3D Printing

Business owners consider the potential value of 3D printing. It is fast and accessible. It is reshaping all the industries around so that you can add value for your web to print business. In the past, customers had to wait a week to get the product and chose the company based on how quickly it can deliver the product. So to stay competitive many printing companies try to embed 3D printing to create and deliver products quickly.

Personalization

Consumer behavior has changed during the last years. Now purchased process requires more personalized experience. Customers want to buy products designed by themselves. Therefore web to print companies offer templates, add features for customization: custom text or own artwork, for example.

Web to print software providers

Business owners now are partners with web2print software providers. Complete solutions they offer power up eCommerce business by adding web to print storefront. This partnership helps customers to track the shipping progress, increases the convenience of the design process and makes transactions easier. We can expect extensive growth of e-Commerce in 2020 and respective web to print companies are ready to offer their services. 

AI

Artificial Intelligence is getting into every aspect of our lives. The use of AI in the printing industry improves customer experience by offering customized direct mails, screen printing, real-time data, algorithms that reduce humans errors, and network security. With the power of AI, you can handle manual jobs like order processing, quality check, printing and more.

Sustainable printing

Due to the high level of carbon emission footprint printing and packaging industries try to reduce it. Being eco-friendly is a trend nowadays. Paper bottles, recycled paper, the treeless paper will rule in 2020. The main goal of printing industries is to add sustainability to the process, and they can easily do this because you only print what you need and when you need it.  

To sum up, this is not an end list of the printing industry trends, because it is constantly growing. There are many to uncover and try, so we need to keep up with developments. What is the most attractive trend for you?

Use a product customization tool

It is tough to impress and make your prospect to stay on your site. A product customization tool on your web to print shop can really draw attention. Customers love personalized things. So a good web to print store is the one that allows its customers to design products on their own, no matter it is stickers designs or t-shirts.

Make it fast and user-friendly

If your storefront’s page takes longer than three seconds to load, be prepared that your customers will leave this. It would help if you understood that browsing experience plays a prominent role. Also, make sure that your storefront is user-friendly with an intuitive interface. Your customers should clearly understand how they can view, order, and buy goods. Moreover, your online web to print store should be optimized for tablets, mobiles, and desktop users. 

Ready templates

Ready templates can be your wild card. If you provide it, your customers will never look for the alternatives. Not everyone has a design idea. Moreover, not everyone has sufficient time. So, your customers need ready-made templates that can be printed on the t-shirts, business cards, stickers, or any product they want to customize. 

Use digital marketing

Social media is a powerful tool to get more leads and increase the number of your customers. Facebook and Instagram can help you grow awareness and brand visibility. Create business pages, post engaging content, be useful for your audience, and you will establish your business reputation.

Maintain good relationships

If your customer is satisfied, then you are on the way to your goal. Try to meet your customer’s needs and desires. Be helpful, polite, and friendly, and they will appreciate this. Also, you can do giveaways or offer discounts for regular buyers.

Support

Offer your customers 24/7 support because one bad shopping experience can cause provoke them to choose your competitor. You can deal with your clients by email, live chat, and phones. Try to solve their problems as much as possible. Besides, remember about time and geographical differences, these should not affect your service. 

Online business is something like a challenge. But if you try to apply changes from time to time, you can see what influence your business the most. Do your best and see the result. If you need assistance with the tips mentioned above, you can contact us.

All of these things have an impact on your prospects. In most cases, people think that having a custom product builder integrated with popular eCommerce platforms is enough. Using the Magento product designer tool requires the implementation of practices that can market your Magento web to print business successfully. 

Feel it as a customer

Before you start selling any product or service to others, use it yourself. Does your business service solve the problem of your target audience? Do you like the design? Is it convenient for you to use the online store? In other words, is it user-friendly? Using your service as your customer, you may identify missed points and therefore improve it in these respective areas. 

Optimize it

If you want people to notice you, you need to make it easy to find you. To get more visitors through organic search, you should optimize your online store to the latest SEO standards. Use organic keywords, prepare useful content for your audience, create a positive user experience, optimize your website for conversions. Moreover, you can try to do it simultaneously with paid marketing. This tactic will create a better relationship between your online web to print store and search engine. 

