A peek of the new Fotomerchant v3

When we released Fotomerchant v2 we rebuilt the application from the ground up, making your photo uploads faster, web pages load quicker and making it easier for you to manage your website, social media, products and orders.

A year and half later, we’re proud that Fotomerchant is now the most powerful photography sales engine on the planet.

New Fotomerchant theme iPad concept

The new features of Fotomerchant v3

We listened to your feedback and learned of your insatiable desire for new website themes and a mobile optimised customer experience.

We are thrilled to announce that the next iteration of Fotomerchant will focus on the modern photographer – an entirely new vision optimised for the viewing, sales and delivery of your digital images.

Three new website themes (and more in development)
Mobile optimised websites
All-new visual page editor for drag and drop content creation
A mobile optimised admin interface
New visual graphs and reports
New plans and more…

Available very soon…

High Concept Chart Example

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions that we assume you’re going to ask us. If you have more, please post a comment below.

Q: Will there be a migration process like last time?

A: Nope, there is no difficult migration process this time around. If you decide to change to a new version 3 plan, the process will be simple and immediate. For most people, your existing photos, gallery layouts, blog and page content will all be retained in place. You may need to make some minor editing changes depending on the theme you choose, and if you have customised your site using more advanced HTML techniques you will probably need to tweak your code. Overall, the process should be quite seamless.

Q: When will Fotomerchant v3 be available?

A: Our development team are on the final stretch of development and are putting the finishing touches on the new admin interface, new responsive themes and new graphic reports. We’re reluctant to announce a specific date until we have thoroughly tested all the new features. We’re talking weeks rather than months…

Q: What do you mean by mobile optimised, how is this different to the current themes?

A: The current website templates are compatible for viewing on mobile devices but they are not optimised for the smaller screen size. From now on, all new website themes will be ‘responsive’, meaning that they will dynamically change in appearance to match the size of the device it is being viewed on. Your customers will be able to browse and buy from your website whether they are on a mobile, tablet or desktop.

Q: How many new themes will there be?

A: The plan is to launch version 3 with at least three new mobile responsive themes, and then at least one new theme per month, every month. We know how important it is for the modern photographer to adapt their style and design to reflect the changing nature of the market. With Fotomerchant version 3 you will be spoiled for new theme choices.

Q: Can I stay on version 2?

A: You will not be forced to change to the new version 3 – you can stay on your current plan for as long as you like. We will be releasing a limited set of new features for version 2 at the same time we release the newer version 3. We will detail these features when we get closer to the launch date. Moving forward, any extra themes and feature enhancements will be exclusive to version 3.

Q: Will prices be different?

A: Version 3 will bring new plans that are designed to reflect the different needs of professional photographers. Our pricing structure will be changing to reflect the needs of the modern photographer and our goal is to continue to offer exceptional value that is competitive and fair.

Written by Kain Tietzel

Kain is a co-founder, creative and marketing director at Fotomerchant. You've probably seen his template designs, blog posts and video content. His photography website lomovision.net is home to a collection of lomography, instagram and experimental photography.

alexkess

This is looking really awesome Kain. Can’t wait.
Darrell Nash

Great to see the Aussies taking on the rest of the world – it’s looking great. Nashy…
Kerry Bergman

Will version three have the option to have a main landing page with separate clickable links to separate pages, such as: blog, website, Facebook – the way many photographers websites are done these days? So, say for example you land on a website and see three buttons (or however many you like) and these buttons then take you to the homepage (which then has its own tabs) or blog or other link.
Kerry Bergman

Will tabs be collapsible on v 3?
- Derek Clapham
  
  Hi Kerry,
  
  Are you able to explain what you mean by this? Not entirely sure which part of the interface you are speaking of.
  
  Thanks!
  - Kerry Bergman
    
    Sure. Sorry, I mean the website tabs. I think I used the wrong word perhaps? I meant cascading tabs for menu items…. so that you can have page tabs with other tabs that appear when you hover over them.
    - Derek Clapham
      
      Ah, so I think you’re talking about “nested pages” that allow you to have a deeper hierarchy on your website?
      
      If that’s what you mean, the answer is that we have some plans to look at doing this but it wont be available in the coming updates. Unfortunately we don’t have a firm timeframe on this particular feature yet!.
      
      Hope this answers your question Kerry.
      - Kerry Bergman
        
        It does. Thank you Derek. Also, are there any plans to introduce a splash page? I think that’s the right term – :D
      - fotomerchant
        
        Hi Kerry, we haven’t really had any requests previously for Splash page functionality.. So please feel free to add a request to the feature request forum – http://support.fotomerchant.com/forums/21801797-Feature-Requests
        
        To be honest though we’re unlikely to build these in the near future as they generally act as a deterrent to customer engagement and they’re not great for SEO either..
        
        Here are a couple of articles worth a quick read on the pros and cons.
        http://webdesign.about.com/od/navigation/a/aa020303a.htm
        http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/11/splash-pages-do-we-really-need-them/
        
        Hope this helps!
        
        Steve.
Lachlan Ryan

Looking forward to it.
Sean McGowan

Great news. Some of us have been waiting for this for many years so it’ll be terrific to become competitive with those “big guys” out there with their sexy purpose-built sites that seem to work on any platform. Better yet, as I draw nearer to becoming fully reliant upon photography as my sole income, hopefully during 2015, this change will save me the grief of migrating to a different supplier, which I was absolutely not looking forward to. So thankyou FM folks for this much anticipated upgrade.
However, please note that “going Telstra” (or “going Adobe”) on us longstanding users by beefing up subscriptions is … unfortunate.
- Derek Clapham
  
  Sean,
  
  Firstly thanks for your comments. We are well aware that these features have been a long time coming and can’t wait to get them out there. Some of the new themes we have planned for 2015 and absolute beauties :)
  
  Secondly, in regards to the planned pricing changes: Over the past 6 years of operation we have only changed our pricing once and that was a price reduction. This time around we are reshuffling features and adding a 4th level plan. We are confident that what we have come up with better represents the broad spectrum of photographers that our customer base represents. From a business perspective these changes are necessary from time to time in order to stay viable in todays market.
  
  We are confident with the coming update that our product will be of a premier grade and also be a tool many photographers use to enable and/or increase the success of their photography business. And as always, we are more than happy to receive comments and feedback at any time!