My Vintage Shoot

My Vintage Shoot started off as the commercial branch of Alan Photostudio. An analog photography supplies store, focused on instant photography.

The star product, born by accident through customer inputs, are instant camera rentals for events.

1 – The Challenge

Due to the small size of the business and the rapid growth of the service, the rental ordering procedure became obsolete quite fast.

As the service grew more and more popular with local customers as well as corporative ones, orders started to be made remotely, only remarking the need for a better system.

In this case, it was not just a question of customer’s user experience, but the merchant’s workflow. Any inefficiency in the system would result in a loss of value and time in each transaction.

2 – The Approach

Making an exhaustive analysis of the existing procedure, taking into account all the legal obligations and adding all the information obtained through customer feedback after each rental, we discovered the following pain-points :

1. It was vital to offer an easy read of Terms & Conditions, not only because of the legal imperative, but for it to act as a rental agreement.

2. Being sus a complex product, we could not use an “out-of-the-box” system. We would need a system that we could adapt so the information would be all presented in a bespoke manner to simplify the rental process and reduce the overall time to a minimum.

On the other hand, we hade the business workflow. We would need complete control of every aspect in every rental from the beginning to the end of the transaction.

Due to these reasons, for this project we opted for an open-sourced online store system. This way, we could achieve two goals with the same effort: we would reinforce the online presence of the studio, making our commercial brand well known through its own online store through which we would sell all our products, and building a platform that we could use to streamline the rental process, making it easier for customers to order. Also, this platform would give us the oportunity to customize every aspect and reports to make easier the merchant’s workflow.

3 – The Product

We installed a PrestaShop store, and we redesigned the product page so when a customer visits any available rental, all the options would be easily chosen, not having to navigate through a lot of pages or options to resolve any doubt. Also we introduced some links to the specific terms in the Terms & Conditions in each rental option, so the customer could check specific information at any given moment.

To improve the merchant workflow, we created custom reports and some special status for each stage of the rental procedure. Attached to these status, we would send automatic e-mail messages, informing the customer of every aspect and update on their rental.