Printbox shares the results of Smart Creation testing
Whether Artificial Intelligence in the photo printing industry provides stunning presentations only, or will it actually increase sales? What will make the end-users excited and bring a crucial improvement for the customers?
In October 2020, Printbox launched the Smart Creation – an AI-powered solution that automates the photobook design process. Unlike the traditional path, the algorithm selects images for a project, doing the job for the user.
After twelve months, Printbox decided to share the tests’ results, carried out last year with 10 customers, presenting both positive and negative conclusions from introducing such a radical change in selling photo books. At the same time, Printbox has set Smart Creation as an only buying path on its demo, thus recognizing AI-based solutions to be the future of the personalized photo printing industry.
Significantly reduced photo book design time
T
he 21st century turned people’s lifestyles and their purchasing behavior upside down. When choosing products and services, customers are guided not only by the price criterion. First and foremost, they want to achieve a satisfactory result quickly and without unnecessary effort.
It is no different in the personalized photo printing industry. In response to these challenges, the Printbox team has started work on an AI-powered solution that is revolutionizing the traditional approach to photo book software.
Since its release, Smart Creation has processed tens of thousands of photo book projects, ranging from simple to more complex, including those where individual photo sets contained almost 4,000 pictures. At the same time, the team tested how the speed of selecting photos and picking other design elements by Smart Creation reduces the total project creation time (counted from design start to order placement).
The results achieved by individual clients helped determine a specific answer, where the median of the total project creation time was 5.1 days for manual design, comparing to 1.3 days for Smart Creation.
Reducing design time, however, was only an intermediate stage toward meeting a more critical challenge, which was increasing conversions.
Higher conversion thanks to algorithms
It’s a tale as old as time that applying any far-reaching innovations in business requires caution to identify potential benefits and risks first.
One of the top Printbox customers decided to start working with Smart Creation by implementing it in only a few stores to treat it as an experiment. Several months of testing allowed for the revision of the solution features among real users.
All stores taking part in the experiment noted a positive impact of Printbox smart technology on conversion results. During the first month, even before the client started conducting marketing activities promoting the new functionality, 22% of over a thousand projects were created by using Smart Creation.
While conducting several-week tests, the customer recorded a consistently higher conversion when using Smart Creation, and the difference in one of the stores was over 57.6% on average. After receiving a positive outcome, the client has decided to launch Smart Creation in most of its e-commerces, including the largest ones.
Highlights from real user research
The goal of any business is to get the end-user to move from browsing to purchasing as quickly and efficiently as possible. Smart Creation tests conducted with audiences from different parts of the world showed that some people are used to creating photo books manually and do not want to trust algorithms in this respect.
A number of photo printing businesses fear that, by imposing automated solutions, they will lose customers who like traditional design methods.
Although some users may be overwhelmed with algorithms at first, the store can reduce the risk of abandoning the project and still take advantage of the positive effect of Smart Creation, by introducing a few improvements:
- Proper education and drawing customers’ attention to the benefits of automation are significant. In simple tutorials, you can explain to the user how algorithms work and how they affect the speed of creating high-quality projects.
- The choice of the shopping path should be clear so that the user is aware of the steps that follow. The analysis of photos by algorithms may take a few moments, so during this time, the user should receive appropriate messages informing about the status of the process. It will help keep their attention and prevent them from being distracted.
- Users should always be able to design a project manually. Printbox has reintroduced the Autofill option, which is a simple addition to photos in slots. Because of that, even customers who resign from the Smart Creation feature can complete their project and enjoy the effect.
Wrapping up and teasers for the future of Smart Creation
The Printbox team put efforts into selecting the best metrics that can measure the impact of AI on increasing conversion, reducing project development time, and improving the end-user experience. The technology behind the Smart Creation follows a future-oriented approach. By default, it will allow customers to design other types of photo products than just photo books.
Market trends in using AI-based photo printing technology by the largest companies in the industry show that this is the last call to catch up. Importantly, Printbox highlights the growing inclusiveness of solutions such as Smart Creation, which allows companies to offer algorithm-powered products and services, regardless of their size or scale.
About Printbox
Printbox is an enterprise photo product software provider, which helps businesses worldwide be ahead of the game. The complete solution includes highly personalized editors to design photo products, a powerful admin panel, and built-in e-commerce.
If you would like to talk about your ideas for using Smart Creation in your business, you can contact Printbox sales team via the form available at getprintbox.com.
[This is a sponsored post provided by Printbox.]