Web to Print and Online Print Management can be daunting prospects to the average printer. For those without the will, and cash, to go it alone, the answer is trade printers who have done all the hard work for you by developing W2P and OPM modules you can use, mostly for free. Andy McCourt looks into the ‘Smart Trade Brigade’ and finds some compelling reasons to sign up with them.
There is plenty of help available from suppliers of W2P solutions, such as EFI’s Digital Store Front or XMPie’s StoreFlow for those printers with the determination to take their business online but beware, W2P can only work well when it is embedded into your MIS and workflow. To have a stand-alone W2P site just ‘receiving orders over the internet’ is akin to owning vending machines where each one is manned to hand-deliver the drinks or snacks. You have to automate throughout, from order to delivery.
This can result a much larger project that needs to be addressed by systems integrators and taciturn code-writers with all of the social skills of a garden statue. It puts a lot of small-to-medium sized printers off the idea of W2P and OPM and often results in plain ‘billboard’ websites that simply state the company’s services, history, equipment, awards, location and contact details. So often we see statements such as: “We’re dedicated to quality printing so, if you ever need a quote or some advice please call or email us anytime.” Guess what? ‘They’ won’t.
Off the shelf and free
But even for the smallest printer with minimal resources, there is a ready-made answer to W2P and it could not be quicker, easier, cheaper or smarter to implement. Trade-printer supplied website templates.
First, to define the difference between W2P and OPM. Web-to-Print is just that, a website that enables any customer to see your business, get a price, upload artwork and place an order – usually pre-paid by PayPal or credit card. VistaPrint is the best known example of this with founder Rob Keane’s brainchild going from startup in 1995 to over AUD$1.5 billion in sales for financial 2014.
Online Print Management is more personal and sophisticated and typically targets regular print buying customers, hosting their most frequently used templates, standard-ising fonts, storing logos and image files and even, for chains and franchises, creating own-brand websites accessible by every outlet nation-wide for ordering brochures, signange, cards and stationery that complies with the corporate guidelines.
For most printers and designers, a combination of both W2P and OPM is desirable. The fast-growing trade printer CMYKhub also offers what it calls D4P, an online service that does not assume print-ready files and allows the customer to create their own designs for printing. With software generational numbers heading up, it might not be long before we see W99P.
CMYKhub has pioneered the offering of ready-made W2P and OPM websites to trade customers. The business model is fair and flexible, with the option to have work sent to the printer’s business itself, if it is within its capabilities, or via HUBlink to one of the well-equipped CMYKhub trade sites in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Darwin or Perth. For graphic designers broking a little print, they don’t even need a press; the work can go straight to their nearest CMYKhub site and is usually shipped within 24 hours.
Real time e-commerce
The trade customer selects a website template, customises it with logos, contact details, colours and products and the rest is done by CMYKhub who also host it as a classic ‘Cloud’ based service. Best of all – it’s free!
Profit margins can be set by the trade customer based on their buying price from CMYKhub, and adjusted anytime. The print web store is then open 24/7, expanding the trade customer’s business with very little effort or financial commitment other than sending at least some work through to CMYKhub, on which they make a profit anyway.
For OPM it works in much the same way but there is a small fee per template created by CMYKhub, but with training the trade customer can create their own. There is virtually no limit to what artwork can be uploaded and the trade customer maintains control over the print-ready PDFs; choosing when they are ready and whether they are printed in-house or sent via HUBlink to CMYKhub.
W3 from printing dotcom
The name Grafenia may not be well known in Australia but it is the new name for what was printing.com – Manchester, UK’s Tony Rafferty’s aggregated print provider that was in the spotlight of rapid growth a couple of years ago. Rafferty realised the goal of setting up cloned print sites everywhere, was both expensive and fraught with potholes so he wisely developed W3P in two iterations: W3client and W3shop. Both represent a SaaS (Software as a Service) Cloud-approach and both are in operation in the ANZ region.
In New Zealand, thanks to its good spread of print shops, PrintStop has rolled out the ‘shop’ model and changed its name to printing.com which was the original license it acquired a few years back. The NZ printing.com website is a typical digital store front with offers, free delivery and compelling graphics. Grafenia W3p in NZ is also available as a 'shop' or 'client' version to licensed 3rd party printers, designers and other print buyers wanting to offer web-based print buying to their own clients.
For Australia, the Cester family’s Whirlwind based in Knoxfield Victoria has taken a different approach. As a trade printer, Whirlwind has partnered with Grafenia to offer branded websites to trade customers, using W3P. It can operate as both a B2C shop and B2B OPM portal. Over 18,000 sector-specific templates are stored in the Cloud along with stock images so that clients without print-ready design can create their own files. New templates can be created directly from Adobe’s Indesign.
W3P ‘Shop’ allows customers to have a professional consumer-facing website that can help both design and print, using the design templates and over 10 million searchable images. The system can easily be integrated into existing websites.
W3P ‘Client’ allows customers to have an online print management system for multi-outlet business and corporates. It includes digital asset management, pick & pack and payment gateways. Templates can be created in ten minutes using Indesign. Both platforms enable SMEs in print & design to have a professional online business presence in either niche or local markets, with very little investment.
W3P goes one step further in that it includes some basic MIS. This appears to address the issue of interfacing Web-to-Print and OPM with third party MIS systems but is aimed mainly at design studios and smaller ad agencies. Called W3MIS, it includes preflighting, customer relationship management and day-to-day design management plus what it calls ‘entry-level production management’. There is also a module called ‘Pick ‘n’ Pack’ for stock management, making the whole package seem ideal for a small print manufacturing shop with an A3 cut-sheet digital device.
W3P is subscription-based starting from $299 per month and will be comprehensively demonstrated by Whirlwind at the upcoming PrintEx show, where qualified registrants will be offered free software valued at between $5,000 and $10,000 per annum.
OPM grows
If you’re a Kwik Kopy franchise you have the option of adding Zenith Hub OPM to your services. This is more of a model to encourage corporates, chains and franchises to buy print online, which is then directed to the nearest Kwik Kopy production site for local fulfillment and delivery, but can be seen as a kind of ‘trade print’ W2P model within the franchise.
Worldwide Printing Solutions also offers its clients an OPM model but again this is directed more towards channeling regularly ordered and templated work through to the franchised Worldwide outlets.
Other trade-only printers such as LEP and CTI Colour Printer use W2P as a support for their trade buying customers but have yet to move into offering branded websites that the customers can then re-market to attract W2P and OPM work.
Printers such as the ACT’s Vivid Print have embraced OPM and offer their ‘Brew’ system free to clients who agree to purchase a set amount of print annually. Brew enables clients (not other trade printers) to place orders for most common print items via the web; edit and change information such as phone numbers and email addresses; view and modify orders online; arrange online payments via PayPal or credit card; centrally manage orders that come from different departments or locations; assign users and manage access levels according to an organisation’s policies; view history and order reports and order print anytime, from anywhere.
For print service providers, there are two pathways into smart printing using W2P and OPM. One is to speak with your MIS or workflow supplier to see if they have extended their modules to include W2P or a digital store front of some kind or; license a module from a third party supplier who can work with your MIS. Don’t allow your W2P presence to become an island disconnected from the rest of your workflow.
The other is to consider a Cloud-based service hosted by a trade only print provider such as CMYKhub or Whirlwind, or printing.com in NZ. This is both inexpensive and frees you up from maintenance and upgrades.
It could even free you up from having to print the jobs as well.