Word of Mouth

I'm a huge movie buff and 2 movies that fared very well in the last week were Peter Jackson's “District 9” and Quentin Tarantino's “Inglorious Basterds”, which were big hits at the box office. Great movies but what's interesting was that their successes were reported to be attributed to word-of-mouth and viral marketing across social media websites.Switched has a great article on this.

It got me thinking on how important is “word of mouth” for your works and this week, we’ll put things in reverse perspective, with added features that will benefit your prospective clients more so than our members.

First Impressions Do Count - Use your Portfolio like a Sharp Suit

First off, how your works are being viewed by prospective clients is a key area that we have been working on. Our goal is to create a great experience for your prospective clients so they will hire your services. This week we have added the Lightbox effect to your individual works on the main page. The Lightbox effect definitely adds a clearer and more convenient showcase to how your works can be viewed. We're currently still working on the cropping feature for your galleries which should be up very soon. With the cropping feature, you will have the option to create galleries depending on the type of works you have. You can create Portrait, Landscape and Square galleries for optimisation. The above features will help your prospective clients view your works in their best form.

At TAXI, we're always thinking of dedicated channels to help promote your works to prospective clients. Currently, we have a “Recommendation” system which allows a client to add a recommendation. This allows other prospective clients to appreciate the value of your services. We're working on bringing this further by creating a dedicated network for your prospective clients to search your works of and a smartly tuned search logic.

This is coming up very soon and we'd be sure to keep you informed when we have more updates. We will be marketing this page, to businesses that will need your services and expertise.
Also, every time you update your portfolio, you may also import a contact list of your clients and partners to inform them to check out your latest update. And when they visit, make them fall in love with your works, and if they do, they'd share your portfolio with their personal and professional networks on Facebook or Twitter. It's that easy, and that's the point -- you spend your time making great work and make people do the talking for you.

What's Cookin'

Also coming next week, we will be bringing back our yearly payment plan option and we will be offering a nice discount to users who sign up for our yearly package. Simply write in to our portfolio crew to find out more. Since the launch of the new site, we've received tremendous feedback from our supportive members like yourself. We are pleased to inform you that most of the bugs have been fixed now, so you may wish to log in and experience the difference. If you encounter any difficulties, please do not hesitate to write us an email.

Since our launch, there has been feedback that images shown on the main page are on the smaller side and the automatic cropping does not do some of your gallery thumbnails justice. We listened, and will be implementing a hover function on every thumbnail that is featured on the main page. Once the thumbnail is hovered, a lightbox will appear showing a larger image. This will allow art directors and buyers to view clearer pictures while browsing for potential hires on our main page.

With the above plans in the pipeline, we hope to achieve our goals to deliver the best viewing experience in portfolios. With such platforms in place and support from our members and partners, we will create enough buzz for your services to mirror the “word of mouth” successes of movies such as “Inglorious Basterds “ and “District 9”.

That’s it for this week, we hope you’d enjoy your time at TAXI and have a great week ahead .