Serve more customers by organizing your images (Part 2)

If you haven't had a chance to read part 1 of my series (Serve more customers by organizing your images) I highly recommend taking a look at it before reading this post. Serve more customers by organizing your images (Part 1)


In this article, I wanted to talk about sorting images using multiple CF cards during events. This type of sorting technique is extremely useful for team and group events. With the prices of CF and SD memory dropping each year, it is now easier and more affordable to buy multiple memory cards, properly label them and associate each card to a specific team, location or whatever type of organization level you wish to create.

Doing this can save you time and stress of trying to organize all of your images; especially if you try to organize all of your images taken on one large card at the end of the day.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind

You don’t need a large inventory of cards
If you’re shooting a large team event you don’t need to physically have one memory card per team. With proper prep time before your event; you can easily label your cards and manage your day’s events by knowing when and where teams play.

Keep a good ratio of shooting and dumping on your computer
It is sometimes difficult to know ahead of time when you can run by your computer and dump your images. But keeping a good flow between taking images and dumping them on your computer will make sure that you always have a fresh batch of images available for your customers to view. This is also another good reason for shooting with multiple CF cards.

Keep it simple
Trying to over-organize your images can become a burden. When preparing for an event, try to find a good balance. Sorting too narrowly will take up too much of your time. Not sorting images, will make it too difficult for your customers to view their pictures.

Usually a double sort is a very simple, yet efficient way of organizing your images.

Try to combine two types of sorting information such as:

• Team Name + Age Group
• Game # + Field / Location of Game
• Team Name + Day of Game (for weekend tournament)

Double sorting makes it easy to sort using memory cards and provides your customers with that extra information to make their viewing experience much quicker and more enjoyable.

Watch this video and see how easy it can be to organize your images using multiple CF cards.

Serve more customers by organizing your images (Part 1)

My next series of blog postings will focus on the benefits of properly organizing your images when selling onsite during events. I will discuss various techniques that can help you maximize your onsite sales while eliminating some of the headaches usually associated with selling your images onsite.

Every time I attend a conference or seminar about selling images onsite, the main focus points when looking at maximizing sales are the location of the event, the age group of the participants and how much money is spent to participate in this activity or event.

One subject that I feel is often left out; is how to convert customer interest into a sale. What does this mean? Let’s say you are at an event with great exposure and parent are eager to buy images.

What needs to happen for you to get a sale?

• Images need to be presented to the participants
• Participants need to place an order
• Payments need to be collected.

If by chance any of these steps take too long, customer interest will drop and the sale might never happen; which means you lose money.

3 keys to closing the sale

• Allow your customer to quickly view their images
• Allow your customer to easily place an order
• Make sure you or your staff can easily view orders and collect payments.

So what’s the big deal with organizing your images? For a customer to buy his or her images, they need to be able to quickly see the images you have to offer. Having to browse through thousands of images will make them lose interest and diminish your chances of making a sale.

By organizing your images, you will make sure that your customers will be able to view only their images. Quickly viewing their images also leads to a faster checkout; therefore allowing your viewing stations to handle more volume.

Benefits of organizing images

• Keeps your customers' interest level high
• Convert your customers' interest into more actual sales
• Quicker checkout allows you to handle larger volumes of customers.

A powerful workflow system that allows you to easily organize your images, combined with self-serve viewing stations is the most effective way of achieving your goals. Keep this in mind the next time you cover an event. If you feel it can generate a lot of customer interest; make sure you focus on key points that convert interest into hard sales.

How can PicSphere help you?

PicSphere is proud to launch a brand new feature designed to help photographers convert customer interest into actual sales. This feature was inspired by your feedback and we want to thank everyone who has participated in the creation of this ground breaking addition to our workflow solution.

Watch the following video and visit our website to learn how MetaFlow with its new Customer PhotoFilter feature can help you.

4 viewing stations using one computer

In February, Pascal (our CTO) started testing devices from NComputing. They have some really useful technology that makes it simple and affordable to build viewing stations.

NComputing's multi-user terminal boxes allow you to add three users to an existing PC. Each terminal box connects to its own screen, mouse & keyboard. These small terminals are then connected to a desktop using a normal network cable.

Basically it creates a mini network of terminals and shares the computing power equally among them. Each terminal works independently from the other. Here is an overview video:



Pascal has tested the X300 and the L230. Both hardware models worked with PicSphere's kiosk solution, but he recommends the X300. It is simply less demanding on the network and that is a big advantage. A local photographer chose to try it out at a recent event, so we jumped in to the car to witness it in a "real-world" environment; they ended up working great. Here is a review of using NComputing's X300 to run viewing stations.

Pros:

• Very affordable.
• Easy to install and setup.
• Compact to transport and display.
• Low power consumption (the network cable supplies power eliminating the need for separate power adapters).

Cons:

• Not touch-screen compatible.
• The maximal screen resolution is 1024x768 (we updated the PicStores Kiosk to run on that resolution and it looks great).
• If something happens and the host PC goes down, you lose the linked stations.
• The maximum distance between the units to the host PC is 10 meters (15 feet).

Note that most of these limitations do not exist for the L Series Ethernet-based access terminals.

Price:
Tigerdirect is selling the NComputing X300 3 User Expansion Kit for $219.99 and 3-User Terminal Computing Bundle for $734.99 (included 3 screens, mousses and keyboards). You will also need one desktop computer.

Overall, it is a very affordable and a practical way to run viewing stations. It will suit the needs of most of our users but as always feel free to discuss your particular needs with our engineers before you make a hardware purchase.