Case Study - Printify | Shutterstock

How Printify integrated with Shutterstock in just two days—giving their merchants direct access to 370+ million images

Summary

Printify, a leading print-on-demand network connecting merchants with print providers, now offers their customers direct access to millions of Shutterstock images and editing tools. The best part? The Printify engineering team used Shutterstock UI—an intuitive tool for developers—to integrate in just two days and meet a tight deadline. Now, merchants can quickly search beautiful images right from within Printify and create stunning products that increase engagement and boost sales. Here’s the full story.

But how could Printify’s engineering team give their merchants access to inspiring content and image editing tools, with few backend resources?

“Our team had a very tight deadline to meet and limited resources, and it was clear that Shutterstock UI was an impressive tool that could really speed up the integration process,” said Francois.

“The Shutterstock Editor is a great benefit to our merchants,” said Francois. “It’s something they’ve been requesting since day one.”

“Shutterstock UI was instrumental because there weren’t any limitations,” said Francois.

An integration without any UX and UI limitations

The Printify team quickly discovered that Shutterstock UI didn’t limit them at all from a UX perspective and they were able to maintain consistency, even with little time to implement. “When we started to think about how we could design the feature for our merchants, Shutterstock UI was instrumental because there weren’t any limitations,” said Francois. “We were about to think about the user experience from a merchant’s perspective only, which was a huge benefit, in addition to the sheer speed of getting up and running. The flexibility was impressive.”

Empowering merchants with intuitive image editing features

Using Shutterstock UI, the Printify team was also able to quickly integrate, which included Shutterstock Editor, an intuitive editing tool that would allow merchants to easily edit images and designs.

The integration now makes it simple for merchants to boost their businesses in 3 steps.

Step 1:

Merchants can search 360+ million Shutterstock images directly from within Printify. Search results include Smart Image Recommendations, which are relevant and timely based on the season.

Step 2:

They can edit and customize images for specific products like sweatshirts, mugs, hats, t-shirts, and more.

Step 3: Publish and sell!

Before Printify’s integration with Shutterstock, the only source of designs that merchants had were their own—and those had to be uploaded manually. Now, they have direct access to 360+ million visuals from the Shutterstock library to give them unending inspiration to help engage new customers and increase sales. To learn more about Shutterstock's integration with Printify—and the possibilities for your customers with the Shutterstock API— contact Shutterstock's Platform Solutions team here.

Since launching their integration with Shutterstock,Printify saw results immediately. Take a look:

Today, there over 50,000 Printify products have been created with Shutterstock images and 800 products are created and published per day—an extremely high publishing rate for Printify. 95% of the products designed with Shutterstock images are also published to sell on third party platforms, indicating that merchants are delighted with the quality and aesthetic of their creations.