What makes e-commerce for printers so complicated?
E-commerce in general is a complicated and tricky prospect for any business, but for PSP’s (Print Service Providers), e-commerce or “print-commerce” gets even harder.
Why?
1. Printing is a product AND a service, not just a product by itself.
2. Printing products have additional product attributes that make their databases exponentially more complex.
3. Online competition and profit margins are rough. Online print companies such as vistaprint and printrunner, have a concentrated online strategy in place to find and secure print buyers. PPC and advertising costs is expensive.
4. Print buyes are VERY price sensitive. With the advent of the Internet and “free shipping” offers from many providers, customer loyalty is decreasing at an alarming rate. Throw in e-economic sensitivity and “local” is not always preferred anymore.
5. Artwork. The print product itself is a result of the artwork provided to the order. Ensuring quality artwork to avoid garbage-in garbage-out, is another step and variable that needs to be clearly addressed by PSPs in their ordering process.
With 10 years experience in this field, we hope these little insights will help you to find a solution that best fits your needs.
Categories: E-Commerce for PSP's
Tagged: E-Commerce for PSP's
Good Example of a Retail Digital Storefront
www.NeedAPrint.co.uk, is a good example of a retail oriented digital storefront. Here are some key factors that make this solution successful.
1. Customized and updated graphic design
2. Utilization of Articles for reference and SEO
3. A parent-child relationship for product catagories
4. Very well defined ordering workflow.
Categories: Case Studies · E-Commerce for PSP's
I learn, like many sometimes more from the little failures than the little successes. Sometimes they are painful lessons, but not-repeating the mistake is the real treasure.
Enclosed is a story of a web-to-print failure. No names will be used.
Client engaged a firm requesting a “fully loaded” print solution, complete with advanced ecommerce, online proofing and a powerful digital storefront. Vendor agreed to provide the solution with the caveat that; the client had staff and resources for graphic design work, data input and testing. In short the vendor provided the technology, and to minimize cost and exposure the client agreed to provide the staff to complete. Vendor provided the first phase of the solution, the ecommerce engine, but quickly learned that client’s staff didn’t have graphic design capabilities nor really any affinity for data and pricing input. Despite the online tools available, the vendor had to spend extra time hand-holding and doing manual input and tweaking of the interface on behalf of the client. Despite the project being signed as a time and materials bid, the client paid the first 2 invoices late and was short on the initial agreed deposit. That should have been a warning to the vendor, but the vendor, almost to a fault wanted the project to succeed. Needlessly to say, many frustrated phone calls, emails and discussions, the vendor still couldn’t find the staff or resources to complete as well as defaulted on the monies owed to the vendor. The vendor faithfully enabled the ecommerce, even some of the web-to-print features that were quite advanced and needed in the marketplace.
Summary, the relationship ended in frustration. The vendor lost out on money from development and the client has no solution to speak of. The question and lesson, aside from the financial, is why did the client think they COULD put together and even manage a comprehensive online print solution? I think its a sad statement, but despite the attempt to provide simple to use web-to-print technology, it still requires true investment from a resources standpoint on a clients behalf. Lesson learned. Painful.
Categories: Web-To-Print Success Stories
Tagged: digital storefront, web to print failures
Digital File Proofing is the most powerful tool within the print providers toolkit. Digital file proofing is the ability to receive and post a digital version of artwork for print buying customers to approve and/or make change requests.
Digital File Proofing
1. Ensures that artwork is approved and accurate before it goes to press.
2. Provides a means to effectively communicate with print buying customers
3. Utilizes a “change reqeust” workflow to ensure that all changes and requests are logged for audit or review.
The above 3, are just the basic benefits of what a digital file proofing tool can do for a print provider. The need for printers to track and record changes will always be needed and having the capability to give your print buyers a visual means to approve their artwork directly within an ordering workflow helps to improve the conversion of requests to orders and thus directly impacts your bottom line.
Categories: Best Features of Web-To-Print Technology (Vendor Agnostic) · Digital File Proofing
Tagged: change requests, digital audit trail, Digital File Proofing
Benefits of Custom Order Request Forms
From our recent internal research, print buyers placing orders from an online catalog of existing products satisfies approximately 65% of the orders from existing customers, but only 35% of the order requests from new or prospective customers.
To accommodate the other 65% of order requests from new print buying customers, we recommend that a custom order form with a means to communicate (digitally) with your prospects is the most overlooked feature of web-to-print systems.
