Printbox is constantly improving the Smart Creation solution for automatic photo book creation. We are more and more boldly straying from the beaten track to enable consumers to create items that genuinely express their uniqueness. At the same time, we effectively reduce the necessary action to the minimum number of clicks.
We aim to impress end-users with the simplicity and reach even greater sales thanks to marvelous-looking books. Here are the most crucial findings from the last months.
A project by a human or an algorithm? Blind test results
In the world of personalized photo products, consumers expect projects tailored just for them instead of factory-like copy-paste creations. But is an algorithm capable of design that mimics something human-made well enough?
We decided to run a Blind Test to check how easy it is to find automatically generated projects amongst human-generated ones. Both humans and Smart Creation were given the same conditions: same sets of non-stock photos, number of pages to create, the same maximum number of pictures per spread and same book template. The task was to create photo books in those conditions. After that, we had 20 photo book projects – 10 created by humans and another 10 created by Smart.
We invited 20 respondents to our test, and each of them received 10 randomly selected projects from the pool. The interviewee’s task was to assess whether a human or an algorithm designed a given project.
Here is the method we have adopted for the evaluation of the test results:
The total number of points for each questionnaire ranged from -10 points to 10 points. We considered the person’s test as passed after they obtained 3 points or more. We assumed that the entire blind sample would be regarded as passed if 60% of respondents (12 people) received a minimum of 3 points.
The team that stands behind the Smart Creation knew it shouldn’t score badly, but the bets were not in favor of Smart. That shouldn’t be a surprise – those were the people that know all about possible improvements. But the results were more interesting. We passed the test as 60% of people received a minimum of 3 points!
Despite passing our Blind Test, we are constantly working on improving the technology that drives Smart Creation. We want the designs proposed by the algorithms to be pleasing to end-users, so they have a higher chance of converting to buyers.
Smart Creation is the driving force for RWD conversions
User experience is essential for every store, especially in the photo product market. Nowadays, many visitors to your store are browsing it on mobile devices. That’s why the crucial part is to take care of the RWD of the website and online editors.
Creating a design like a photo book using a smartphone should be as easy as possible because people won’t spend hours polishing them. Hence, we have introduced Smart Creation. It is especially useful for mobile users as it automates the design of ready-made custom products.
Our recent analysis showed that this was the right move, especially for our clients’ sales performance. Users choosing Smart Creation in the RWD editor have an 80% higher chance of converting than those who designed the product manually on a mobile device.
→ Read more about RWD and its influence on conversion in Responsive Web Design: Best Practices for Photo Printing Business.
Smart Creation boosts the upselling rates by 60%
Numerous businesses focus their attention and budget on attracting new clients, forgetting about maximizing the value of those who have already decided to buy.
Upselling is a technique of persuading customers to buy either the same product with additional features or a more expensive, premium version of the item they chose primarily. Therefore, we decided to analyze how Smart Creation increases the profit on individual orders.
The data obtained from our customers’ stores show that Smart increases the number of users choosing upselling by 60%!
→ Read more about how upselling can maximize each photo product purchase.
Use all photos – influence the habits of users
The age-old challenge of the photo products industry is the struggle with the belief that making a photo book is time-consuming. Why is it like that? Even before visiting the online store, many users select the photos they want to have in the album. It means they had to go through several hundred images manually, which is cumbersome and takes hours.
We designed Smart Creation in such a way as to independently assess the quality of photos and select them into a coherent story. When Smart has to work with images pre-selected by the user, it makes additional filtering anyway. During our work, we found that many people enter the editors with photos already culled. That’s why we are introducing the ‘Use all photos’ option.
Our goal is to make the lives of our users easier. At the same time, we understand they have their long-term habits. That’s why we decided to give them options and a chance to try something new that can affect how they buy in the future. The feature will be available for use by the end of May 2022.
Better user experience on the shopping path
We are constantly simplifying the creation process while continuing to add more options for the user. In February, we released a significant change to let users see their projects as quickly as possible. We moved any obstacles and additional options to a later stage in the editor. This way, Smart becomes smart indeed, as it just needs photos to operate.
In addition, we redesigned the whole Smart journey to delight our end-users. Now, when Smart is doing all the hard work, users can watch as we cycle through their photos in a truly nice way.
Thanks to all of these improvements, we raised by 15% the chance that a user will see a project created by Smart Creation. What’s more, we made the Smart journey more comfortable by reducing warnings and errors by even 70%.
Stay tuned for more in 2022
Our product roadmap for the rest of 2022 is packed with remarkable improvements. Follow our blog and social media to be informed about all the updates. We are certain that our real-market data, analysis and guidance can help you and your photo printing business.
See you next time!
Inga Leder-Majewska
Content & Communication Manager in Printbox. She has over 5 years of experience in communication activities in social media, supporting the marketing team in PR activities, research, and expert content creation. In her spare time, she listens to true crime podcasts and takes long walks around Krakow.
