Cart Features

It’s all about the bells and whistles! Customizing your shopping cart with features that promote sales is our jam: everything from promotional highlights, pop-ups, and countdown clocks to multi-child ordering. Make your shopping cart do the work for you, encouraging customer engagement and leading to more sales. I teased in an early customer cart tour this blog post, and here it is. Welcome to the deep dive into some of our favorite features you can use to jazz up your shopping cart.

Pop-Ups

Let’s begin! As soon as customers enter their cart, they are greeted by a pop-up. This pop-up feature is easily turned off/on depending on what you want to bring attention to for the particular session. This pop-up is an effective way of getting information to your customers as they need to close the pop-up to proceed. Divert their attention to any information or promotions you currently have in place. Please scroll to view some examples of how our studios have used this feature.

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Banners

The next topic on the agenda is 3…2…1, the countdown banner! The countdown banner sits at the top of your page, with a live-moving graphic of those seconds ticking away. The customer is immediately hit with a sense of urgency. The duration of this countdown is determined when you decide the end date of the current stage that is active. Click here to learn more about stages. The countdown banner is a simple but powerful tool that reminds the customer that these photographs won’t be around forever! So they better act fast before their gallery is no longer online.

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You can also customize the countdown to reflect the gallery's expiration day.
You can also customize the countdown to reflect the gallery's expiration day.
Or, if you have no exact date in mind, you can simply add text to strike up a sense of urgency.
Or, if you have no exact date in mind, you can simply add text to strike up a sense of urgency.

Multi-Child Ordering

Multi-child ordering, or as the cool kids call it, MCO, is a brilliant feature that allows parents to add all of their children’s orders to the same invoice. Of course, to do this, all the children must exist within the same session, and the parent must know each child’s access code. This is precisely why we include the access code in the initial gallery notification email; it allows parents to shop for their children in one order. You can see how this email looks in the customer cart experience blog post.

Let me now walk you through how this handy multi-child ordering feature works:

Step One: The parent selects “add another student/player/subject.”
Step One: The parent selects “add another student/player/subject.”
Step Two: The parent is prompted to add an additional child’s access code and search.
Step Two: The parent is prompted to add an additional child’s access code and search.
Step Three: When the child’s name pops up, the parent is prompted to the new subject.
Step Three: When the child’s name pops up, the parent is prompted to the new subject.
Step Four: Voila! The parent can now easily switch between the two shopping carts of their children. Shopping for multiple subjects has never been easier.
Step Four: Voila! The parent can now easily switch between the two shopping carts of their children. Shopping for multiple subjects has never been easier.

Promotional Products

Have a promotion running and want to bring attention to your offers? Or perhaps you just want to push a  product that hasn’t been selling so well lately. Look no further. In the Fotomerchant shopping cart, you can tag different products with eye-catching phrases to bring attention to the product, e.g., most popular, best value, don’t miss out. These simple tags work a treat in attracting the attention of the customer. 

Another handy little trick we have up our sleeves is the price drop feature. Everybody loves a discount, especially when the price is automatically lowered. Place a slightly higher price next to the actual cost with a slash through the old value. This feature is super effective and leaves everyone happy, your studio has potentially increased the customer order total, and the customer feels they have saved. We love a win-win situation!

To further bring attention to a product you want pushed, why not highlight it in the menu bar? Showing a product in the menu bar means that your promotional highlight will always appear there regardless of which page the customer may be on, packages, digital products, or BYO. This gentle reminder will follow the customer through their cart experience and hopefully result in them popping it in the cart. Dream no further; highlight your promotional products in a manner that leads to profit.

Locking/Unlocking Rules

On the final stop of my cart feature tour, I would love to introduce you to our brilliant locking/unlocking in-cart feature. The screenshot below is taken from one of our studios’ shopping carts. As you can see, this studio provides a free digital download to customers when they add specific packages to their cart. The add to cart prompt is faded out and unclickable until a package is added to the cart. Once the customer adds one of the packages, they can come back and also add this product. And yes, you guessed it, the linked product will also be removed if the package is removed from the cart. So don’t worry. We got you covered. Of course, you can use this feature for any combination of products; the free download product was just an example.

