Capturing stunning images is only half the battle. You also need to set up an online photo proofing page to showcase your work in a professional way and make it easy for clients to select the pieces they want.
The good news is that you can use an online photo proofing plugin for WordPress such as picu to get photos approved by clients quickly.
The picu plugin offers a brilliantly easy solution for improving the workflow on your photography website by letting you create private collections of images and share them with your client.
In this article, we’ll talk about how picu lets you enhance the client experience on your photography site and how you can use it to make an online photo proofing page in WordPress.
What is WordPress Online Photo Proofing?
WordPress online photo proofing is essentially an alternative to proofing images via email.
So, instead of going back and forth with your client over email, you can simply send them a link to a page with photos they can browse at any convenient time, simply clicking the checkbox by any photo they would like to have edited by you. It’s faster, more secure, and helps you offer a better client experience on your photography site.
By uploading images to a private online gallery on your WordPress site and sharing the link with your client, you can let them view their images from the shoot directly on your website. This gives your clients the ability to finalize images from your website instead of going back and forth over email or using a cloud storage solution like Dropbox.
The Benefits of Online Photo Proofing
Online photo proofing can help enhance the client experience and increase conversions on your photography site.
Here are the major benefits of using online photo proofing:
- Better communication with clients. Clients can easily stay connected with you throughout the image selection process. They can view and select the images they like from the shoot at their own convenience. Once they know which images they want to finalize, they can simply click the checkbox next to each chosen image, and the plugin will then send a notification to you to let you know that the client’s selection is complete, so you can begin the post-processing.
- Reduce the need for revisions. Online photo proofing images on your photography website also reduces the need for revision. This is because online photo proofing is less prone to human errors and miscommunication with the client. For example, clients may accidentally copy and paste the wrong filename, or mistype the filename of an image if doing the proofing by email. In addition to this, it also helps improve the workflow for you as the filenames can be exported into a text file for you to copy and paste into Photoshop (or whiever editor you prefer) so that they can all be opened automatically for you.
- Showcase your images better. Showcasing your photos better is crucial for converting prospective clients into paying customers on your photography website. By creating an online photo proofing page you can showcase your work better and speed up your workflow significantly.
Depending on the type of business you run, or the type of website you create, online photo proofing can be hugely beneficial for you.
How to Create an Online Photo Proofing Page in WordPress
Ideally, you want to have your images available for clients to view using a self-hosted server for your photography site. This gives you full control over your images and data, and provides the client with a professional, branded experience that is quite different from having to send them to a third party site such as DropBox or Google Drive.
For creating an online photo proofing page, you’ll need a WordPress site along with the picu plugin.
The picu plugin for WordPress lets you create a beautiful collection of your images and showcase them in a custom, private online photo proofing page in WordPress.
If you would like to follow along with this tutorial you’ll need to make sure you have some photos ready to be displayed in a collection on the online photo proofing page we’ll create in WordPress.
Once everything is in place, follow these steps to create an online photo proofing page:
Step #1. Install and Activate the picu Plugin
The first thing you need to do is get the picu plugin and install it on your WordPress site. Download the plugin and navigate to Plugins → Add New from the WordPress admin panel.
Click on the Upload plugin button and select the .zip file you downloaded earlier. Click on the Install Now button to install picu on your WordPress site. Finally, click the Activate link to activate the plugin.
Step #2. Create a New Collection
You will see a new picu menu in your WordPress admin panel. Navigate to picu → Settings to configure the plugin’s settings.
Here, you can select a theme for how you want to display your collections, and configure various email settings. You can set the sender email using the From Email: text field and also set a name for the sender.
Once you’re done configuring picu, click on the Save Settings button at the bottom of the screen to continue.
Now, we can start creating a new collection for your images. To do this, navigate to picu → New Collection and give your collection a new title.
Click on the Upload / Edit Images button using the Upload Images meta box and upload your images to the collection.
Once you’re done, click on the Insert Images button to continue. Now, you can customize the sender message and enter the client’s email using the Share Options meta box.
Additionally, you can choose to send the link to the client manually via private message instead if you prefer. Click on the Copy link & send manually tab under the Share Options meta box.
Click the Publish button to continue.
Step #3. Create the Online Photo Proofing Page
Now with a collection added to your WordPress site, you can showcase it on a custom online photo proofing page. Simply navigate to Pages → Add New and give your page a title.
Using the Shortcode block in WordPress, paste the [picu_list_collections] shortcode and click on the Publish button to continue. Clients will be able to see the collection on your photography website.
Clients can click on the link to open the picu collection in a new window that lets them select the images they like and hand them over to you faster.
Conclusion
Creating an online photo proofing page in WordPress using picu is a great way to enhance the client experience and offer site visitors an easy way to view your work. Clients can view the entire collection directly on your website and select the photos they want.
picu works better than most SaaS online photo proofing services as it gives you more control over where your images are stored. It integrates seamlessly with your WordPress site and offers a complete solution for online photo proofing.
Ready to start online photo proofing in WordPress easily? Get picu today!