Be valuable

Take care of your customers. Useful guides or tips can help you get more engagement and increase your audience. If they know that helpful information appears on your site regularly, they come back again and again. For example, you can tell them how to match the custom t-shirt with other clothes. 

Share on social media

Pay attention to promoting your Magento web to print store in social media. Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, Quora, and Pinterest rule our world. People spend their time there for the whole day, so it is an excellent chance for you to build and spread your brand’s name.

Use video marketing

People find it easier to perceive information through video than through text. Therefore, you can use the power of YouTube and create exciting videos and explain more about who you are, what your product is, and how it can be useful for your customers. Do not forget about entertaining content. 

Do you have an online web to print store? Feel free to contact us to integrate our Magento online design software.

Customers appreciate things that are made just for them

When you have a choice to buy the mass market thing or purchase something that is tailored to you, apparently you will choose the second one, because you can feel more in control. So, If you allow your customers to buy custom products they want, they will value it and definitely will come back again. Product customization delivers customer experience and increases customer loyalty and satisfaction. Thus, it is a proven business strategy that will drive regular customers, not one-time ones.

Your customers are different

No matter what you sell: online products or physical, you should know that your customers have various needs and desires. Understanding that your customers are different is essential when you create a product that can be liked by many people. When you want to create a product for everyone, you will just create it for no one. The perfect solution is to customize your product to fit different segments of customers instead of being generally suitable. To correctly identify your potential customization opportunities, create user personas. In this way, you can genuinely understand your customer’s pains, goals, and needs. 

Increase personalized experience

When you place the design process in the hands of your customers, you give them an opportunity to choose the desired color, textures, artwork, add text, and much more. The more custom options you provide, the more valuable and fascinating customer experience you get. You create a connection between the buyer and the product, in this way, your brand grows. 

Increase competitiveness

Selling products that are unique make you more competitive on the market. Moreover, customers are willing to pay up to 20% more for custom products. So that delivering your customers what accurately they seek is a proven way to increase sales. Once you claim your company as a brand that offers unique products, your competitors will need to strive to catch up with you. 

To sum up, it is vital for your business to be able to compete in today’s market. The only marketing strategy may not be enough. You should deeply understand to whom you are selling. Personalization is a perfect way to learn about your customers and their needs and finally become popular and demanded on the market.

First of all, let’s get acquainted with existing platforms. Magento, WooCommerce, OpenCart, Shopify work well with web to print business. You can choose any of them, but consider functionality depending on your needs.

Magento

Magento is one of the largest e-commerce platforms on the market. It is trusted by popular brands such as Cisco and Nike and has more than 350 000 users. Magento has a lot of remarkable features, such as price management, flexibility, custom design, and cloud deployment. With Magento, you can achieve the desired functionality using customized templates. Moreover, wish lists and better price suggestions help to increase customers engagement. Also, it is mobile and SEO friendly.

Woocommerce

Woocommerce - is an eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It is an open-source plugin so you can host it anywhere. The great thing about WooCommerce that it is very secure. It provides updates regularly and is compatible with WordPress versions. WooCommerce has many themes that you can modify. Besides, this platform is easy to use and learn. And one of the main advantages of WooCommerce is that it is free. You just need to download the plugin and start your business upgrade.

OpenCart

OpenCart is also the right choice for your eCommerce business. It offers many features including perfect order processing and easy to use admin panel. In general, the OpenCart interface is simple and straightforward. OpenCart has a good set of themes and modules. This platform provides many payment methods such as Amazon Pay, World Pay, PayPal, and more. OpenCart has perfect support and very clear documentation with screenshots to make user’s usage easier.

Shopify

Shopify is a reliable solution for already existing eCommerce business as well as for those who are going to build an online shop. Shopify is simple to use platform with a modern and friendly interface. Shopify provides usage of different sales channels such as Facebook, Messenger, Amazon, eBay, Pinterest, so that it can improve your sales like a shot. It gives you a dropshipping opportunity with an extensive range of dropshipping apps. Likewise, Shopify supports many payment processors. It comes with inbuilt services such as Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal.

So how to choose the eCommerce platform for your web to print store?

Check if it meets your needs

First of all, you should understand what your main requirements are. What should the platform provide? What would you not want at all? Once you decided, start exploring existing platforms and their features. Many of them offer a free trial so that you can accurately understand if this is what you were looking for. Also, you can connect with support and sales staff and ask questions to get a better understanding of what the platform provides.