Thank you for exploring some of the nifty features we have to make your shopping cart shine. We believe that it is the little things that matter. Minor shopping cart changes can significantly improve revenue and customer experience. To learn more about our shopping cart functions, click here to read a high-level walkthrough of the cart.

Customer Cart Experience

First impressions matter. When it comes to customer cart experience, we understand that less is more (unless ice cream is involved). The last thing you want is for a customer to become overwhelmed and leave the cart confused without making a purchase. Building your cart in a way that clearly communicates your products is not a one size fits all situation. Here at Fotomerchant, design your customer cart to work for your offerings. Don’t build a maze but rather a signposted road that leads all the way to the place order button. *insert cha-ching sound* 

Let me show you! Keep reading to experience a generic example of how our customer cart format can look.

Cart Experience Walkthrough

Every good story needs a hero; enter Jack Largeman

BING! Jack’s parents just received a gallery notification email. Mum and Grandma received the email, and Grandma is eternally grateful that this studio entered her email as an additional one.

The simple but effective email links Jack’s Mum straight to her cart by clicking a button. This button will contain a direct link to Jack’s cart, so Mum doesn’t have to scramble through her mailbox or handbag to find that pesky access code.

Once the button is clicked, Mum will first be shown an ID gate. This ID gate asks for the user name, email, and whether the customer wants to opt-in to additional marketing. Gathering the user email and name is essential as this information allows us to reference Mum’s name in future marketing. If she passes this link to anyone else in the family, we will also have their email address through the data collected at this ID gate. The opt-in checkbox allows customers to opt-out of marketing if they please, and they will receive no abandoned cart or promotional marketing in the future.

At this point, Mum is greeted with a pop-up. You can customize this pop-up with whatever graphic or text you would like. For example, notify your customers of any current promotions or important and relevant information like free shipping.

Once Mum enters the cart, create a customer-friendly experience by arranging your products and packages in a way that intrigues but doesn’t overwhelm your customer. We have many different customizable options that can be implemented to guide your customer through the cart. 

See the below image to view our countdown banner, additional subject feature, promotional highlight, and menu bar. These three features are juicy blog posts in their own right and highly benefit your customer cart experience. To give you a high-level overview of our shopping cart, we will revisit these features in greater detail in future posts. For now, I want you to focus on the cart layout and how Mum can easily find her desired photograph of Jack through the screen’s handy menu bar on the right-hand side.

We have learned some tricks by tracking thousands of customers through their shopping carts. One to note is graphics matter. Outlining the products in your packages through simple bullet-point lists is effective, but nothing does the trick like visually seeing your prints. Provide a visual representation of what exists in your package through a complete graphic takeover, or a combo of a bullet-point list with accompanying graphic. Start out with our generic silhouette graphics, or provide your own. The sky’s the limit!

Scroll/swipe to see more examples of how your products can be presented in the cart:

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I could talk for days about how these shopping carts can differ depending on your studio needs. Everything from highlighting promotional products to graphics utilized, you can really make this cart your own. Rather than rambling on, why don’t I just show you how one of our studios has designed its cart! Swipe to view:

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Well, there you have it. No studio is the same, so each shopping cart is different. We understand how other jobs may require alternate shopping cart layouts. At Fotomerchant, you can have multiple cart setups depending on your photography job. Build your cart in a way that works for you and your clients. Reach out if you want a demo tour and see this shiny shopping cart in action.

School Photography Industry Report

The day we have all been waiting for with bated breath is finally here. So, with great excitement, I’m here to welcome you to the first School Photography Industry report! The report you will see below is a joint initiative between Fotomerchant and School Photographers of America (SPOA).

Data. Does that excite you? Well, it should. The data we collated for your benefit can transform how you conduct your studio. We believe that data allows for educated and concise moves within the industry. Without data, we would be standing in the dark, unable to track what works and flops. This report is your touchstone for valuable information and insights that will inform and inspire your organization to grow.

The best part of this is that we’re just getting started. This report is a foundation for further research and comparison to find correlations and insights that will span into the future. So strap in and get ready for a wave of beneficial information coming your way in future reports. 

The report is split into four key components: Demographics, Price, Quality, and Choice. I will give a brief overview of the highlights captured in this report. For the in-depth analysis, you can download the report for your casual perusal. We cast our metaphorical net large for this survey and surveyed a whopping 31 thousand individuals. 

