Getting a web-to-print website is easy. Getting it to make you money is not. We have a few do-s and don’t-s for you to consider before you take a plunge.

Web-to-print & new customers

Having a fancy website without good sales people and smart marketing won’t bring new customers. The technology is only one of components of the service a printer provides. Do not oversell it. Price, quality, delivery times, etc are more important to the customer. Web-to-print adds convenience to the overall process and reduces costs at both ends. The technology is only beneficial when both price and time are a priority consideration.

End consumer products

The competition in this market is fierce. Several established players like VistaPrint, Click Business Cards, 123 Print and many-many others have large scale operations, rock-bottom prices and huge advertising budgets. It will be very difficult for a small player to get noticed.

Google search results

“business cards” - 36,400,000 results

“business cards plumber” - 479,00 results

The first 10 pages are taken by old, well-optimized websites. It will take time and effort to move your website to the top of search results.

Google advertising

Search engine advertising is very expensive for popular keywords.

Assume that optimistic 10% of clicks result in an order.
284 clicks * 0.1= 28 orders a day at a cost of $127.5 per order ($3,570 / 28).

Corporate products

Web-to-print is an excellent sales tool. It gives your sales people a good excuse to call a potential corporate customer because you can offer what others cannot. Businesses with large number of customer-facing staff or those who order and re-order often are your best bet. Remember that their time spent ordering a product from you costs them money and lost productivity, but don’t be surprised if they don’t like doing it online. There are plenty of people who prefer the old way.

Charging a premium for your online services is risky, because your competitors don’t

The effort of setting up a template is roughly equivalent to processing 2 orders manually. Will they order often enough?

Brands and franchises

A deal with a franchise head office or a brand name holder is an excellent opportunity to get high order volumes at very little customer acquisition cost. Web-to-print is perfectly suited for this type of customers. The technology does make a big difference here.

Brands and franchises - partisan approach

A lot of master franchises and brand name holders neglect the printing and advertising aspect of their business or demand exuberant prices though “preferred suppliers”. It leaves the franchisees unhappy and looking for better alternatives. Usually it is not difficult to identify individual franchise holders and approach them directly with your offer. It should be very easy for you to beat the prices demanded by the “preferred supplier”.

A good service, low prices and the convenience of web-to-prit will quickly bring you more franchise members through word of mouth. You can achieve the same low customer acquisition cost and web-to-print technology makes all the difference.

Consider copyright and trademark issues. Their head offices may not like your approach.

Niche consumer products

We see some incredible examples of web-to-print being used for niche products of all sorts and kinds. It is all about knowing that niche market and having access to the customer base. A simple example - greeting cards. Who would think that apart from a few big players there are successful printers servicing tiny micro-markets where good service, right price, excellent designs and the convenience of web-to-print bring very good order volumes.

Conclusion

Web-to-print is only a tool and will not replace your sales and marketing. You can extract only as much value out of it as you put into promoting and selling your services.

No matter how good your web-to-print software is, but if the price is too high or the quality is too low it cannot not help you get more business through the door.