Photographers: Get yourself in order before the holiday sales rush.
Put your SmugMug site to work this holiday season. Doing a little now can do a lot later when gift-giving time is in full swing. By taking advantage of all our design, customization, fulfillment, and even pricing, you’ll be able to transform your SmugMug print shop and site into a gift-slinging, sales machine. To make it easy, we’ve put together a little checklist to help you get ready for the best season of sales you’ve ever had.
Theme work makes the dream work.
Take a look around your settings and consider a new site and gallery theme. With fall upon us, you can change the color scheme of your site to reflect the autumn colors and fit into that #pumpkinspice vibe that runs so rampant during October and November. (We even have a theme called Pumpkin.)
Of course you don’t have to update the theme of your SmugMug site to reflect the season. Even changing your the main background photo or homepage images to season-specific images can get your visitors feeling extra festive. Think changing leaves for October, food and family in November, and the crisp, white winter photos to round out December.
Learn more about changing my theme.
It’s gonna be a banner year.
One of the most undersung and underrated content blocks available for site customization is the title block. With it, you can create easy to read banners spanning the top of your site to communicate urgent information, holiday order deadlines, coupon expirations, or just sales announcements. Each and every one of your visitors will see it big and beautiful at the top of your site so you can build a little excitement or urgency into your customers as they search for the perfect gift for friends and family.
You can find the banner content block in your customizer. Click Customize > Content and Design from the main navigation at the top of the page. From the main customizer panel, click Entire Site in the upper right, it will highlight in red. Next, scroll to the Add Content Blocks section and click Text. Drag the Title content block to the top of your page, adjust the settings, and type your message.
Put a freakin’ bow on it.
It’s gift-giving season, and if you’re moving extra prints over the holidays, what better way to add a little class and holiday spirit to orders than to provide an option for boutique packaging? Each print you sell can arrive wrapped and ready to stash under the tree or hand over to their new lucky owners. It’s the perfect extra touch for busy buyers looking to streamline their shopping experience this year.
Learn more about boutique packaging.
Get ’em clippin coupons.
Who doesn’t love a discount around the holidays? It can motivate customers to make a purchase more quickly, add another item to their order, or just give them an idea for a product they may not have thought to give this year. Luckily, SmugMug has a really robust tool for creating, tracking, and applying coupons to your products so you can pass on savings and deals to your customers. They’re perfect for bolstering sales over the busy gift-giving season, so make sure you’re ready with some coupons of your own. Need ideas for how to use them? We’ve got plenty.
Are you even selling the right stuff?
We’ve been busy the past year adding new, incredible print products to our catalog that you can sell to your customers. From phone cases to new metal prints and everything in between, make sure you have your pricelists set up with all the new products. It’s also a good time to review your pricing, make sure your margins are set correctly, and check your order history to see which print products have been popular in the past. Armed with good data from your sales history, you can develop the perfect deals and photo packages to offer your customers throughout the holiday season.
