Curating the Top Personalized Products
According to Photo Imaging News, the estimated number of photos taken in 2024 is 1.8 trillion, growing to around 2.3 trillion in 2028. So, our favorite recommendation for personalized gifts is photo products.
Nothing touches your soul more than receiving a photo calendar or photobook full of precious memories. And according to many, classic is here to stay.
The number of products stores can offer nowadays is nearly limitless. Personalized playing cards? Accordion? Even without investing in expensive equipment first, companies can test new items and see what customers will love with printing partners or global print-on-demand platforms. No market and customer are the same, but whenever you find an audience that loves the products you offer and vice versa – you will have loyal fans who won’t leave your brand because many product categories we see have high retention.
Why it’s worth offering photo gifts
In the age of fast changes, technology, AI, and debates about the advantages of robot labor over humans in some sectors, we need to remember one thing that makes us unique as people – emotions. While we can’t be sure about many things about the future, we can be sure that people will always preserve their memories in one way or another. Photos are and will be part of our interior designs, mobile phones, laptops – our life.
So, what products can you offer to achieve success? I don’t know. Otherwise, I would open the photo products store by now.
But jokes aside, we can always help you with some inspiration. Inspirations based on data are always the best combination.
Regarding volumes, our clients’ best-selling products were photobooks, prints, calendars, wall décor, gifts, cards, and business cards. In the gifts product category, there are 1000 other sub-categories: text-personalization products only, photo-personalization products, and a mix of both. Bigger gifts like blankets or tiny ornaments. Following still-trending premiumization you can differentiate yourself with a unique set of products or materials. You need to know that while offering premium products, everything from quality through packaging to customer service needs to be top-notch, and when it comes to premium personalized products – this needs to be on another level. At the end of the day, you deal with people’s memories. For which preservation, they paid a lot of money.
Year in Memories with a Photo Calendar
Almost every home has its calendar on the wall. People make memories with friends and loved ones throughout the year. Memories they want to preserve. In the moment of receiving such precious gifts, people are reliving those moments once again. Once it’s hanged, they can follow the personal events of the year marked by the other person when designing the calendar.
Once people order the calendar from your website and they liked the order processing combined with the great quality, they will most likely come back every year, uploading new photos or sometimes picking up a new theme. It’s important to have in your e-store good-looking themes and update them often since it’s one of your differentiators on the market.
If your production capabilities let you do so, a good idea will be to offer more than one type of photo calendar – desk calendars, XXL calendars, or trigeminal calendars.
This section will delve into how to design and market photo calendars that customers will be eager to display and gift, making every month a celebration of memories.
Sip and Smile with a Personalized Photo Mug
Imagine you start your day in the home office, go to the kitchen and make yourself a freshly brewed coffee in a personalized mug with the nicest photo of your last summer trip with your family.
Do you feel that nostalgia? That’s how you want your customers to feel as well. To get back one step before, they need to have a way to personalize this mug as they envisioned. This process also needs to be a kind of craftship. A compelling layout and theme will make this job even easier for them. All they need to do is to upload a photo and/or text.
Mug, being one of the simpler gifts, will often be created on mobile devices. Make sure you know your customers best and provide a great experience on tablets and phones with your software (or software provider).
Enhancing Memories with a Photo Editing Program
Consumers are different and need different approaches. Some of them want more customization options and spend more time on the personalization of artwork, while other groups want to have beautiful products in a matter of seconds. Personalized online businesses need to provide them with necessary solutions, like top-notch photo editing programs, to provide a seamless experience for them. The acquisition of customers online is more expensive than ever, so you don’t want to lose users in the step where they start personalizing their product. Because if you do, they will most likely not finish the purchase or go to your competitor.
Building such a solution in-house is a challenge, especially in our niche, where the business owner or their team’s shoulders are customer service, efficient workflows, production, and, last but not least, marketing. Then, there is the question of maintaining and updating it to the newest standards. Therefore, many companies have decided to choose a reliable software partner who will support them in their journey with its know-how.
An example of such a technology partner is Printbox, which provides solutions for personalized products, containing five different online editors based on the products, flexible buying journeys, servers, and photo products management panel. On top of that, companies can hand over the eCommerce maintenance by choosing ready, custom-made integration with Shopware 6 PWA.
There are many software providers out there – there is no one best company in everything. Choose the one that answers your needs. If you are considering Printbox as your potential partner in your journey, contact our sales team, and we will advise you on whether our solution is a perfect match or not.
Krzysztof Szczepańczyk
Student of the University of Economics in Cracow. Photo products business is something new for him, but he's already making a name for himself at Printbox with his curiosity and desire to learn. Loves sports, travel, playing guitar, and scrambled eggs for breakfast.
