Web site for sales

[iND]

I would like to gather experiences with web sites used for sales, I also like the ability to password albums a single user (not public)


Presently I use a smugmug PRO account and it is OK.


PROS


The sales are easy


The products are well printed and accurate


The turn around on orders is 3-5 days.


I can password protect galleries to limit access to a single customer.


My storage is unlimited in my PRO account


CONS


The site design requires experience in writing

[bob williams]

IND, I can't speak for the others, But I can talk about Zenfolio:


Pro's


Yes, you can password protect specific galleries and photos---I.E for a specific Customer


The print Lab they use is Mpix--I haven't ordered a print from them yet, but others on the forum seem to think they are one of the best.--Also, nice listof other venders,and can sell digital/commercial products


Unlimited storage and individual photos up to 24 meg


No Code experience required, Every thing is templated but very customizable


I don't know about Mac's compatability


Very quick and useful technical service


Ability to hide Zenfolio Branding with pro account


Can use your own web address


Has a very good Lightrooom plugin


Nice variety of templates and themes


Cons:


No blank preformated template pages (But I have been told that they are working on that)


Takes some time to learn your way around the site ---not always intuitive, but once you learn thier layout---very easy to modify and customize your site


Some templates will truncate yourtop row menu items---they are aware of this and are developing a fix


No ability to hide gallery or photo thumbnails--you can password protect them, but then you still see a blank thumbnail that says "protected"


All slideshow photos must have the same aspect ratio otherwise the slide show frame wont fit all photos.


website is "flash" based on therefore not readable on some apple products such as I-Phone and I-Pad.





Hope this helps,


Bob

[Daniel Browning]

A few of my wedding photographer colleagues recommend pickpic.com very highly.

[Tom Wertman]

This site has worked well for me. http://www.fototime.com/


Tom

[bob williams]

After some work on my website, I realized I was in error on some of the previously mentioned "Cons"

No blank preformated template pages (But I have been told that they are working on that)

While this is still true, there is a fairly easy workaround that looks pretty good, so not really a problem

No ability to hide gallery or photo thumbnails--you can password protect them, but then you still see a blank thumbnail that says "protected"

I was in error hear, I was seeing my own "private" thumbnails because I was logged into my own site. In the visitor view, you cant see these type of thumbnails at all.

website is "flash" based on therefore not readable on some apple products such as I-Phone and I-Pad.

Only the slide show is "flash" based--even then, if a non-flash system sees it, it will appear as just a manual slide show.


Ok, thats it, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't mis-leading anyone


Bob