Spring has Sprung!
As the world opened up, we were able to travel for the first time in 2 years. Terence Swee, our CEO, was on the panel at DSCOOP Edge in Denver to discuss the ROI of using AI in print taking in the WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) expo in Vegas on the way.
We also released a slew of our latest 3rd Generation white label apps for various customers from Germany to Australia.
In this newsletter, we will cover three topics:
- The ROI of AI: Does it actually add value to the experience and revenue of a print-on-demand mobile app?
- New features in our white-label apps
- New Partner App releases
The ROI of AI
They all presented actual real sales data and survey findings from our respective customers. The results are clear and the market has spoken:
AI (or “smart-assistant”) for photo book creation is a must-have, no longer a “gimmick”.
We have all definitely come a long way since the Microsoft “paperclip” assistant!
From our own data, out of the dozen or so white-label apps we have globally, we have seen in some cases, up to 200% increase in conversions with a corresponding (197%) increase in revenues.
We have accounts that are growing some 25% month on month. Of course, not all apps will see such awesome performance for various reasons, but this is a key data-point: removing friction in the creation and shopping process, and getting your “store into pockets” is what’s going to “move the needle” on revenues.
Marketing and promotional activities will no doubt support organic growth by single or low double digit growth. But to make a real impact quickly, bold moves and investments have to be made. Using AI to help remove that friction is but one tactic, but it’s one that has repeatedly demonstrated measurable results.
New Features in the White-label Mobile App
QuikPrints: We added a super fast order work-flow just for Prints. Users can pick an entire folder or date range of photos, order reprints of some of them, and add to cart in a single step.
Collage: Support for “Multi-Photo Single-Surface” (MPSS) products (like Collage Posters) are now baked into our mobile platform with added support of multi-page variants (like Photo Strips). Creating wall-art with multiple photos has always been popular even before Instagram, but creating such products was not easy for consumers and producers alike. The usual way of using fixed templates created by graphic designers using professional applications like Adobe Illustrator or hard coding them means that porting across to different product aspect ratios and sizes are painful. So we ensured that all of our collage are algorithmically calculated, so we can easily support all kinds of wall-art dimensions and shapes.
Framed-photos are now also supported. We upgraded the architecture to be able to easily define such products from our product configurator. Now you can roll them out without updating to the client app. Framed photos allow users to pick frames with different colors and finish, and see them in our RealSense preview which will show the actual photo that users have ordered set in the frame of choice, mounted in a familiar scene like a living room, which shows the relative size of the product the user is ordering.
Non-printable products Now you can also sell photo accessories like frames, and picture hangers from our mobile app. All such products can be added into your product catalog easily and it will appear in the app clients upon next launch. All without the need to update the app.
With the support of non-printable products, it paves the way for our app clients to also sell art pieces, paintings and every flowers and other gifts!
New Partner App releases
In Q1 we also published 5 white label apps for customers in Sweden, Germany, UK, Australia and Ireland.
MaxPhoto was released for the Max Spielmann group. Max Spielmann has a network of over 450 photo specialty retail stores all across the UK. This app was the first to use the “store pick-up” feature. Users can easily find the closest Max Spielmann store they want to pickup from. Our back-end will then push the order to that particular store to be manufactured. Pick up is usually ready within the same-day, or sometimes, even within an hour!
Pixelnet Fotos – this app was developed for ORWONet of Germany; one of the largest white-label print fulfillment company in Germany who prints for many retailers in the DACH region with millions of orders a year. This app integrates ORWO’s legacy CRM and order management system, so that previous users of the various branded websites can also sign-in to our mobile app and vice versa without the need to create a new account. It integrates the entire product capabilities of ORWONet, meaning future client-specific variants of their app will have easy access to all or some of those products.
Photobookshop – www.photobookshop.com.au based in Melbourne Australia are well known for quality photobooks with great value pricing. They now also have one of the widest print gifts catalog we’ve worked with. Their white label app includes photo gifts like jigsaws, coasters, pillows and other fun innovative products. This is the first release with support for such products which comes in various forms, shapes and sizes, each requiring slightly different considerations in the app.
Puppibook – Matt came to us with a very simple vision: to address the pet-parents market. We not only developed the Puppibook app, through our print network, Puppibooks was able to be up and running and fulfilling quality photobooks in the UK within weeks. We will soon make Puppibooks available to proud, fanatic pet parents in Australia and the USA. We also look forward to introducing more pet-specific features and products to this vertical.
Remoment – Fotoklok of Sweden wanted a clean and quick app to make elegantly-simple photobooks which exudes Scandinavian simplicity and quality. Remoment was an early adopter of our Version 2 app and has now upgraded to the latest V3 codebase. This includes a complete replacement of the payment module to support Klarna Pay Later, which is a very popular payment system in Scandinavia.
Black’s Photo – next week, we will go live with the Black’s photo app in Canada. Blacks.ca is the most well-known photo printing site in Canada and known for quick and fast service. Blacks wanted a streamlined way for users to make photo books from the photos that are stuck on their mobile phones. Although they have a mobile responsive webstore and even an uploader app, uploading hundreds of photos through a web-browser method on a mobile device is fraught with multitude of problems. The initial release of the Blacks photo app will feature their 3 best sellers: their Softcover perfect bound books, hardcover PUR and luxurious Layflat books. We configured the app to use different layout algorithms for layflat books to take full advantage of the full spread.