See the below graphic to see this number broken down.

We surveyed a mix of parents and teachers to understand better customers’ order habits and the more practical needs of teachers. ​​Teachers hold crucial input as they hold an influence over school photos and yearbook processes.

Without giving too many spoilers away, you really should see it for yourself; here are some interesting results we saw emerge from the data for parents. For the parent demographics, we noticed the majority of survey respondents were 36-45 years of age and female; this changes how we interpret the data collected further below.

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Woah, Woah, easy there! That is all I am going to show you here. Download the report to see more of this juicy data (and there is plenty more where that came from). 

As we look to use this report as a baseline for further studies in the future, it would be greatly appreciated if you could provide your feedback via the feedback form. After you undoubtedly devour the report, please share your thoughts on what you found informative and where you think we can improve.

More is better when it comes to data collection. If your company wishes to participate and gain access to these surveys to be included in your communications this fall, please register here.

We could not have completed this mammoth effort without help from a plethora of studios nationwide and the individuals who graciously donated their time and feedback. We extend a huge thank you to everyone involved in creating this report. We are standing on the precipice of knowledge that can mold our industry for the better, only created through a collaborative effort and understanding of a common shared goal, which I think we can all agree is to provide a service that makes us all proud.

Session Templates

Better. Faster. What do we mean by this? Here at Fotomerchant, we are focused on streamlining and improving your studio workflow. One way we do this is by templating your different job types. By speeding up your workflow and removing the potential for human error, session templates save you time and money.

Before introducing you to the dazzling session template feature, let’s get acquainted with sessions. Sessions are what you may refer to as a job. A session is an event where you photograph individuals; this could be a sport, school, or graduation event. These sessions consist of stages that allow your customer to move through a specific cart experience tied to durations or particular dates. We can template stage structures and any specific tax or shipping settings you may need to be linked to a session.

How Session Templates Make Your Life Easier

As your photography season starts picking up, the last thing you need is for an easily avoided mistake to stop your flow. Building stage structures and assigning shipping and tax settings for your session every time you import a job is time-consuming and results in human error. Why painstakingly create each job when you can simply duplicate it from a premade template! 

Let nothing stop your workflow as you refer back to your session template and create new jobs with this structure already in place, a process so easy you could even delegate it to other team members. Woah, what if you want to track which session templates your team uses? No worries! You can easily view which session templates are utilized for your jobs using the handy “review usage” feature. 

Do you need to tweak session settings for each job that may diverge from your session template? No problem; you can adjust the job as needed after creating your new sessions from the session template.

At Fotomerchant, we understand that each job may need different stage structures, e.g., you may shoot prepay for your dance schools but only proof for your soccer teams; this would require multiple types of session templates, which you can set up. Depending on the job type, select the correct session template to ensure your tax, shipping, and other fiddly settings aren’t forgotten in the mid-season swarm of jobs. Create your new session, and presto, the category-specific stage structure, and all necessary settings are in place!

Within the hectic mid-season period, promotional marketing can sometimes fall through the cracks as you prioritize getting your photos out to buyers. Don’t worry; we got your back. Session templates help bring marketing back into your workflow as our session templates can include promotional campaigns linked to stages within your sessions. The marketing is already incorporated when you create new sessions using the template! So sit back, relax, and discover the sweet feeling of surprise sales generated by previously forgotten promotions. Our session templates can include both stage durations and specific dates so you can perfectly time your promotional campaigns. Marketing without the work? Yes, please! Click here to learn more about marketing linked to stage types.

User Stories

When thinking about a user story to introduce you to the capabilities of session templates, I had one studio in mind, Strawbridge Studios. On a large scale, this studio cannot afford to create a new session structure every time a job comes online. It would be chaos! The thought of all the human error and late deadlines met makes me cringe. Thankfully for Strawbridge, session templates were here to make their workflow better and faster. Here is what Strawbridge had to say about the use of this feature:

The session template feature allows specific settings and stages to be applied to thousands of sessions at a time. Marketing campaigns can be executed without the need for manual manipulation, which eliminates the high risk of human error.

