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4 Signs Showing You're Ready for a Web to Print Storefront

ready for a web to print storefront

| Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes |

How do you know if you’re ready for a web to print storefront? How do you know if you’re ready for some automation in the procurement and distribution of your printed marketing materials? Here are four potential challenges that show you that it may be time:

If you’ve found yourself in agreement to the above challenges, or even just one or two, you are ready for a web to print storefront.

There is great news for you! Robust web to print software solutions exist that address all of the concerns listed above.

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You or your staff frequently order items that are the same in style but different in content.

Not only are a lot of your orders repeated, but a lot of items can be templated and follow certain rules and logic. Your marketing materials follow a certain consistent design but are personalized to an individual, dealer location or branch. (Please check out this list of potential items.)
number1

You are continually concerned about maintaining brand consistency and ensuring that shipments are routed correctly.

You seem to always be sharing your style guides and branding guidelines over and over with every agency, vendor or partner that you work with — and mistakes still occur! Keeping multiple shipping locations accurate amongst them always seems to be a challenge too.
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You and your staff wish that routine ordering and re-ordering could be easier and quicker.

Many of your staff are capable of re-ordering routine items without having to disrupt your schedule or waiting on you. You (and your staff) want a way to get their marketing materials into the proper hands faster, without the needless fuss and without the risk of careless errors or inconsistencies in following branding guidelines.
number3

You or your staff wish that all of your marketing materials could be found (and ordered) from a single location.

With the ever-increasing quantity of printed marketing collateral, signage, stationery and any other branded assets, you or your staff will have a hard time remembering where you had sourced some of those not-too-often-ordered marketing items.

If you’ve found yourself in agreement to the above challenges, or even just one or two, you are ready for a web to print storefront.

There is great news for you! Robust web to print software solutions exist that address all of the concerns listed above.

So I’m Ready for a Web to Print Storefront, Now What?

We have determined that you’re ready for a web to print storefront. The next step would be to determine which web to print software would work best for you.

To satisfy challenge #1 above, you should ensure that your digital storefront software supports saved and repeat orders. This is commonly achieved by requiring a profile or account for the orderer.

To answer challenge #2 above, you should ensure that your online ordering system supports logic with their templates. This will allow for some built-in “intelligence” when auto-formatting or auto-typesetting your marketing materials. For greater accuracy in shipping information, you should also ensure that your web to print solution supports split shipments and personal and/or company address books.

To conquer challenge #3 above, you may wish to ensure that your online storefront solution is easy to use and that it supports approval routing. With approval routing, you are able to open up ordering to more staff, where, once they are happy with their proof and order, they can submit the order and have it route to an approver (perhaps yourself), so that the order (and its item(s)) can be reviewed prior to it getting released to the appropriate vendor/manufacturer.

Finally, to have success against challenge #4 above, it will be very likely important that your web to print software is vendor-agnostic. This means that your web to print storefront is capable of working with any vendor at any time. This will give you the ultimate in flexibility in dealing with whichever partners you choose, all while maintaining the same familiar ordering experience for you and your staff!

Many different vendors may offer you a private storefront, but they may not allow you to put items from other vendors into your storefront, especially if it happens to be a vendor that may occupy the same market as that vendor. You will also want to ensure that orders can be properly routed even if items within the same order belong to different vendors.

Once Your Web to Print Storefront is Built, Reap the Rewards!

Your automated storefront allows you to be responsive to everyone who requires your marketing materials, granting access to all or to only those who need it. You can easily define limits on what and how much they can order. You can filter the display of items based on profiles or accounts so that certain departments, for example, only see items appropriate to them. Your storefront is available at any time, for anyone authorized to use it.

Combining usage reports and the ability to allow for just-in-time production, makes it possible to ensure that you produce only what you need, when you need it. Rather than buying in large quantities, only to see it become obsolete shortly thereafter.

Once you’re ready for a web to print storefront, you will soon realize that your web to print storefront is a modern solution to a number of key challenges. You are effectively using intelligent automation to perform routine and repetitive tasks, leaving you valuable time to respond to other worthwhile demands!