2016 brought a TON of new tools and upgrades from our developers, who have been massively hard at work to create new and better tools to help you run your business.
Let’s recap the highlights, just in case you missed them when they rolled out earlier this year:
PROOFING
Our proofing tool saw a host of style and sharing upgrades, including cover pages and a new portrait layout.
Proofing remains our standout product, helping photographers guide their clients through photo selection, ordering, and in-person sales.
Sharing helps bring new eyes on the photographers’ work, branching out through social media and friend/family groups to bring new attention, sales, and sessions.
Email Marketing
This year we introduced our integrated marketing suite: Email Marketing & Landing Page builder.
Every account got this upgrade. You can build landing pages to share about specials, session bookings and more, then post them to your social networks to get the word out. We also gave all accounts a starter pack of free emails you can send each month.
Throughout the year we released more pre-styled templates you can use to make styling your emails and landing pages easy. Just pick a look, customize, add images and text, then voila! Send out that email to your list of clients and leads already waiting inside your client relationship builder.
Forms & Contracts
Forms saw huge improvements this year, including drag & drop design, form payments, new easy styling options and templates, official signatures, and so much more.
Forms are an integral part of your lead capture strategy, and because everything feeds into your client relationship builder, it makes finding and talking to new customers ridiculously simple. And when you tag your forms, new leads are automatically slotted into mailing lists. Neat!
We also added form payments, so you can take deposits, sell products, and collect registration fees all in one place – absolutely commission-free!
Improved Blog Builder
In 2016 we made it easier than ever to have a great-looking blog. Our revamped blog builder includes drag & drop design, which makes creating beautiful blogs really easy. And the image block within the blog editor is particularly cool, giving you a bunch of different image layouts and collages that are put together for you without you having to code or resize a single thing.
We also rolled out new blog page layouts that include fancy date badges, which was a hotly-requested option.
And to make blogging even more of a snap, we released "one-click" blogging, which will transform any proofing gallery, form, or marketing campaign you create into a blog post for you. Think you don't have time to blog? Think again. You have one of the most flexible and easy blogging platforms right in your pocket.
Custom Pages & FX Banners
Parallax is an eye-catching design trend that has seen a huge amount of interest from our clients. We introduced parallax "FX banners" this year, which allow you to create a cool scrolling banner with text overlay in just a couple seconds.
Also new in web design are custom pages, which are truly flexible and use the drag & drop builder. Custom pages allow you arrange your page elements any way you see fit – on and on into eternity. You can even create one-page websites with a single custom page!
Ecommerce Gallery Layout
Last but definitely not least, we released a new way to display products in your online store that you can't find anywhere else.
The ecommerce gallery layout was created especially for our fine art customers to display their work in glorious full-screen detail. But! It looks lovely with all kinds of items. Clothing, equipment, gifts... anything!
We're so happy to be able to provide our artists with the tools and designs they need to stand out, and this gallery layout is a particularly nice touch to finish off the year.
What's Coming In 2017?
Whew... that was a lot! But we're not stopping there.
Looking forward into 2017, we’ll be releasing even more new features and updates to the our website engine ("did somebody say sitebuilder 2.0?"), enhancing proofing & ordering, developing more ecommerce features, scheduling and more! Lots of exciting things on the horizon, so stay tuned :)
And we'd like to take a moment to thank YOU for inspiring us to continually build, design, and improve. For that we can never express enough gratitude.
13 years ago we began creating web tools specifically for photographers & artists and we’ve never looked back. You keep us fresh with your new perspectives, ideas & changing needs and we love rising to meet the challenge of being the best online company to support creative pros like you.
We'll see you in the new year! Keep being awesome, friends.