Strawbridge Studios

This studio has a long list of session templates they choose depending on the type of job, pre-pay, spec, seniors, proof only, sports, if you can name it, they got it! Life without session templates for this studio would be strenuous and complicated. It gives me a headache just imagining it! Lucky for everyone involved, session templates alleviate some of the mid-season stress. Don’t just take it from me; let Strawbridge tell you:

Within our eCommerce department, session templates have become our entire workflow. Without them, our job would take a lot more time to complete, and we would experience a higher rate of human error. We would not be able to manage the volume of our company or the diversity of our offerings without them.

Strawbridge Studios

Well, you heard them! Session templates have become so instrumental in Strawbridge’s workflow that they couldn’t imagine life without it. So streamline your workflow with session templates and never look back. Reach out to our friendly Fotomerchant team to learn how we can transform your studio workflow.

The Opt-In Feature

Man, oh man, collecting customer data seems to be getting trickier by the day! One of the most resounding comments we hear from studios is that schools feel uncomfortable providing student emails. So how on earth are you meant to let parents know their images are ready in this scenario? Here comes our opt-in feature to save the day! 

Our opt-in feature collects information in a user-friendly form that will help you match your images to customers and, in turn, collect those sweet customer emails.

Why Opt-In is Useful

Thanks to our easy-to-set-up opt-in pages, you can now provide schools and event organizers a direct link to disperse to relevant parents & event participants. When emails are unattainable, parents and event-goers can voluntarily opt-in by filling out a simple form. Once the emails are obtained, the skies the limit as you can market to customers previously out of reach. 

The link provided to parents and event-goers by the school or event organizers is unique to each session, meaning you can tweak the opt-in form depending on the type of job you are photographing. You can easily find your unique opt-in link in the session details

Our opt-in feature is customizable to how you would like it to function for your personal use case. 

  • Do you want the opt-in turned on for only a week? You can choose to leave the opt-in turned on for as long as you would like. 
  • Want your opt-in portal to be accessible on your home page? We can implement this faster than you can say, “this opt-in feature rules!”
  • Want to collect information about the dog’s name for photo day? We can absolutely account for Patches the dog to be roll-called! This is one of the best aspects of opt-in; format the data points required by your studio to allow for easier matching to the subject photographed.

On that note, let me introduce you to a fantastic user story where opt-in is implemented.

User Story

Like all good stories, this one begins with lots of dogs. One of our studios specializes in photographing dog daycare events, and yes, the photos are unbearably cute. This studio required a customizable opt-in form to match the images to their dog parents. In addition, they needed a form that captured both human and dog names while allowing multiple event participants to be added (the more dogs, the better!).

This studio had the event organizer send out the unique opt-in link, which brought the dog parents to a simple and easy to interpret web page form. After filling in the form, they were subscribed. Yipee! The studio could now see the subscribers pile in.

After the cute dog photos were imported, the studio was quickly able to match the subscriber information to the images using our matching feature. Our clever system of pre-filling matches sped up this process using the data provided. So, no more endless scrolling to find names.

This user case is slightly different from photographing humans, as the studio can make their dog galleries public. Cute dog pics for everyone, yay! The opt-in page was also made public to allow day-of standbys to opt into buying dog pictures as well. This, of course, can be hidden from your homepage if your situation requires it. We can also limit the time frame for subscribers to opt-in by linking the form to a durational stage. 

We are all about customization here at Fotomerchant. Make opt-in do the work for you in a way that works for your studio.

Email Marketing

So how will the subscribers know their images are now online? When you are ready, and your subscribers are matched, all you need to do is click a button. I wish everything in life was solved with the press of a button! The triggered email has a direct button link straight to the customer cart and includes a photograph of the subject in the header image to help encourage click rates.

One of the significant aspects of having subscribers opt-in is capturing customers’ emails you would not usually be able to harness. In addition, we can export these subscriber emails and use them for future marketing promotions and last chance gallery reminders. So snap up those extra emails and create a marketable database. 

From customizable forms to customer marketing, the opt-in feature is a universe of its own. Filling the gap between you and your customers, the feature allows you to get your photographs out there while avoiding the usual blockades. With the swish of a simple link sent via your schools and event organizers, gain access to parents, students, sports players, graduates, doggy parents, and any other living creature who wants a photograph. Reach out today to find out how our opt-in feature can make your studio’s workflow better, faster, and a lot easier.

