The PhotoDeck blog

We've just rolled out the first of many upgrades for 2021, and this one is about making your clients feel even more at home on your website.

Can you spot all the changes?

Lightbox, selection or favorites?

PhotoDeck is not just about making your clients' life easy, it is also about providing you flexibility and the ability to tailor your website to your business and the type of clients you work with.

Your website includes a powerful proofing tool to help your clients select images and videos: the lightbox. "Lightbox" is a very clear concept for many clients, especially professional ones, but it's fair to say that non-professional consumers probably aren't that familiar with the name, and that is not optimal if you mostly shoot weddings, for example.

So we've added a setting to change the terminology used throughout your website. Do nothing, and it will still be called "lightbox". But you can also make it more generic ("selection", which is the new default), or more human ("favorites"). It's now up to you, and to who your clients are!

You'll find the new setting under My website / Setup / Visibility and features. You should also update the free text on the menu link (leave it empty and the system will automatically use the correct term).

More functional full-screen and mobile image view

Like most of what we do, this change is based on our members' feedback, and is in line with our "usability first" tenet:

We've modified the image/video fullscreen view, which is especially important on mobile, so that more actions are directly visible on that screen, without additional click, and with text for clarity.

Most notably, it makes the "Buy" button more prominent.

For this change to appear on your website already now, simply accept the prompt to update the rendering engine for both your desktop and mobile designs! To make the buttons more visible still when overlaid on images (see landscape image on smartphone held in landscape orientation), you can adjust their opacity via your theme settings.

PhotoDeck's new features are designed with photo agencies and photographers collectives in mind

It has been a popular request from photographers, and now it's here: host multi-photographer accounts on PhotoDeck, with access rights management.

In practise, this allows giving to contributing photographers limited access to a PhotoDeck account via their own login, so that they can for example upload images but not modify (or even see) the images from others, nor access any administration feature.

A gallery with images from different libraries, identified by color codes

Who is this for?

There are many uses cases where a PhotoDeck account would host images from multiple photographers, here are common examples:

• Event and sports photo agencies: instead of first collecting images from the photographers, then having the account owner upload them to the PhotoDeck account, you can have contributing photographers directly uploading to PhotoDeck, and if you allow them, directly publishing to the website. This makes for huge time savings, which is especially important on events when customers' willingness to purchase images is emotional and may diminish quickly with time.
• Stock photo agencies and collectives: these new features allow multiple photographers to create a common stock photography website, where each one can manage his/her own images.

The downloadable sales report includes data to allocate each image sold to a photographer.

This is also useful for busy creative agencies: having different logins and user rights for your team members can help reduce the risk of accidental "messups" and increases overall security ; allowing commissioned photographers to upload directly helps save you time and get the images to the client faster. It also allows adding temporary project-specific talent to the account.

How does it work?

• The PhotoDeck account owner can add team members to his account, each one getting his/her PhotoDeck login and specific user rights 
• If there is indeed a need to make sure collaborators can access only specific images (e.g. their own images in the case of collectives), a new media library can be created for each photographer or project, with access rights defined by the account owner.

For more information, here is the guide!

These features are included in the TEAM plan, for up to 5 team members.

Google have launched a new version of Google Analytics, called "Google Analytics 4", which over time will replace their current "Universal Analytics" product.

It is a significantly different product, that focuses on tracking people accross devices instead of simple "visits", and on their behaviour. It relies on machine learning both to provide insights and to fill the gaps in user behaviour data when missing.

The information it provides is also quite different from the Universal Analytics tool. For example the Bounce Rate, which used to be considered as very important, has been removed and replaced by a new "Engagement" metrics.

We've now added the capability to connect PhotoDeck websites to GA4, along with the legacy Universal Analytics tracking (yes, you can keep both). All you need to do is provide your new Google Analytics 4 "property" code and we take care of the rest!

This feature can be found in the PhotoDeck admin space under My Website / Setup / Analytics & site verification.

This is our third update in less than a month, and today it is about design!

We've built a new feature to add animations to elements in your free content (custom pages, banners, gallery introductions, pricing profile descriptions, etc...)

Each content element can be made to fade in, slide or zoom when appearing in the visible part of the page. The effects are subtle so that they enhance the page but don't distract from the content itself, except for the zoom-out effect which is a powerful way to draw attention to a call to action, for example.

You will now find a new "magic wand" button for each element in the free content editor to choose an effect.

It's update day again! Today, we're bringing an updated look to the checkout pages on PhotoDeck websites.

What has changed?

• Cleaner and more robust design on pricing pages;
• Simpler and more modern cart, orders and quotations pages;
• Uncluttered payment page to further reduce checkout friction;
• Fully responsive content to better align mobile and desktop pages.

To benefit from this update already today, please simply accept the prompt to update your rendering engine (for both your mobile and desktop sites) in your admin space!