2021 has been an exciting year! Our development team has been working hard on enhancements for the Photo Biz platform all year. Let’s take a look at the new features, tools, and programs we launched this year.

Organization is key to a good user experience. We made updates this year to the main menu in the control panel with that in mind. The main menu moved from the top of the screen to the left side for quick easy access and now slides out when you need it and minimizes when you don’t. 

We also introduced a website progress bar at the top of the dashboard, to help guide you through the steps of building a website. This is particularly helpful for new users, but even long-time customers might get some tips from it. The progress bar guides you from designing your site to attaching your domain and adding security, to show you how far into the process you are. 

Once your website is live and the progress bar is complete, it is replaced with a notification bar to help you quickly and clearly see various details about your account.

With these updates to the dashboard you are also able to see more news stories from PhotoBiz’s Growth Hub, quickly access products and tools, and see notifications and product usage all in one place.

These updates are building blocks on the road to launch PhotoBiz 8.5, coming in 2022.

Learn more:

• Control Panel Updates: Dashboard Redesign + New Progress Bar

• PhotoBiz Website Builder Updates

There is always room for growth. That’s part of the reason for our Education events. This year, we launched a new series of educational events including our MasterClass, workshops, webinars, and one-on-one coaching. There are both paid and free events as well as live virtual events and on-demand recordings to help photographers and other creative businesses learn online. From technical setup assistance to lead generation tips and strategies, there are education opportunities for everyone.

As our education program grows, we are also continuing to host webinars and Facebook Live events which include website reviews, Ask Me Anything sessions on a variety of subjects, and even chats with industry leaders. 

We are excited to bring back our MasterClass again in 2022 and continue to grow our educational events to help build and support your business online.

Learn more:

• Introducing PhotoBiz Workshops and Coaching

• PhotoBiz Education Site

To help you have consistent branding across all the tools in your account, we released a global branding feature this year. It allows you to upload your logo once, select your brand colors once, and have this information applied to all the tools in your account. There is still an option to override the global branding settings with custom branding within each tool, but you don’t have to anymore! 

Learn more:

• New Feature Alert: Global Branding

• Global Branding Settings Now Work With Ecommerce!

The checkout process in our ecommerce tools underwent a radical redesign this year to make purchasing even easier for your customers. It now features a simple four-step process to collect customer details, shipping information, and payment and ends with a confirmation message. And from every step customers can see a running total for their order. It is also more mobile-friendly. 

Learn more:

• Updated Universal Checkout Process

Some enhancements were added to the Scheduler, Proofing, and Ecommerce tools early in the year. We added the ability for you to add your Scheduler calendar to your personal calendars with the help of a calendar feed. This means if someone books a time with you through your Scheduler, that time will automatically show up on your calendars, such as Google, Apple, or Microsoft calendar. This allows you to quickly and easily see your calendar without logging into your PhotoBiz account.

We also added a bulk action feature to our Ecommerce and Proofing tools to help you quickly make adjustments to pricing and shipping on multiple products or services at the same time. You can make bulk edits to products and services, including:

• Price

• Tax options

• Shipping options

• Additional shipping charges

• And if the product is active

For Proofing, you can use bulk edits to quickly modify the following settings for multiple events:

• Expiration date

• Price list

• Allowing downloads

• And digital download file resolutions

We hope each of these updates will help save you time! 

Learn more:

• New Scheduler Calendar Feed + Bulk Actions for Proofing and Ecommerce Now Available

We want our tools to be easy not only for you to use but also for your customers. Several of you have shared how-to purchase documentation you provide your customers to guide them through the options to interact with their Proofing galleries. To streamline this we created the PhotoBiz Proofing Gallery Assistant, a pop-up walkthrough video option you can enable for your customers when they enter a Proofing gallery. 

The video walks your customers through the process of creating an account, liking and sharing images, and adding prints, packages, and products to the cart. There are two videos you can choose from. They both are guides to help your customers understand their options, so you don't have to explain them.

Learn more:

• Proofing Gallery Assistant: Share This With Your Customers

And we saved the best for last! This fall we launched one of our most requested features, Email Automation. You can now set up a series of emails to trigger at specific times or based on specific actions to automatically follow up with your contacts. There are Email Automations for Proofing events, scheduled appointments, and invoices. You can select and customize templates or create your own series of automated emails. They can be used to remind people of their abandoned carts or saved items in Proofing, upcoming appointments (booked through the Scheduler), payments due on invoices, and more.

Email Automation allows you to take a hands-off approach to customer follow-up and frees up your time to focus on other aspects of your business.

Learn more:

• NEW! Automated Email Reminders

• Creative Ways to Use PhotoBiz Email Automation

Our highest priority continues to be providing high-quality products and designs backed by unparalleled support. We are looking forward to developing and releasing even more enhancements in 2022. If you have any questions about our tools, services, or education events, please call us at 866.463.7620 or chat with us online (customers, please log in first).