Split-Testing

All good things in life are defined in terms of comparison. Pizza vs. salad, the beach vs. a parking lot, Apple vs. Android (I’ll let you decide the winner of that battle 😉). How do you know what tickles your fancy without at least testing other options? This, my friends, is why split-testing is crucial to your marketing plan. Stop pumping out email campaigns willy-nilly and start experimenting, testing, and comparing whether your marketing is doing what you intend.

So get out your beakers, test tubes, and white lab coats, and let’s start experimenting.

Split-testing? Huh?

What is split testing? Great question. Split testing, otherwise known as A/B testing, is a way to learn how you should market to your customers by testing different email variations against each other. Think of this as your gladiator colosseum, where we battle to find the sleekest, most alluring marketing plan through whatever means necessary, without all the gore. 

Have you ever wondered whether your customers prefer a cheeky headline message or a straightforward call to action? No? Well, let me tell you why you should. In a world where our digital mailboxes are cluttered every day with deals, promos, and the occasional interesting email, first impressions matter. Your email marketing needs to understand what clicks with your customer base and, in turn, provokes them to click on the place order button. The only way to uncover this is to compare email marketing tactics in mini-experiments. 

Every good scientist knows that to conduct an experiment, you first need a control, a point of reference to begin. So you first set up a control email and then change one thing you want to test in a variation email. Then, you send both these emails out simultaneously and compare the results. The most crucial part of split testing is to have a clear intention of what you are testing. For example, if you want to test the subject line of an email and whether changing the format improves open rates, only change this one element. If you were to change the email copy in your variation, you will never truly know whether the text change or subject line change helped improve customer engagement.

The example above highlights two different subject lines. 
Variation A: 🍀 Fotomerchant’s March Newsletter 🍀 
Variation B: 📰 [Newsletter] Fotomerchant’s March Happenings

Man, that sounds like a lot of planning and work! Well, I have good news for you; the Fotomerchant marketing team has an array of split tests ready to test on your customer base. So sit back, and let us do the experimenting for you. In case you were wondering, pigeon mail is the clear loser to sending an email. How do we know? We split tested it. It turns out pigeons are major divas, too hard to work with.

How will split-testing benefit you?

As your email campaigns end, the split test has run its course, and we are left with data as precious as gold. This data can enlighten us on how best to market to your specific customer base for future email campaigns. As much as a gut feeling is important, actual hard data backing your marketing strategy is how we roll here at Fotomerchant. 

A customer shopping for dance images will undoubtedly be drawn in differently from those shopping for graduation photos. Or will they? You will never know unless you split test it! If your studio shoots multiple types of events, this makes for some fascinating split tests. Don’t target your different events in the same manner ever again! Market with precision and confidence only created through testing, testing, and, you guessed it, more testing.

Split-testing and seasonal marketing.

Does a seasonal marketing plan with split-testing built-in sound too good to be true? At Fotomerchant, we use data to inform our marketing plans; this is all the more reason to opt into our seasonal marketing; generate revenue and learn more about your customer base at the same time. So once Christmas rolls around, we can see what button size, header images, and subject lines are best at reeling in those sweet customer conversions.

Split-testing and gallery notification emails.

We have talked about marketing promotions, but what about your run-of-the-mill gallery notification emails? Testing these notification emails is just as important! We can set up your marketing workflow so that a winner is chosen after a certain period of time, and the winning email is automatically sent as the generic campaign. No fiddling around; the marketing platform takes the reins and chooses the clear winner based on the data generated. You can even select what is determined as a winner: conversion, click, or open rates. We want clear winners when it comes to split testing; that means no participation awards. Instead, we want to know what works and use that method going forward.

We can’t wait to see all the goodies that lie within your data. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the revelations made through split-testing. So don’t hold back any longer. Develop a well-rounded understanding of your customer base and stop stabbing in the dark with your marketing. Fotomerchant is holding the flashlight; we just need to switch it on.

Marketing Types Linked to Stages

Sometimes as I struggle to fall asleep, I dream of an email marketing plan triggered by the progress of a photoshoot’s specific workflow. The thought of such a feature that can be templated and easily re-instated is the only thing that can soothe me on a cold winter’s night.

