Posts Tagged ‘Photography Business’

P1Wired released 15 new features in our studio management software on May 15th. This post describes two more of the features included in the new version of P1Wired.

P1Wired has multiple tabs on the customer form to allow you to store all the great data you receive from your customers. To provide a simple and easy way to review any new data in a tab, P1Wired has added highlight hinting. If there is information added in a tab, it will show up as a different color in the customer form. There isn’t the need to click through the tabs in the customer form because the color highlighting will let you know if there is new customer information — it will be a real time saver.

P1Wired also added some new validation features to the studio management software. The validation features will assist the photographer with the data entry in the software program and insure a better level of quality control. This will also be a big time saver for the photographer.

We just released some new features in P1Wired.  Most of the enhancements come from recommendations made by the current P1Wired user-base.  We will provide a brief write-up on each of the new features for photographers over the next several weeks.

As you know, if you are doing business face to face, accepting credit card processing has become a necessity.  We have enhanced the credit card processing in P1Wired so a photographer or studio can process credit cards in both a keyed and swiped format.

The swipe capability adds efficiencies in the form of lower merchant fees, reduced human error and time.  Given the importance of credit card processing to any retail business, we will make additional related enhancements in our next release this summer.

Please keep in mind when selecting merchant services:  4 Easy Ways to Save on a Merchant Account.

1. Ensure you have the right type of Merchant Account for your clients

2. Never focus exclusively on the discount rate — look at the entire processing expense

3. Look to save on the processing equipment given the efficiencies that have been created over the last couple of years

4. Limit the time associated with any agreement — if possible, move to a no contract relationship

P1Wired has teamed with Merchant Warehouse and believes the services and products offered by them are very competitive.  We are working very closely with Merchant Warehouse to address the ever changing credit card compliance and the requirement for better and tighter security with respect to sensitive credit card information.  We will continue to make sure this a priority for P1Wired – Simple and Easy.

I am a big fan of Facebook and the myriad of marketing opportunities offered by this social media portal.  That said, Facebook’s executive Elliot Schrage didn’t provide me many “warm fuzzies”  in the recent The New York Times article.

Schrage answered privacy-related questions that stem from Facebook’s April 21st release with new privacy-related features.  The most important question asked is “Why Facebook didn’t make its features opt-in instead of opt-out?”  With the new feature Facebook automatically shares users’ names, pictures and other information with Yelp, Microsoft Docs and Pandora.

I guess it isn’t a big leap of faith that the “sands” might shift as Facebook evolves and looks at various means to generate revenue — given, it is still FREE (kinda).  I just thought the revenue paradigm that they would emulate would be the advertising revenue path as opposed to selling customer data and defending their position — to their 400 million-plus members — using semantics.

This might be a good time to review your security settings in Facebook to ensure the level of sharing you find appropriate.

If you are like me, I will quickly click on the video button (on a website) because: 1) I enjoy taking in content through video, 2) I want to check out the technology, 3) I want to see the creativity around the content, and 4) I like to see how different types of businesses are using video to promote their business.

Online video doesn’t make sense for all businesses but I do believe it makes sense for a majority of the photography business.  Here are some questions you may want to ask yourself to determine if online video should be part of your marketing plan.

1. Do you sell a product online?

2. Do your customers see you as significantly different than your competition?

3. Does your business need to be explained for people to really get what you do (as an artist)?

4. Do you have customers who would be willing to say you’re the greatest?

The bottom line is simple — studies have shown that a video used to sell online out performs a still picture by over 100%.  Video can show aspects of your business that may be difficult to put into words and it may reduce the time it takes someone to understand your business/value.

For the next release (scheduled for May 15th), the developers have been adding new functionality and focusing on the “flow” of the application, as defined by the current user base.  It is the number one goal of P1Wired to keep photography studio management “Simple and Easy.”

One suggestion that has come up several times is a simple and flexible workflow to easily email an invoice to a customer.

We have been tinkering with the current invoice feature and added some new options.  With a click of a button, an invoice (pdf) is created and attached to a customer email.  The customer email is a template that can be modified and tailored by the photographer or studio.  When the email is ready to send it can be further personalized to incorporate any additional information or it can be sent out, as is. These additional options should address much of the workflow for invoices.

If you have any additional suggestions, please let us know by submitting an idea or suggestion in the SUPPORT tab of the P1Wired website.