You’ve been shooting all summer and as the wedding season ends, album season begins. Album companies start notifying you about holiday cut-off dates and you begin to realize how essential it is to get your album designs approved quickly by your clients. And guess what? Your business will be more profitable if you can design your albums and get approval from your clients quickly. Why?
Speed is everything! The faster you can get an album design to your clients after their wedding, the more likely they are to approve that design and the happier they will be. Because clients have a much stronger emotional attachment to their images within the first few weeks after their wedding. That translates into your client wanting to spend more money and an opportunity to sell additional albums to the parents. It’s that simple.
What’s the rush, you ask?
Here’s a true story. Before I started working here, I was shooting full-time. I photographed a beautiful destination wedding for the most lovely couple. Their coverage included an album, but before I could even begin designing the album, I needed the couple to select their favorites. I wish I was using Design Proofer back then!
As so often happens in life, things got crazy. The couple both started new jobs (I started a new job), they relocated to a new city and had a baby. Every month that passed meant their album became less of a priority and the process of designing, approving and delivering their album was an exercise in patience.
I was contractually obligated to deliver that album even after three years passed. My album costs has risen significantly and I had to absorb those costs. The couple were ecstatic to receive their album (probably relieved to finally get it). I can only imagine how much more they would have enjoyed the album while still newlyweds. The lesson from this story is don’t be like Randy or it will cost you!
We recently optimized Design Proofer to help you get your designs approved faster than ever before, eliminating the stress of image selection and album proofing. Let me show you how easy this workflow is from start to finish. Start by setting up a Pick Gallery for your clients. Pick galleries are an easy way for them to select their favorite images to use in the album design. Then you bring those selects into Fundy Designer and create your album design.
In Fundy Designer, choose “Export for Proofer” from the list of export options. This will export your album design perfectly sized for Design Proofer, including the front and back cover options.
Log into your Design Proofer account and upload your exported files. Quickly go through the options to create a virtual album you can share with your clients.
Copy and send a link to your client. The client link is a virtual album that allows them to leave comments directly on the spreads. There is a link option to view the comments directly and there is a family/friend link that is preview only with commenting disabled.
The virtual flip album is beautifully rendered full screen and is mobile and tablet friendly. Your clients can view and leave comments by clicking the comment icon.
This loads the comments page, where your clients can leave comments for changes. The comment box can be moved anywhere on the page and each comment is numbered sequentially. Clients can comment directly on the designs enabling you to visually see the changes they’re requesting.
Pages can be marked as approved by clicking the “Approve Design” icon.
To make it even faster, we’ve added the ability to mark all the pages as approved if there are no comments. Your client can scroll through the design and if they like what they see, it’s just a few clicks to mark it as approved and you will receive an email notification.
Once you receive the email notification from your client, you can view any comments your client has made. There are options to view all the pages or only the pages with comments. You can even load and view multiple revisions. This keeps the communication process between you and your client very clear.
Drop Zone® technology in Fundy Designer and client tagging in Design Proofer create a powerful one-two punch. Simply view the client tagged changes in Design Proofer and instantly make the change to your album in Fundy Designer. In just minutes create a new revision for your client to approve or export your album to send for print via your lab or send the album directly from Fundy Designer.
Experience for yourself how easy it is to get your album designs approved quickly by signing up for a free trial of Design Proofer and watch this video showing you a workflow using Design Proofer and Fundy Designer. If you don’t have Fundy Designer, download our free trial (Mac and Windows) which never expires.
Gorgeous wedding photos © Danny Dong Photography.