A custom order form allows a print provider to:
1. Gather information on the types of products their visitors are asking about.
2. Capture prospect data for lead generation and e-mail marketing.
3. Start a conversation with prospects
Combined with a digital proofing tool (see our section on digital proofing) a custom request order form, satisfies many needs of a digital storefront.
Categories: Best Features of Web-To-Print Technology (Vendor Agnostic) · Custom Order Forms
Tagged: custom order form, digital storefront, lead generation, web to print
Many firms view Web-To-Print in its most basic essence, an online ordering web form and a file upload. True, the ability to capture not only the order specifics, but the artwork needed for the job are essential, but we would like to propose that true W2P is much more.
Web-To-Print is the technical capability to streamlining the ordering process or “workflow” for securing orders from print buying customers utilizing the Internet.
The benefits of true web-to-print are numerous; not only is the printer providing a means to secure the order and funds for the jobs, but also is providing a mechanism for their clients to order at any time (“on demand”).
Quality W2P systems will certainly provide their customers with their own online account management tools and digital asset repository, but also in that process create a means to start the digital conversation with their current clients and new prospects.
The take-away. Depending upon your firm and your objectives, we encourage you to view W2P technology as a means to capture and process orders, sure, but we strongly encourage you to view the technology as a means to streamline you operations as well as tool to start a dialogue with your customers.
Categories: Different Views of Web-To-Print
Tagged: digital storefront, W2P, web to print, web to print benefits
This is one of the most commonly asked questions and is fundamental to online print success. However their is not a single, sure-thing answer. It clearly takes a combination of pricing, ordering availability, product quality, offline marketing and continued online web-marketing initiatives. Over the last 3 years we have seen and worked with over 100 different types of print providers. From graphic designers, print brokers and marketing firms to full-fledged, high-volume gang run printers, we’ve seen it all. The part that they all share is pricing. Print buying is highly sensitive. If you can compete at the pricing game you’ve got a shot.
One of the most commonly asked questions we get is, “once we have a digital storefront, how do we ensure product sales?”
When it comes to print procurement, the situation becomes even a little trickier. Print products are a combination of a product and a service. Add on top of that, the complexities of the product itself, quantity, size, paper types and you have a very complex database with a vast number of products to manage. If you happen to be a “gang-run” print provider, you will certainly have a number of options and the products and their pricing gets even more complicated.
One of the most fundamental rules that we see time and again, is to follow the “Keep It Simple” rule. Review your orders from the last year and determine what are your best sellers. From that group, determine what are your most profitable products and build upon those for your digital storefront. After 10 years, we can confidently say that conversions of sales is higher for digital storefronts that have a very concise set of products and services. Try to avoid the mistake of offering too much for your print buyers. More options lead to more questions and lower conversions. To also offset some of concern of not being able to capture every order, utilize a “custom request” form. This will allow your print buyers to request an item perhaps not listed in your catalog and serves as both a form of lead gen and online ordering.
Categories: Making Web-To-Print Work
Tagged: digital storefront
Successful W2P Story- From my associate Tom Thayer -
I have been managing W2P operations at my company for almost three years now. Before I arrived, our company had been on the fringe of the W2P game for a little over five years using Printable. When I came in we implemented Press-Sense’s iWay product.
I agree that out-of-the-box systems can certainly be a disaster. Especially due to the fact that most printing companies see this as an opportunity to “set it and forget it”. Usually putting an extra pre-press worker on the case to periodically manage orders when time permits.
If you want your W2P system to succeed, the main ingredient to success is a knowledgeable staff that you can solely dedicate to the operation. A W2P manager should be knowledgeable about print, IT configurations, web standards, and at least have some basic skill with regard to code.
Although it may be a shameless plug, RIT’s School Of Print Media breeds exactly this type of candidate.
Over the last two years we were able to customize the iWay product into our own system, because we were already informed on the technology as well as what is needed for a successful B2B customer interface.
Being able to customize our product and develop our own features has enabled us to take W2P to the next level, beyond simple stationery and into the world of highly personalized variable data projects.
Having a dedicated support staff for your W2P service will also help attract the bigger customers.
Another method I found successful is to use your contacts and networking skills to find out how others are already succeeding at this. Take bits and pieces, ideas and workflows, put it all together using your own philosophies for success.
I would suggest you lay a foundation with your existing clients. Get them using your system for simple projects like stationery and then get them asking “What else can you guys do?” and take it from there.
If you want to bring in serious money through the web, your system can’t just be something you did because your competitors did it already.
Categories: Web-To-Print Success Stories
Tagged: Press Sense, Printable, W2P
