In the past five years Web-to-print software has matured rapidly to meet the growing needs and market share of online print purchasing. But not all web-to-print systems are created equally; some can end up taking up an inordinate amount of your employees time, and leave a bad taste in your clients mouth.
It’s not only important to make sure you have the right tools for the job, but to ensure that you’re using these tools as an effective part of your process. Effective usage of these tools has been proven to capture new business, increase your client retention, and save your employees time on their day to day activities.
Getting the most out of your web to print system is best achieved by using it to stay organized internally, connect with your clients, and automate administrative tasks. Your designers and operators should be empowered by your web-to-print, and its usage should allow them to spend their time on more meaningful work.
Managing / tracking order status, quote / estimate management, proper organization of both client supplied artwork, and print ready files. These are all things that a busy print company is dealing with constantly every day, and those using an effective web-to-print system are able to easily use that system to keep both their team and clients up to date.
When you handle your day to day tasks using your web-to-print system, not only do you reduce the friction of your clients ordering experience, but you reduce the amount of repetitive work required from your team to process that order. Think of all the emails your customer service reps would have to write to handle a typical order:
Each one of these emails requires customization per client, per order. But that doesn’t mean your reps need to write these emails. They should be given the freedom to connect with clients without needing to also edit or write these boilerplate notification emails. Your web to print system should be handling this kind of communication.
And there’s a lot more value in using these internal tools than just saving yourself time; consistent usage of these tools encourages client interaction with your website, which in turn increases:
We have a variety of articles on the impact of local web traffic, and how increasing direct website visits is vital to increasing your search ranking, and acquiring new business. Make sure you’re enabling your entire team to drive traffic to your website just by doing their day to day tasks. An advanced web-to-print will utilize user subscriptions and custom email alerts to make it easy for your team to stay up to date, whilst only exposing them to information relevant to their role or job description.
Calculating commission in a variety of ways for your sales reps? Expanding your sales process to include affiliate marketing? You should be able to use your web-to-print to handle these ventures, with the power to give restricted access to external sales teams so you don’t have to be concerned about the sensitive information of your other clients.
Now nobody can say that all of your clientele are going to begin using the entire range of your web-to-print capabilities immediately; but it’s important to understand that internal usage of these tools today will lay the foundation for much higher adoption rates in the future.
Some of you reading this have been running reprints of the same job for your clients for years, but although you can expect some jobs to remain the same for years to come, it’s fair to say that purchasers come and go. Make sure that in the case a large company you do work for changes hands, that the new contact in charge of purchasing print has a very simple decision when it comes to continuing to purchase from your company. Make it as easy as possible for them to order from you, whatever their preference may be.
PressCentric are experts in helping print service providers flourish online. We’ve helped hundreds of printers make web to print a key part of their success, with storefronts and online ordering solutions for dozens of industries and countless purchasers.
Contact us today to discuss how we can make you more efficient with our web to print tools.