Smug Tip of the Week: Use Visitor View to Preview Your Site

I just set my Pro pricing but the default prices are showing in the shopping cart!

Why are my hidden galleries still showing on my homepage?

We hear both of these regularly on our help desk, but there’s a simple solution to these both: Visitor View!

The very best way is to simply use a second browser (we love Chrome and Firefox), where you aren’t logged in. But if you don’t want to do this, no problem. Just use the handy Visitor View button that we give you.

See Your Site Like a Customer

When you’re logged in as the site owner, you see tons of features that your fans won’t because you’re the master of them all. You certainly don’t want anyone seeing all your switches and dials, or to be able to make changes to your site.

So use that second browser, hit the Logout link in your header (or footer), or just hit the Visitor View button at the top of your homepage or category page:

Click it once and you can navigate around your site to make sure every hair is in place for presentation. Some things that you can expect to be not show to your guests are your unlisted (private) galleries and the upload and other buttons at the top of each page. If you have keyword tags or mapped photos that are located in unlisted or passworded galleries, your visitors won’t see the keywords or pins for those either.

Now You See it… Now You Don’t

Here’s a good example of a site with a little customization on the homepage. This is what you see when you’re logged in as the owner:

… and here’s what the same site looks like when you view it as a visitor. Notice that a lot of the buttons and links are now gone and all you see are clean, beautiful galleries:

Pros: Get a Price Check

A hot tip for the Pros: Use Visitor View to check your custom pricing. You can always hit the Buy button to bring up the shopping cart. We’ll show our default pricing when you’re logged in (with your custom pricing under each line), but doing this in Visitor View will give you the total client experience.

Finally, Power and Pro Smuggers will find the Visitor View button key to customization, too. Be sure that you’re checking it often because your owner-only features can cause things to shift around a bit.

Don’t be afraid to take control of your site and be sure of what you’re showing your adoring fans!