Survey any business in this day and age, and you will find that 92% of them want to deliver a personalized customer experience - whether it is through products or services. From eCommerce and financial services to F&B and retail, personalization is the need of the hour.

The print industry is no exception. From fashion and apparel to custom packaging and stationery items to trophies and marketing collaterals, a variety of items can be custom printed under the sun.

And why not? Offering personalization on more channels can increase overall consumer spending by up to 500%. With digital buyer penetration surpassing 65% across the globe by next year, boost your revenues just by functioning online and enabling customization.

Here is an example: you have a client that wants to run an offline marketing campaign to promote their new t-shirt line. Now such campaigns involve physical materials of some sort. They could be product brochures for a new launch, posters to promote an event or signage for billboards. They want personalization and print support under one roof.

What do they do? While your client could opt to manage all of these itself, it is much easier to work with third-party services that simplify the printing process and ensure consistency with high quality. That is where having a web-to-print storefront can make a difference.

If you are new to web-to-print services, here is a quick guide for printers you will like:

What is web-to-print?

Web-to-print is also known as “print eCommerce solution” or “remote publishing”. It is essentially a way for businesses (your printing company) and end-consumers (your clients) to purchase print products through an online self-service platform.

The concept itself is not a new one - the notion of sharing print files with the printer shop by email existed as far back as the 1990s, and it allowed printers to cater to clients within their geographic location. However, maintaining enough hardware to process those orders was expensive, and not to mention the limitations that geography brought to the fore.

As technology has evolved, costs and complications have gone down, and a simple web2print software solution has you covered for all your print needs. These web-to-print software solutions come with several pre-built templates for different products such as t-shirts, footwear, printeriors, brochures, business cards, labels and stickers, uniforms, and so on.

With a few clicks, your clients can customize a ready-to-print template design to their liking and get it printed on the material of their choice. Isn’t that simple? It is!

How does it work?

Deploying a web-to-print storefront might not seem any different from using desktop publishing software, where your clients upload their designs and print them in their preferred dimensions and quality.

However, web-to-print lets you streamline your client’s print requirements, unlike any desktop printing option. Simply upload a premade design, or use one of the ready templates on the portal, and place an order as large or small as needed after changing the design dimensions as necessary.

The great thing about software like this is that your clients can store their brand’s designs on the portal in a standard PDF/JPG format so they can access them whenever they need them.

They get to give the final stamp of approval to every design before it gets printed, which saves them the trouble of coordinating with a sales rep 24/7 and also removes the risk of the prints not coming out just the way you want them.

>>> Don’t Miss This: An Introduction to Top 5 Web-to-Print Software Companies

Why is it important for my clients and printing business?

There are many reasons for the same, seven of which are as follows:

1. Web-to-print has massive advantages in terms of convenience, cost savings and quality results. Typically, web-to-print software is designed to be easy for even novices to use so that every member of your clients’ teams can start using it from day one.

2. The software also makes it easy to place and track multiple orders at once, which is excellent if you have multiple vendors supplying printed items. This way, they all can separate user accounts to keep track of orders and deliveries, thus making it easier for you to scale the web-to-print software solution as and when required.

3. Once your clients have uploaded a design onto the web-to-print portal, anyone can access it any time they need to print more copies of it. You, on the other hand, can keep track of the designs and ensure they are stored safely.

4. Your clients can also make tweaks to the design as and when necessary, be it the background colour or the logo being used - and also keep certain elements the same throughout, such as the company’s contact details.

5. Several portals offer the option to directly send out an email or social media campaigns from the same account or user profile, which saves an extra step. Design’N’Buy can help you with such a w2p storefront, tailor-made for you.

6. Partner with leading web-to-print software providers like Design’N’Buy. You can even offer a plethora of payment gateway options, thus attracting a broad base of consumers who get to complete the purchase through the payment option of their choice.

7. Your clients can access real-time quotations based on custom options such as size, finish, material and quantity. They can edit the templates on-the-go because the web-to-print storefront is device-responsive.

Over to you

Web-to-print is one technology that can make your eCommerce business thrive like never before. It not only enables greater transparency amongst your team members but also amongst your clients who want to know what their printed items would look like, how they would make a payment and the status of their delivery.

If you can give them a fully-custom web2print portal to work with, they will be happier to keep coming back to you, and you will soon create a massive base of repeat customers. What do you think about web2print? Do you have any plans to implement the technology?