Compare costs

Most eCommerce platforms are paid. You need to check what is included in the payment to make sure that you are investing in what you really need. Very often, eCommerce store builders offer different plans like basic, standard, and premium. That means that each plan upgrade is accompanied by an additional set of features.

Platform usability and functionality

When we talk about usability, it means that you can work without the need to learn a lot of coding or be aware of the technologies. So you should have the ability to set up, navigate, and use the platform easily. The interface of the platform should be intuitive and user-friendly so that you can concentrate on promoting your business instead of spending your precious time to learn the platform.

Support

When it comes to platform setup or some platform upgrades after your online business growth, you may need some help. So, please, make sure that the support staff of this platform will give you qualified assistance with answering your questions and solving the problems.

To sum up, when choosing a platform for your web to print business, consider all points, ricks, and features. Save your time and money and take it seriously. It is essential for you to study all aspects of your business. Good luck!

Which points when choosing the eCommerce platform for your printing business are the most vital for you?

The project does not consist of coding only. We need to do a lot of preparations and post-coding work to create a solution that will satisfy our clients. First of all, we should carefully discuss with you which solution you want by exploring your business needs and requirements. Meanwhile, we analyze our experience from previous similar projects to understand what is feasible and what the likely estimate will be. We also offer some demos so that you could evaluate live solutions and share your feedback. The feedback helps us get more details to understand what you need entirely. We document all of the discussed requirements for further project development.

Our team explains then how the solution may look like as well as indicates the likely time and effort involved. Quoted hours include requirements management, solution design, development, testing, deployment, and support. Also, we communicate associated risks and timeframe as the project parameters.

Once we have initial requirements and know what you expect to receive, we start the development process. Our team creates a list of tasks to accomplish and to deliver a ready solution. The solution is developed incrementally in sprints. Every sprint usually takes four weeks and is allocated to a specific timeframe. To prepare a sprint, we select some tasks from the general list of tasks we created (called backlog) and start working. After every sprint, we deliver you a working demo version of the solution.

In most cases, it happens continuously or biweekly. Besides, we hold weekly meetings where team members discuss the progress as well as any impediments we might have down the road. You are also involved in the process, as your participation is crucial for project success. We expect the client to provide feedback, clarify requirements, answer questions, and accept features. Besides, you can see how costs are used and distributed between the tasks and can control them by going for some function or excluding it from the scope.

For every task and sprint, the testing and QA process follows after development. It is essential to see whether the results match the requirements and fulfill the business goal. We also ensure that the delivered software contains minimal bugs or unimplemented specifications. Should any issues arise, we communicate them immediately to discuss the associated costs to address and implement.

After successful testing, we publish the final demo and look forward to approval. Once you are satisfied, we are ready to deliver and deploy the solution. After the launch, we carefully control whether the solution is functional. We can also provide user assistance and solution training if necessary. It means that we can step you through the operating procedures and assist, for example, with fonts or product templates preparation. If you notice any issue, we create new tasks for it and proceed with the development in additional sprints until you are content with the solution. Once the bulk of the project development is complete, you may subscribe to the support plan for long-term maintenance.

Last but not least, for a stable solution, we review the requirements and list of completed tasks again. We suggest some improvements that we see will add value to the solution. You can decide whether to pursue such ideas in the subsequent sprints or revisit them later.

We hope you get a better understanding of how the custom web to print development process is working. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us!

Accessibility

Modern life is so fleeting that people do not want to waste their time waiting for something. Web to print solutions allow you to order the desired product at your convenience. You no longer have to wait for weekdays, you can place your order even at any time of the weekends. 

Ability to have customized designs

In connection with the expansion of social media and online printing, trends are changing fast. With web to print stores, people can buy unique products designed by themselves according to their requirements. Moreover, some stores offer you the ability to add new features to ready templates. There are no limits to your creativity and fantasy. You are welcome to design the thing you have wanted all your life.

Tracking and order management

Using the web to print solutions, you always know the progress of your order. When you order something, you get an automated email stating that your request was received, accepted, done, etc. Thereby, you can track the entire process and be sure when to expect your ordered product.

