Print service vendors have never seen themselves entering the eCommerce setup selling printing online. Remodeling their traditional set up they have now startedselling printing products online giving rise to Print Commerce. However, only a few businesses survive in the long run, and up to 75% of them fail.
Printing and ecommerce is a well adopted model by customers but both the industries vary a great deal from each other. Marrying them managing different aspects of print and ecommerce are bound to be encountered with several pitfalls like making solutions more complex, less adaption by internal teams or Albeit, you do everything right if your print ecommerce or web to print solution is not saving customers time and efforts, it tends to fail or customers will find it hard adopting it. The model came to existence to interact with customers digitally and save time and efforts for tech-savvy customers. But have you ever-though that if your print software is saving customers’ time or they are having tough time adopting it.
You must be wondering that how can you evaluate from a customers end that are they liking new printing software? Is it more time savings and fast in placing orders via printing software or web to print portal than doing it over phones and long mail chains? Are they satisfied with the print order shopping cart and checkout process?
What features ensure that your online print software is saving customers’ time?
In offline world there are sales people who can assist customers in their buyer’s journey but this option is not available in the online world. Still over online medium customers’ time can be saved via various features and can be very helpful and enriching for them to interact with you online. Here’s a list of crucial and peripheral features that you should look in your printer software to save customers’ time –
Crucial Features that you should look up to:
• Approval Management Workflow
Print business owners already know how much time it goes on phone and mail conversations to get a single approval for artwork. Even after paying attention to all details, there are times when complete print orders go for wastage as there are no recorded approval workflows. This is customers’ loss of time and businesses’ loss of efforts and costs. Web to print software that is having inbuilt approval workflow management saves customers time by placing notes and changes while ordering for production. Business owners can check notes, do changes as required and can upload softcopy for approvals. Customers can download, views and cross-check comments and changes done and can approve things online. There’s no back and forth regarding explaining changes and waiting for printers to send an amended copy.
• Print ordering and Online Quote Management
Ordering print requires a lot of things to be considered like a number of colours, type of printing, the material of printing, minimum order size etc. The catch is that if one of the things very, printing prices tend to vary. Web to print software need to provide real-time quotes workflow to give customers’ accurate cost of printing. This saves customers time to go back to printers and ask for price sheet or checking prices for every option. There is advanced web to print solutions available in the market that understand all the minute details printing industry entails and have customized solutions for them. Printing businesses should consider web to print software after a proper understanding of how flexible technology is with the customization required to save customers’ time and make them happy.
• Shipping and Payment Options
Web to print software accentuates the whole process of placing print orders. Digital payments and records eliminate the hassle of keeping records and invoices of repeat orders or wrong orders and streamlines payment with B2B customers. B2C customers save their time by having options of paying online and getting orders delivered at their doorsteps. This saves customers’ time and enhances their overall experience with the brand.
• Customer Accounts
Web to print provides eCommerce features to print businesses and customer accounts is one such feature even print buyers look forward to. Customer accounts provide the ability to save items to wish list, share artworks for approvals, access to previous orders, updating and editing their contact information and address book. This saves customer’s time in seeing previous orders or getting past invoices as everything is being recorded on the web to print solution.
• Online Product Design Tool
Web to print solutions provide a lot of options and variety in terms of design, still, designs are very subjective from person to person. Online product design tool with features of editing images, uploading them, using different font and texts and other design features or give the option of uploading their artwork. This shortens buying cycle and cut down their time in case they don’t want to go for defined templates.
Peripheral Features that you should look up to:
• Browsing Features
Web to print software that provides smart search features like layered navigation, easy filtering, product comparisons, reviews and ratings will allow customers save on their time in finding the right product for them. Business owners also in increases their chances of cross-selling and up-selling their products and increasing average order values with this. Look for a powerful cataloguing mechanism in the web to print software to save your customers time and making it user-friendly for them.
• Seamless design and mobile compatibility
Having seamless integration of all the features and web to print software that is fully mobile compatible ensures that customers are not wasting time in managing screen resolutions. Mobile is omnipresent and looking to the varieties in screen and sizes of tabs, mobiles, phabletsetc; it is very much required that your web to print software provides a seamless experience to customers throughout all channels of interaction. This saves on their time in getting habituate to the changing screens from desktops to mobiles and still having the same experience.
Conclusion
Web to print implemented in silos, without considering end-customers’ requirements are bound to fail. Technologies are only successful when they adapted by users and eases out tasks for them, saves their time and provide one-stop-solution to them.