Websites and Printing

[thedogsdanglers]

Hi all, I'm seriously considering starting my own site, I'm selling here and there via online galleries etc, which is fine because I don't have to order the prints/canvases etc myself I just take my percentage markup fee.

However those galleries are very competitive with 1000's of other artists/photographers selling from the same site. So what I'm looking for is an easy to use website template provider (squarespace, clickpic, zenfolio and the likes) that can offer a similar service, whereby the customer orders and the site orders the prints for then and sorts delivery, with me taking a bit of a back seat etc. (I work away a lot)

Or maybe a combination of website and printers that can be integrated?

Does anyone here have any experience of this, good, bad or indifferent?

Any examples welcome.

Regards

Carl

 

[KmH]

I don't think you'll find anything really worthwhile that is "easy to use".
It takes a substantial amount of work just to set your prices for all the various product options you need to offer with pretty much any web site template.

Plus you have to devote considerable time, effort, and budget towards promoting and advertising your site as a way to drive people there.

Zenfolio has a larger variety of partner labs now compared to back when I used Zenfolio - .Integrated Partners | Zenfolio

 

[Light Guru]

Squarespace is great for putting together a website.

A place to host your site is NOT going to be your problem. Your BIG problem is how are you going to get people to your website to buy the prints. The reason those sites you are selling on have all those other people selling there is because they have shown that they can get people there to buy. Simply putting up a website does not mean people will visit it.

How do you pan on getting people to go to YOUR website to buy prints?

 

[thedogsdanglers]

I guess 'easy to use' was maybe the wrong term, I'm more than aware of the efforts required for marketing and pricing etc. I guess that's why I want a site that's user friendly, (there's the term I was looking for) which cuts down on the overall efforts required.

I'm confident using IT but not experienced at running a website so I'm looking for something relatively easy on the management of the site once set up.

Ill take a look at zenfolio.

 

[angieparkerphotos]

Can anybody tell me a good, affordable ecommerce site where you can let your clients view their galleries, purchase prints and purchase a cd digitally all while the ecommerce site you are using collects sales tax for you? I have found some sites such as smugmug but none that sell cd's, only individual digital files they have to download. The problem I find with this is that not everybody has a good working computer or even internet access and if they do their downloads might take forever which will encourage somebody to go somewhere else for business. Almost all my clients want the CD.......however, I would like to get out of the monthly sales tax thing and just do my taxes yearly. I can what I am trying to say is I would like to find a site that if they choose a cd....the company will send one to them......any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!