So, your eCommerce printing company has decided to buy a web-to-print solution. But you don’t know how to go about it. Depending on how sophisticated the platform is, there are significant expenses associated with setting up a storefront and working through the back-end processes. And you can’t afford to make a mistake given the investment is huge.
According to an Epicomm study, W2P has helped boost sales by 58%. Therefore, it is essential to know how best your printing company can make the most of the technology and thrive in the eCommerce industry. Without further ado, let us take a look at the five best industry practices to follow when it comes to web-to-print software:
Focus on functionality of your storefront
As a printing services provider, you must always think about how your customers will access and use your storefront. If it is not user-friendly and doesn’t have features like one-click checkout, easy re-ordering, social media log in, you are not going to get any traction.
Therefore, focus on what your customers will require. For instance: if sales reps majorly use your printing services on the road who upload images through their smartphones or tablets, refrain from using Flash Player as the software doesn’t work across all types of operating systems.
Conduct focus groups and understand what your customers want, and then get help from any leading web-to-print solutions provider that offers customized and tailored solutions to businesses like yourself. Such providers are adept at developing software that includes all the features you would like to have on your storefront.
Optimize your storefront performance
It’s a fact your printing company relies very much on sales coming from the storefront. So, its speed should concern you. You are losing out on business if your web-to-print storefront performs poorly. And if you want to up its performance, here’s what you should keep in mind:
a) The images uploaded on the website should not be larger than what the screen can display. Otherwise, that will bring down the speed at which the webpage gets loaded.
b) Whenever the CSS expands over, it slows the dynamic content on the website and affects the speed performance. So, make sure that doesn’t happen.
c) When multiple existing libraries are used for coding the online store, the volumes of Javascript used increase which affects the speed performance.
Since an average consumer doesn’t spend more than three seconds on any website, it is best to provide a great browsing experience – irrespective of the domain. Moreover, not every consumer browses through using a high-end device.
The number of users with low-end devices such as smartphones or tablets is on the rise and should be considered when it comes to boosting speed performance of the storefront.
Simplify The Product Selection Process
There are so many things that can be customized and printed – photo books, mugs, photo cards, calendars, wall art, stationery, uniforms, shoes, and others. But that doesn’t mean you offer printing services for all of them. Additionally, you may deal with multiple paper types and sizes – thus broadening your offerings.
That’s where you are going wrong. Simplify your product offering and make it more sensible. For instance: instead of offering various sizes and papers for brochures, create three different types of brochures. That will enable your customers to choose between glossy-print brochures vs. matte-finish brochures.
In a nutshell, your customers will spend more time in choosing the finish options of one product rather than getting confused between a dozen different products.
Provide ongoing customer support
There is no doubt that customers are royalty and they are spoiled for choice. One bad experience and it doesn’t take them much time to switch to a different brand, quite possibly a competitor. Of course, they can’t be right all the time, but it is your responsibility to reason with them and not ignore them or refute their concerns whenever they are wrong.
Set up a customer support team that is on duty 24/7. If your customers are all over the world, then you have to make sure that time zones don’t hamper the customer service of your business. That should be #1 priority of your printing company. Introduce a ticket system and deal with your rattled customers on the phone, email, and chat.
Ensure them about how serious you are about making it right for them. Win their trust. Some of the web-to-print software offer the customer service feature, so leverage it to run the show for your business.
Web-to-print brings a company-wide change
Fundamentally speaking, web-to-print affects everything in a company – from marketing to invoicing. And that isn’t something you can walk away from. If you, as the owner of a printing company, can’t get used to the idea of having a web-to-print software, then it having one doesn’t make a difference.
You have to make sure the W2P software gets upper management support and a dedicated team that will keep the technology up and running. If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, you have to get technologically robust.
Partner up with DesignNBuy
We agree buying a web-to-print software is not a piece of cake but it can be if you buy from us. That’s right! We are a leading web-to-print solutions provider that offers customized and tailored solutions to eCommerce printing companies like yourself.
We can develop a W2P software with all the features like Design Studio, Multi-Vendor, Quick Reordering, One-Click Checkout, Print MIS, and more you would like to have on your storefront. It doesn’t matter if you sell custom t-shirts, mobile covers, banners, greeting cards or photo frames or all – we have a solution for you.
Drop us a line at [email protected] and we will get back to you to know more about your business requirements. Speak soon!