Most product pages are written on the assumption that everyone reading is a potential customer. This one is not. A digital gift built out of your own story is very good in some situations and genuinely wrong in others, and the wrong ones are easier to describe than the right ones.
It suits distance
If you are not in the same country, the usual options collapse. Posting something means customs forms and a fortnight of anxiety. Flowers arrive from a website neither of you has any relationship with. A video call on the day is lovely and lasts eleven minutes.
This is the situation the format was made for. A link crosses a border instantly, opens in whatever timezone they are in, and — this is the part that matters — stays. They can go back to it at two in the morning when the distance is at its worst.
It suits anniversaries more than birthdays
Not a rule, but a strong tendency. A birthday gift is about the person. An anniversary gift is about the two of you, and this format is built out of a shared history: the day it started, the places, the photographs with both of you in them. If there is no shared history yet, you are working with less.
For a first birthday together, three months in, something small and physical is usually better. Come back to this at a year.
It suits people who are bad at saying things out loud
Some people can say the sentence. They say it easily and often and it costs them nothing, and they should probably just say it again.
For everyone else — and it is most of us — there is a gap between what you feel and what you can get out of your mouth in the moment. Writing closes that gap. You can take three attempts at a sentence. You can put it inside a sealed letter so it arrives when they are alone rather than when they are opening things in front of your family.
It suits a long relationship with too much material
Seven years in, the problem is not what to say. It is that there is too much, spread across four phones and two dead laptops, and no way to hand any of it over. The value here is editorial: choosing twenty-five photographs out of nine thousand is itself the gift. You are saying these are the ones.
It suits a proposal, but as the setup
Several people have used it as the thing that leads to the question rather than the thing that asks it. That is the right way round. The story goes through everything that happened, ends on a date that has not arrived yet, and then you are standing there.
Where it goes wrong
You want something to be opened in a room full of people. This is a private format. It is read on one phone, usually more than once, often not in front of you. If the moment you are imagining involves an audience and a gasp, buy something with a lid.
You need it in the next two hours. Access is instant — the link and password reach you as soon as you have paid. The building is not instant. Choosing the photographs alone takes most people an hour, and the letter takes as long as it takes. If the occasion is tomorrow evening you will make something rushed, and rushed is visible in this format in a way it is not in a bunch of flowers.
You are not sure how you feel. This sounds glib but it is the most common mismatch. The format has nowhere to hide. There is no wrapping paper doing half the work and no price tag implying effort. If you are giving a gift to discharge an obligation, it will read as exactly that, at length.
The test
If you can name, right now, without looking anything up, the day it started and one photograph you would put first — you have enough. If you cannot, you may still have enough, but spend twenty minutes with your camera roll before you spend anything else.