Fast and easy to use

Printing traditionally is a time-consuming process, while web2print stores need a few stages. All you need is to open the website, choose the design regarding your desires from a wide variety of design features, place the order, choose the delivery date, and that’s all! Also, if you need some changes in the design or cancel the order, you can easily do this online, even at the last minute. There is no need to go to the print company and spend your time and energy.

WYSIWYG

Wysiwyg means that you will get what you see. When you design your product on the web to print store, you can immediately see all the changes you do. So, you can be sure that the ordered product will be without extra or missing details. This approach increases customers’ confidence and loyalty. 

Ability to order from smartphones

Smartphones and tablets have become a part of our daily life. Web to print stores care about customers and provide the benefit of adapting to the screens of different devices. The ability to order from smartphones is a significant advantage for people with a busy schedule. So they can design and buy their products wherever they want, even standing in the queue to the store. 

These are the main benefits customers can get while buying at stores with web to print solutions. I want to emphasize that this is not the final list, as technologies are improving we are ready to offer more advantages to you soon.

Problem statement 

First of all, you should ask yourself which tool you need. Think about the features of your product design software. Which problems do you have at the moment? For example, you spend a lot of time processing customers' design order or have a lot of refunds. Make sure that this tool will cover all your needs. 

Consider the integration

As our world is changing fast, functional requirements for applications are getting more sophisticated. The ability to integrate product design software into your website is necessary. You need to decide what type of integration you want to have. Do not be afraid to ask the company you are going to work with about previous clients who integrated into the same CMS or e-commerce platform as you. Try to get some feedback about their integration, because you should consider all factors before investing.

Be sure that design tool is easy to use

The product design software you want to choose should be user-friendly with an intuitive interface. Many people leave the website page immediately if they do not understand what kind of customization you offer, what your products are, and what to do next. Your main goal is to take the user's attention and drive them to complete the checkout. The software must be easy to use both for you and your customers. As you will manage the process, you should not have difficulties with it. 

Compatibility with all devices

The product design software should work correctly on all devices: mobiles, tablets, desktops, etc. Tools that are compatible only with desktops are not actual anymore. According to the research, 58% of people use mobiles instead of desktops. People are also more inclined to complete the purchase once on mobile. Thus, make sure that your tool is compatible with mobiles so that you could increase your SEO ranking in Google search and let users use the design tool efficiently.

Support 

Do not think that the purchased product design tool is the last step. You can have some troubles after its installation. Ensure that the company you are working with is ready to provide 24/7 support and have an individual support plan. Are they prepared to help you if you want to add some new features to your application? Check the type of warranty they offer after the installation of their tool on your website.

Numbers of websites are increasing, and web to print technologies are evolving. You should meticulously choose the tool for your business to understand whether or not it can help your business grow. Make sure that the company providing design tools and services makes suggestions that suit your business requirements.

"It's time for my customers to do order themselves," thinks Jeff and purchases a simple product design tool for his website. The software works well for a while, but the pricing does not adequately reflect the capabilities of the equipment and printing process. The admin area of the purchased online editor also lacks some features that would ease up Jeff's job. So the businessman tries another web2print solution off the shelf, yet every time something is missing. The shop owner starts to think he travels in circles to find the answer of streamlining his orders.

Suddenly, among many web2print software providers, Jeff finds a team that listens to his pains and asks some questions no one asked before. Previous companies lacked the attention to Jeff previously, so he tries his best to explain how the ordering works and what features he lacks from used solutions. The company team listens to him well and offers to build a quick MVP (minimal viable product) to see if it matches his expectations. One week later, Jeff is ready to give a new software try by integrating it into his existing shop.

After a few test orders, Jeff is ready to give his feedback. He works together with the company team to tweak his solution further and soon replaces his off the shelf tool with the bespoke one. It looks like Jeff's issues are mostly solved, and the shop owner has focused now on attracting more customers and working with them closely to assist with the design and printing. His sales numbers start to pay off and rise, so Jeff thinks about hiring more staff and modernizing equipment.

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LiveArt offers custom web2print consulting services since 2001. Our first customers were bespoke boat name printers, and there were no ready solutions on the market at that time. Through hard work and dedication, we have brought up many web2print sites that are still online and developed expertise with 15+ years of experience working with many printing industries understanding and addressing their needs.