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Howie Fenton

Web to Print still need the basics
February 11, 2008

We’ve been discussing how expecting increased sales or profits simply by offering a shopping cart is naïve. Here are four cases in point.

#1 A franchise printer is losing market share. They set up a web to print portal. Having another company host it - the investment is minimal. They sign up, register a subdomain, change the skin and hire a designer to create and upload 100 templates. In an attempt to keep prices low they hire the cheapest designer and get poor quality designs and understaff the site resulting in poor customer service. The combination of poor quality design and poor customer service results in poor sales.

#2 – One printing company read about the success of VisaPrint and decide they wanted a piece of the pie. The invested in infrastructure, staff, template design and built a solution. Month after month they expect their sales to soar but are disappointed. Why? They have not identified their target market or created a marketing and sales strategy.

#3 A different franchise set up their web to print solution. It took about a week to set up their templates. An email went to close to 1000 franchisees. Most of them rushed to the site, registered, played with it, saved their orders and NONE made a purchase. Why, the pricing was 33% higher then the competition.

#4 – A fast food franchise, spends time and money to create a web to print site that will allow their franchisees to order and customize print orders. Their emphasis is creating a efficient web to print site, that automates the internal manufacturing. Therefore, a great deal of time is spent in scripting actions, using hot folders and servers and building a digital smart factory. However, they soon realize that few of their franchisees are using the strategy, because they forgot to get feedback from their customers about the user interface. It’s clumsy, slow and awkward and no one uses it.

Don’t fall for the “if you build it they will come business model”. Remember the basics: user friendly interface, efficient manufacturing, marketing and sales, quality design and good customer service.

Posted by Howie Fenton on February 11, 2008 | Comments (1)

February 17, 2008
In response to: Web to Print still need the basics
amazingprint commented:

In your #1, poor service is post the sale, hence shouldn’t influence overall sales. In #2 target market was Vista, which is very transparent when it comes to marketing similarly. In #3, price isn’t everything; otherwise vista would have no competitors online, tell #3 to disable the “save” or procrastination button. Howie, the success of a web to print system for a franchisee or for a stand alone print shop, depends just like any other type of a sale on: a/b testing, marketing, conversions, design platform, offering and most importantly brand. I agree with you, as these are the NEW basics.