Shutterstock has introduced a new
Portfolio Page feature that allows contributors to organize their collection into sets they want to feature. Once a significant number of contributors have taken advantage of this opportunity Shutterstock will encourage their customers to check out the galleries and image sets that their contributors have created.
Prior to this, by clicking on the contributor’s name on the “pic detail page,” customers were able to see a contributor’s entire portfolio organized by either most popular or newest images. Now, once the customer goes to the portfolio page he/she is given the choice of clicking on “Galleries” to see all the sets that the contributor has put together and organized in the order the contributor wants them shown. Contributors can create an unlimited number of sets and reorganize them at any time.
While this feature makes it possible for contributors to feature the work they feel is most important it might be more helpful if both “Portfolio” and “Galleries” links appeared on the “pic detail page.” The Portfolio link would take customers to all of the contributor’s images organized in the traditional way while Galleries would take them directly to the sets the contributor has chosen to feature.
Currently, the pic detail page tends to drive customers to “Similar Images Preview” that are images from other creators, rather than more from the creator first chosen. Putting direct links to everything on the same page would make navigating easier for the customer and give him/her a clear choice of seeing more from the contributor originally chosen or more from other creators. The way it is set up now customers must go two levels deeper if they want to see more from the contributor whose work they chose initially.
Customers will also be invited to Follow their favorite contributors. Once they set up “Follow” links they will be shown the newest content from each contributor they are following in a feed on their homepage here:
http://www.shutterstock.com/follow.mhtml
Contributors can share links to their portfolio via their social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and links from their own photography websites. On Microstock Group a photographer observed, “It may easily turn out to be a better option than my own web site on Photoshelter (where sales are non-existent, and I even pay for storage)”. Since this includes a contributor’s information and links, they can choose to use this as their storefront on the web. It is also possible for contributors to create a custom url for their galleries, making promotion more natural.
Shutterstock's says the Portfolio Page feature was designed based on hours of in-depth interviews and research with customers in order to deliver what's important to them and what will drive more sales for our contributors.
For more information go here:
http://www.shutterstock.com/buzz/introducing-portfolio-pages