Last Thursday, besides rain, I remember for the visit to Telford. Thankfully, the GPS system worked fairly well and I arrived at my destination promptly; only running around one round about twice to weigh up the pros & cons of the gps instructions. Having ignored the lady on the machine sat nav I arrived at the Ricoh factory. The venue of the seminars on web to print.
Today was a sponsored by Whitmar publications event on Web to print. One item I learnt during the day was that customers don't care about web to print. (Web to print? I forgot to say what it is. It is a software system that allows customers to order on line. Vistaprint are experts at it.) So they don't care, yes, that makes sense; its easier to ring up and say could I have 500 business cards. Web to print sales people emphasize the downside of traditional systems, the to-ing and fro-ing between printer and customer. From the customer's point of view the advantage is that the responsibility for errors is left with the printer. Even today this was highlighted as one of our customers had us design the art work; they were to send the completed art work to an on-line printers; we then 'wasted' much time helping the customer sending their art work to the on-line printers. several variations on the art work, emails left right and centre, phone calls to the on-line printers customer support. Web to print companies cope by stonewalling and fobbing off customers.
I was told that Vistaprint has a 20% complaint rate, true or not it hasn't stopped them succeeding as a company. Then, as I review my print jobs I realized that to turn our business into a full web to print enterprise would be nigh on impossible unless I removed most of my catalogue. Web to print companies specialize in a limited range of products, such as flyers and business cards. Print shop such as the Minuteman Press outlets specialize in not specializing.... raffle tickets, posters, brochures, file conversion, forms, diaries, calendars, wedding stationery, business cards, copying, faxing, overprint of pens, newsletters etc. Attempting to computerize all this would be a challenge. Another common factor of these systems is the extraordinary expense of installing them, £3000 for setting them up, £500 a month charged. Forget it. There are cheaper options available but they tend to be a bit clunky.
Moving on, it turns out we are already using web to print, in part; web to print includes a whole range of technologies and many printers will have some of them... email marketing, electronic pricing, web sites, templates. Anyhow, it was an excellent series of seminars led by informative people who seem to know what they were doing or saying. At the end of the day it didn't seem to quite add up. More thought and analysis needed.
Today was a sponsored by Whitmar publications event on Web to print. One item I learnt during the day was that customers don't care about web to print. (Web to print? I forgot to say what it is. It is a software system that allows customers to order on line. Vistaprint are experts at it.) So they don't care, yes, that makes sense; its easier to ring up and say could I have 500 business cards. Web to print sales people emphasize the downside of traditional systems, the to-ing and fro-ing between printer and customer. From the customer's point of view the advantage is that the responsibility for errors is left with the printer. Even today this was highlighted as one of our customers had us design the art work; they were to send the completed art work to an on-line printers; we then 'wasted' much time helping the customer sending their art work to the on-line printers. several variations on the art work, emails left right and centre, phone calls to the on-line printers customer support. Web to print companies cope by stonewalling and fobbing off customers.
I was told that Vistaprint has a 20% complaint rate, true or not it hasn't stopped them succeeding as a company. Then, as I review my print jobs I realized that to turn our business into a full web to print enterprise would be nigh on impossible unless I removed most of my catalogue. Web to print companies specialize in a limited range of products, such as flyers and business cards. Print shop such as the Minuteman Press outlets specialize in not specializing.... raffle tickets, posters, brochures, file conversion, forms, diaries, calendars, wedding stationery, business cards, copying, faxing, overprint of pens, newsletters etc. Attempting to computerize all this would be a challenge. Another common factor of these systems is the extraordinary expense of installing them, £3000 for setting them up, £500 a month charged. Forget it. There are cheaper options available but they tend to be a bit clunky.
Moving on, it turns out we are already using web to print, in part; web to print includes a whole range of technologies and many printers will have some of them... email marketing, electronic pricing, web sites, templates. Anyhow, it was an excellent series of seminars led by informative people who seem to know what they were doing or saying. At the end of the day it didn't seem to quite add up. More thought and analysis needed.
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