AutomationeCommerce
Smileson

Platform for selling graduation photo shoots

Smileson

What is this project about?

In August 2019, Agamir Aliyev, a young entrepreneur from St. Petersburg, approached us. He wanted to make an online service where customers could choose and purchase their photos. Employees — easily share snapshots as they prepare for the sale and then calculate their profits. This is how SmilesOn was born — a platform that allows several types of stakeholders to interact remotely:

  • photographers & retouchers
  • students and their parents
  • school principals

Who will be interested?

Imagine that instead of photos you have any other product that several different people are working on at once. Perhaps this is a landing page that a layout designer, a designer, an author, and an SEO specialist should work on. And clients want to choose the best project. Instead of endlessly forwarding links and opening accesses, they can all be combined on one platform.

How to automate the sale of graduation photos in 3 months and get 8,000 orders in a year?

photo

Selling graduation photo albums is not a new business. But due to the growing digitalization, it is no longer so profitable. It is obvious that fewer people need printed albums, and more and more preference is given to electronic pictures. Looking ahead, let's say that, according to Yandex analytics, the ratio of the first and second types of customers is 50 to 50 (in CIS). However, this is not the only problem for those who have been shooting graduations for a long time. Let’s look at some of them!

photo

💣 Potential problems

Seasonality of work

it is difficult to have a permanent staff

A difficult process of approvals

because there are several decision makers in the chain

Access control

access control in educational institutions

Problems with payments

payments come late, incomplete, offline only

Lack of transparent commission systems

cooperation with educational institutions based on personal motivation and special agreements

Control approvals

difficulties in finding coordinators who will control approvals, orders and payments from parents, as well as sign documents

Amounts of data

huge amounts of data that need to be shared

Paperwork

time-consuming and lengthy paperwork

Lack of fixed deadlines and standards of work

the need for constant monitoring of photographers, retouchers by the manager

Summarizing

Most of these problems can be solved with the help of automation. This is how the SmilesOn project was born. Using his example, we will tell you how to build online interaction between different types of customers and employees.

🔥 Problem solving

Automation

Make a service where all the pictures were uploaded after the graduation photo session.

Automation
Editing

Editing

Make images available to retouchers so they can download the originals, process them, and upload new ones.

Access control

Access control

Access to ready-made photos is open for customers so they can easily view everything and select the required number of photos.

Payment system

Payment system

Make a system for charging photographers depending on the number of shots sold

Separate access

Separate access

Provide separate access for managers, where they would see all reports and accruals on commissions received.

Personal account

Make a personal account in which parents will see all visible pictures, the cost of their acquisition, various discounts, payment methods, as well as download links that are created after payment. Cabinets should keep a history of orders and purchased shots.

Personal account

Who did the project?

Veronica Z.
Veronica Z.
Account Manager
Account
Lena O.
Lena O.
Front-end Developer
Front-end
Dima K.
Dima K.
Lead Back-end Developer
Ilya Z.
Ilya Z.
Back-end Developer
2 Back-end

What results have been achieved?

Cost reduction

The creation of the platform helped reduce the cost of printing photos that ended up not being sold. So, for example, 25% do not even take 1 free shot, while the other 25% buy absolutely all the frames where their children are. Moreover, judging by the analytics, many are really pleased with the possibility of buying online.

The child is photographed at a school in St. Petersburg, the parents pay for the photo on the train on the way to Moscow, and the delivery of printed photographs is ordered to the grandmother in Voronezh.

Order volume went up

Parents no longer had a limit on the number of pictures they could select for a photo album. After all, you can download or print as many images as you like. So when more photos became available, order volume went up. In total, 8,000 orders were made during the year of work, 5,630 customers were registered.

COVID-19 has of course adjusted these numbers and the numbers are expected to rise post-pandemic.

Control panel

For the team that creates photos, we have created a convenient control panel and a common database with access according to their roles. All statistics on purchased images are saved there and reports are kept for each employee of the company.

Have a similar idea?

Do you want to forget about the routine and automate work with clients?