Key advice for a profitable web-to-print project

11 Sep 2023

web to print rendabel

Web-to-print is becoming increasingly popular among print professionals because it improves service, speeds up administration, reduces time-to-market and makes the process more transparent for customers. But how do you make sure your web-to-print project is also profitable? In this blog post, we give you clear and practical advice, based on more than 10 years' experience in multiple web-to-print projects at print media companies.

Why should you invest in Web-to-Print?

Let's sum up the five biggest advantages:

  1. Increased efficiency: Web-to-print technology automates many of the manual processes involved in printing, such as order entry, prepress and proofing. This saves time and reduces errors, increasing efficiency and significantly lowering your costs.
  2. Improved customer experience: Customers place orders online at any time, from anywhere and on any device. This convenience can improve the customer experience and make it easier for customers to do business with your print company. Web-to-print also fits fully into the social e-business trend where customers order smoothly online and also want to receive their orders quickly.
  3. Customisation and personalisation: Customers customise their print products using online templates or by uploading their own designs. This creates a more personalised experience for customers and helps your print business stand out from competitors with extra service.
  4. Less waste: Your customers only order the amount of print they need, reducing waste and minimising the impact of printing on the environment.
  5. Scalability: You scale up your operations more easily by handling a higher volume of orders without significantly increasing staff or overhead costs.

Identify your Web-to-Print needs... and hurdles

The first step to take is to assess the need for web-to-print in your print business and find out how it can benefit your customers. Listen to their feedback and experiences to get valuable insights that could give you ideas. Make a list of solutions, but keep in mind your own company culture and activities that may act as potential barriers to the transformation. You can use these internal obstacles as a starting point:

  1. Technical difficulties: implementing web-to-print requires considerable technical expertise, especially when it comes to integrating the software with a company's existing systems. If your print company does not have internal technical expertise or resources, it may struggle to make the system work smoothly.
  2. Employee resistance: Some employees may resist the change, especially if they are used to traditional (print) processes. It is important to clearly communicate the benefits of web-to-print to employees and involve them in the implementation process to overcome any objections.

Create buyer personas

To better understand your customers' needs, you can create buyer personas. These are fictional profiles that represent the average customer, including their demographic information, goals, challenges and other relevant characteristics. Here's how to get started:

  1. Conduct customer research: The first step is to collect data on the customers you currently have and those you want to attract. You can do this through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or by analysing data from your website and social media channels. You could also use your CRM and MultiPress dashboard for this analysis.
  2. Identify commonalities: Once you have collected the necessary data, look for common characteristics among your customers, such as their age, gender, job title, location, interests and buying habits.
  3. Develop buyer personas: Using the data you have collected, develop one or more buyer personas that represent your target customers.
  4. Validate your assumptions: After creating your buyer personas, validate them by sharing them with your existing customers and getting feedback. You can also use online tools to test and refine your personas.

This will help you detect how, where and when your customer can be reached and determine the steps they take to complete a purchase. These buyer personas will now also be able to serve for your web-to-print research: you can now see whether your customer needs web-to-print, what they want to do with it and how you should offer it.

Using an AI like ChatGPT, you can quickly formulate these personas based on your input. However, remain critical at all times: AI is not always as smart as it seems! 

Avoid software silos and keep an eye on costs

Always keep in mind that no matter what solution the print company chooses for the web-to-print platform, you should always aim to link the platform to the existing ERP system. Avoiding duplication and so-called "software silos", where different software applications do not communicate with each other, is essential for an efficient and optimised business process. 

Don't forget to keep an eye on the costs of this project, including hourly wages, materials used, production costs and lead time. Your web-to-print project should be an investment, not a risk. To keep an eye on these costs and manage them efficiently, consider using suitable software, such as MultiPress.

Ask for expert advice

Now that you have done your own research into the needs of your company as well as your client, you have an overview of the things you can provide yourself and the things you need external help for.

If you encounter too many obstacles, whether technical or human, consider hiring an external consultant to help you. MultiPress project managers, with years of experience in the printing industry, are trained to provide guidance and new perspectives. Moreover, our project managers can help you avoid tunnel vision caused by your existing knowledge.

MultiPress offers several modules in the field of B2B portals and customised integrations with popular web-to-print solutions:

  • MultiPress offers its own web-to-print module. With the MultiPress web-to-print online editor, your customer gets to work himself with design templates, images and text. Your customer can easily design and order printed materials such as business cards.
  • For B2B customers, MultiPress offers a customer portal. With this online customer portal, customers can safely manage and control quotes, orders and individual item data and orders. In addition to the enormous time and cost savings in order processing, the customer portal enables a secure, fast and transparent workflow for your customers and suppliers.
  • MultiPress's connection to third-party web-to-print solutions allows secure sharing of information between different platforms. MultiPress offers integration with WooCommerce, Magento and many others. The full list can be found here.

Whether you choose MultiPress, Magento, WooCommerce or another solution, we are ready to support your specific needs and work together to create an integrated solution that fits your business perfectly.