web 2 print and online ordering – peanut butter and jelly

web 2 print and online ordering – peanut butter and jelly

I was visiting my mom over the holidays with my young son and for some reason he doesn’t want to eat peanut butter and jelly, but he’ll have jelly with his grilled cheese. Drives me crazy. It immediately reminded me of 2 conversations I had over the last month with a prospect and a current client. They both want the same thing, more solutions for their customers. More technology. More Sales. But they want only online ordering (jelly) with their website (grilled cheese). Sure a website is great and important for lead-gen, and SEO, PPC ect. Critical even. But the conversion of the visitor into a customer and then satisfying the customer with technology and solutions is the holy grail. What is the rule, 6x harder to find a new client than satisfy an existing one? I have now in my career seen, what? 200+ different print providers in various lights. The ones that can provide the technology and workflow needed for the customer, not what their printer includes as an add-on with the equipment is essential for being flexible and adapting to change. I wish others would start to grasp this reality. The successful solutions that are built with the ability to adapt to the workflow and provide the customer with the tools they want.

 

Successful W2P Story

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.

 

Online – Web-Based Preflight What makes an efficient preflight system?

Online – Web-Based PreflightWhat makes an efficient preflight system?

Although I have built a file preflight system for our ecommerce engine, I’m personally not satisfied with a couple of things. First, what are the most common files used in this immensely powerful module? PSD? EPS? PDF? I can’t get a straight answer. I know PDF is probably the most common, but for some reason, nobody is willing to stick with just that file type. Secondly, why don’t more print providers utilize this technology. I mean, don’t they see the efficiencies saved in both time and accuracy? If artwork can be uploaded and checked for dimmensions, DPI, safe margins among other things, and then notify the print buyer on the spot of any possible issues, doesn’t that save the print provide time and money? (not to mention headaches). Sorry, I’m just venting a bit here. If I could find software that would add an extra 3 hours onto a day, I’d pay through the nose to utilize it. Back to the problem, If anyone, has any opinion on what are the most common file types to check, and would want to help us clarify and draw a line in the sand, I’d very much appreciate.

 

Web-To-Print and Cross-Media technology overlap?

Once again, in discussions with colleagues and prospects the overlap of tools that are traditionally associated with web-to-print, more specifically online design are evident in the solution needs of cross-media. Why is there so much overlap in these areas? Personally, I think the cross-media people have nailed it. Firms like MindFire and Nimble fish have marketing engines and great overall technology. Although I have not personally seen the code, I’ve built some of these solutions and integrated them for print and marketing providers and understand and have seen first hand the complexities involved. The only tool that I have not seen mastered yet is the ability to enable online design templates easily. As I am biased at my own team and their technology, particularly our Aurigma friends and their mastery of Adobe files and the ability to dynamically parse them, it is still so new and not much attention is being paid to it, yet. The nice thing about Aurigma’s technology is the same element that is missing in these other engines; the quick and easy way to enable those same templates. After all, enabling and even modifying pre-approved marketing messages and designs is part of the process, isn’t it? Sending out the direct mailer and enabling PURLs are fantastic and IMHO the best and only form of acceptable direct mailing. Especially, with spend management on everyones mind doesn’t it make sense to use the tools that provide the most analysis and hard data? We’ll, I digress. The firms that enable these powerful online design tools and integrate them with PURL and campaign management systems will be the leaders in the industry as print providers are looking more and more like marketing firms, and marketing firms, with new digital presses are looking like one stop shops.