Thankfully, I no longer need to dream about this feature; such mystical powers now exist here at Fotomerchant. I’d love to share how you, too, can rest easy with our new capabilities to trigger marketing campaigns via stages in your sessions.

Good things come to those who are informed.

Woah, easy there. Before we begin, let’s get you up to speed on what I mean when I say session or stage.

We Fotomerchant folk refer to a session as any job you may have where you photograph individuals; this could be a specific event, grade at a school, or sports team’s big debut.

Within this session, you will have stages where you can tweak what your shopping cart will offer to customers depending on the date or duration. Here is where the marketing magic starts to happen; these stages can trigger your marketing! Yes, you read that correctly, and no, you aren’t the only person sweating with excitement.

Marketing triggered by dates or durations.

Let’s get to the juicy bits; I want to tell you all about stage-triggered email promotions.

As your customers move through the stages in your session, you may want to offer different promotions depending on where they are in the workflow. Say it’s the third week your session is active, you are feeling generous, and you want to offer 30% for all products, but only to non-buyers. I see you trying to get your customers back in the cart with some discounted goodies dangling about 😉. Here at Fotomerchant, we are very keen to help support you in your marketing endeavors. We will set up your session to run through its usual state of the norm; then, after a three-week duration, an email will be triggered linked to the stage offering this discount! And yes, this email will only go to non-buyers who need a reminder to buy more cute pictures of their son Jimmy.

Say goodbye to human error, guessing, and counting. Who wants to do math anyway?! No more timing your shopping cart stage to your scheduled promotion; the stage change triggers your emails. When your promotion has successfully run its course, we will schedule the cart to return to its usual price points, ready for the next promotion.

Hang on! We have only talked about durations; what about triggering email promotions for specific dates? We absolutely can do this. Imagine it is almost Christmas, the memory of too much eggnog last year has left your thoughts, and you’re ready for more. Meanwhile, Jimmy’s desperately writing to Santa for a 5×7 picture of himself to hang on the mantle. I agree; it is in the Christmas spirit to make Jimmy’s dreams come true by offering his parents free shipping on any orders made after the 10th of December (leaving plenty of time for the Christmas elves to print, pack and send out the order). When December 10th rolls around, and the stage in Jimmy’s parent’s session flips over to the set date you determined previously, an email will be sent with the promotion. Isn’t that cool?

A templated marketing plan.

Let me tell you a little secret about how we easily manage to implement these campaigns triggered by sessions across your account. Remember those sessions I mentioned earlier? We can template the stages for specific session types; we call these session templates. So you can create a marketing plan, all triggered by stages changing, into a template easily duplicated when you add new sessions to your account. Let’s not keep this a secret between us any longer; I want to scream it from the rooftops! Your automated marketing plan is templatable!

Before each season, you can reevaluate what marketing you would like to push, and, working with us friendly Fotomerchant folk, we can set this template up for you. The link between email campaigns to stages via the use of campaign tags is something we pride ourselves on implementing for you, giving you more time to focus on the things that matter for your studio or that new eggnog recipe.

The beauty of these session templates is that you can have multiple versions. For example, say you have a client on board who is… sensitive… to their students/sports players/event-goers being targeted with promotional content. Ouch, yes, that hurts, but you know we got you covered. When creating a session for this client, you can choose a session template that only has a selected number of the promotions linked to it, so you can keep that client happy. Yay for satisfied clients!

The convenience of session templates also expands to different category types, so we can template various promotions depending on whether you need a sport/dance/school session created. This means you can implement category-specific email copies geared towards different session types like schools or sports.

Winter is coming…but who cares when your marketing plan is on track.

Picture this, you are sipping on your fresh brew of eggnog, and you suddenly see orders pouring in! How? In your infinite wisdom, you opted into the seasonal promotion we offered earlier in the season and had these marketing stages incorporated into your session templates. The process was so easy that after you created a new session in September, you completely forgot about the Christmas promotions put in place for you. Now that sounds good, doesn’t it?

Click here to learn more about how you can opt into our seasonal marketing as we offer promotions for Easter, Mothers/Fathers Day, Halloween, Christmas, and almost everything in between!

No, that wasn’t a dream; it is reality and a current feature we have here at Fotomerchant. Marketing linked and triggered by stages is a beautiful thing, and I hope you now also see the light. Please reach out if you would like to learn more about how we can make your workflow better and faster.

