than the lab shipping rates, but make up the price difference by charging more for the products themselves. This can be a great business tactic to address the hesitation consumers feel when they see high shipping costs. You can also reference our 2023: Year in Review blog article to compare your shipping rates with those of your peers.
Account for Sales Tax - If you’re not already doing it, ensure that you’re collecting the proper amount of sales tax. You can utilize the Sales Tax tab of your account to define the correct sales tax rate for a specific geographic region.
3. Keep Sales & Coupons Current
Sales and coupon codes can be powerful tools for encouraging clients to revisit their galleries and make additional purchases. To make the most of these tactics, we recommend:
Take Inventory - Start by reviewing which sales and coupon codes are currently active and which have expired. This helps ensure your offerings are up-to-date and relevant. Use the dashboard to quickly check and filter by "all," "current," or "expired" statuses. Decide if each active sale or coupon aligns with your goals and serves your clients effectively.
Optimize Settings - Once you’ve inventoried your current promotions, take a few minutes to fine-tune their settings. For instance, are the associated sale notification emails up to date, and do you have “discount stacking” disabled on your coupons? You may also need to adjust the expiration dates associated with your sales & coupons to accommodate the holiday season and incentivize your clients.
Create New Promotions - Finally, consider creating fresh sales and coupons to drive additional orders. Running timely promotions, particularly around holiday shipping deadlines, can encourage last-minute shoppers to make purchases. Remember—more promotions can lead to more orders! You can run new sales right up until the holiday shipping deadlines!
Follow these three tips and your storefront will be ready for the holiday season and beyond! Your clients will be thrilled and we think you will be too. We personally think there’s no better way to spend the holidays than generating “pajama profits” from your photography business!
Thank you for choosing us as your photography platform!
