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Photobook Creation Platform
An online way for people to turn their photos into a printed book, built for a company in the paper and memory-keeping market.
Business goals
The client sells to people who love paper crafts and preserving memories. Many of those customers now keep their pictures on phones rather than in albums, so a printed keepsake starts with a digital step. The client needed a way for a customer to go from a folder of photos to a finished book, without design skills and without giving up partway through a long project.
Project overview
Hexagon built a photobook creation tool for the client. Customers upload pictures, choose a layout, arrange pages, add captions and preview the finished book before ordering. Projects save to an account, so a book can be built over several sittings. Staff have an admin view of templates and submitted orders. The work brought a hands-on craft category into a guided online experience that doesn't require design skills.
Challenges faced and solved
A photobook is an emotional purchase wrapped around a fiddly job, and the job is where customers give up.
Too many photos and no starting point
A family holiday can produce hundreds of pictures. Faced with a blank book and a full camera roll, many customers close the page and promise themselves they'll do it later.
We built ready-made page layouts, so customers start from a structure and drop in photos instead of designing each spread from nothing.
Books take longer than one sitting
Choosing photos and writing captions is rarely finished in an evening. If work disappears when the browser closes, the customer won't start over, and the order is lost.
We save each project to the customer's account, so they can leave a half-finished book and pick it up where they stopped.
Fear of an expensive printing mistake
A printed book can't be edited. A cropped face, a misspelled name or a blurry photo discovered on arrival leaves the customer disappointed and the company with a complaint.
We added a page-by-page preview before ordering, so customers review the book as it will print and fix mistakes while it's still free to.
Getting clean files to production
Customer uploads vary widely in size and quality. A print team can't spend its day chasing missing pages and files that don't match the ordered format.
We packaged each submitted book with its pages and order details together, so staff get a complete job in one place.
Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Customers | |
| 1. Customer Account | Each customer has a login that keeps their projects and orders together. |
| 2. Photo Upload | Pictures are uploaded from a computer or phone into a project library, ready to place on pages. |
| 3. Layout Templates | Ready-made page designs give customers a starting point and keep books looking tidy. |
| 4. Page Editor | Customers place, crop and reorder photos on each page, which keeps them in control without design software. |
| 5. Captions and Text | Names, dates and stories can be added to pages, which is often what makes the book worth keeping. |
| 6. Saved Projects | Unfinished books stay in the account, ready for the next sitting. |
| 7. Book Preview | A page-by-page view shows the book before ordering, which catches mistakes while they're still easy to fix. |
| 8. Order Submission | Finished books are submitted as orders, which closes the gap between a project and a product. |
| Client staff | |
| 9. Template Administration | Staff add and retire page designs, so the range can follow seasons and occasions. |
| 10. Order View | Submitted books appear in one list, with pages and customer details attached for production. |
How the platform is put together
Each layer has one job.
The result
The client gained an online path from a customer's photos to a finished book, ready for ordering.
| Area | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Making a book | Customers worked with physical supplies or tools elsewhere | A guided online editor with ready-made layouts |
| Long projects | No place to keep unfinished work | Projects saved to the customer's account |
| Checking the result | Mistakes surfaced late | Page-by-page preview before ordering |
| Production | No single view of submitted book orders | Pages and order details kept together |
How we took it from idea to launch
Good software follows a process. Here are the six stages, and what happens in each one.
Discovery & Requirements
Goal: Define the product vision, target audience and core business requirements.
Key activities- Stakeholder interviews
- Market and competitor research
- Defining user personas
- Drafting technical specifications or a Product Requirements Document (PRD)
Design (UX / UI)
Goal: Create an intuitive user experience and visual interface.
Key activities- UX design: information architecture, user flows and wireframes
- UI design: high-fidelity mockups and interactive prototypes in Figma or similar tools
- Design system: colors, typography and component libraries
Development: Frontend & Backend
Goal: Build the functional application using agile sprints.
Key activities- Backend: set up databases, design APIs (REST, GraphQL), implement server logic, and configure authentication and authorization (OAuth, RBAC)
- Frontend: build responsive interfaces and connect components to backend APIs
- Version control: manage code through Git and GitHub
Security & Optimization
Goal: Harden the application against vulnerabilities and boost performance.
Key activities- Security: address the OWASP Top 10, including injection, XSS and CSRF, enforce encryption in transit and at rest, and implement rate limiting
- Optimization: code splitting and lazy loading, database indexing, API caching and load testing
- QA and testing: unit, integration and end-to-end tests
Beta Release
Goal: Deploy to a controlled group of real users to catch edge-case bugs and gather feedback.
Key activities- Set up staging and production CI/CD pipelines
- Launch a closed or open beta with real users
- Monitor errors through observability tools
Public Release (Launch)
Goal: Roll the software out to the general public.
Key activities- Final production deployment
- DNS configuration
- Marketing and onboarding rollout
- Post-launch performance and security monitoring
Business benefits
Templates and saved projects remove the two most common reasons people quit.
Customers approve what they see before anything is produced.
A paper-focused business gains an offer suited to phone-first customers.
Staff receive complete orders in one place.
Conclusion
Customers don't really want photobook software. They want the finished book on the coffee table, and every extra step stands between them and it. Hexagon built this tool with that in mind, using templates to get people started, saved projects to keep them going and a preview to give them confidence. If you sell a personalized product and customers need to create something before they can buy it, let's talk about how to make that step easier.
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