Survey Interim Results

Without data, we are guessing at best.

In 2021 Fotomerchant announced we had joined School Photographers of America as a strategic partner, and one of our initiatives was to launch an industry-first national survey. During SPAC, we presented a broader outline of what we aim to achieve along with some of the interim results we had collected over the first few months, and we’re excited to share this information with you.

What Is The Report?

Without data, we are at best guessing what drives our customers to make the purchases they do. We don’t clearly understand why they purchase the things they do or what products they want. While you likely have customer reports that give you a glimpse of this information, we are creating this annual report using a national survey of parents and schools to provide insights across the entire industry.

This report is a collaboration between Fotomerchant and SPOA, and the full report will be available at their conference in June, so make sure you attend. 

What Data Are We Capturing?

This year, we’ve been collecting data from parents and schools to give us an initial understanding of what they want and where their pain points are. The initial goal is to establish a baseline that we can later build upon. In the future, we’ll be expanding the areas of inquiry, such as doing a deep dive into the digital products parents may be interested in or asking an expanded set of targeted pricing questions. In addition, we will look to broaden the survey to include school photography studios and, potentially, vendors. There is endless potential on how we grow the survey and limitless opportunities for data collection.

We’re currently focusing on four critical areas of interest:

Demographics 

An essential part of the survey, we’re delving deep with this to obtain the who and where information we need to get a baseline.

Price

We want to know how much are parents willing to pay and why. Along with uncovering if they think the pricing is fair or too expensive and so on.

Quality 

Discover what parents expect and how important quality is to them relative to price.

Choice

Learn if we are giving parents what they want and determine if we are giving them too much choice or too little.

Interim Results

We received over 10,000 responses from both parents and teachers across 24 states during the first week of launch. We’ve pulled a handful of this data and are thrilled to share the insights with you: 

Here’s a brief look at some of the questions we’re trying to answer:

What size prints do parents want?

Keep in mind that we are barely scratching the surface here, and there are many more questions we ask, but this is a quick example to give you a taste of the type of questions we’re asking. While you may have a pretty good idea of what your customers want, do you have the data to back it up? Also, is there an opportunity for you to dial in your product offerings? 

80% of parents want a 5×7 print, and only 7% of parents want 1×2 minis

How much do parents think digital is worth? 

There’s no denying that digital is growing, and we know parents are interested. However, we want to learn more about what they think digital is worth, if we are pricing them correctly, and how these answers may vary from state to state, zip code to zip code, household income to household income, etc.

66% of parents think digital is worth $10+

Are parents happy with their eCommerce experience? 

With sales rapidly moving online, accelerated by the pandemic, is the online shopping user experience fulfilling their expectations, or is there room for improvement.

54% of parents are happy with their current eCommerce experience, and 46% are unsure or not satisfied with their experience

Are schools being offered backgrounds by their studio? 

There are exciting insights about parents wanting choices on the types of backgrounds they want to buy, such as basic colors, textured, themed, patriotic, etc.

Only 36.5% of schools are being offered backgrounds by their studio, and 63.5% of schools are unsure or are not being offered backgrounds

Does any of this data change based on location? 

This ties back into the demographic information we’re capturing for each survey respondent. Likely, behaviors and expectations will not be uniform. For example, buyer information collected in New Jersey will be different from information collected in Florida. We’re gathering the empirical data to back up this theory and provide solid evidence to support it.

Find out at SPOA in June if this data changes based on location and get even more details.

How You Can Help

If you’re interested in helping, you can share the survey with your parents and schools! The more data we collect, the more comprehensive and accurate it will be for the industry. Parents are also happy to participate in the survey, and we’ve had a respectable conversion rate of just over 1% and an excellent completion rate of close to 90%. While there is room for improvement, we’re thrilled parents are responding positively, and we’ll be looking to tailoring the performance of the survey over the coming years.

We’ve collected some incredibly insightful data across 24 states. Still, we want to obtain data from across the country and need enough data points to make the findings statistically relevant. We have just over 10,000 completed parent surveys, and we want to have over 100,000 completed surveys by the time we generate the report in June. Achieving this goal will be of tremendous value for the entire industry, and we believe that we can only do it together with your help.