It seems like an eternity since I last updated the website, but I came down with a nasty flu bug and spent the latter part of the week incapacitated at home, much to the chagrin of my two partners Ken and Bob, who are chomping at the bit for more work for the press. As Chief Marketer (and Feet on the Street Guy), the workload in the shop was pretty light, which had Ken on edge.
One of the decisions we had to delay was our Web2Print plan, which we finally met about on Monday when I returned to work. It ended up being a very long, drawn out discussion about the merits of each company’s offerings and secondarily, their pricing. Now, there are probably 20 different web2print solutions available, and I’ve seen 11 since we announced the Social Print Experiment. (We’ve evidently also become a very high profile project, based upon the number of CEO’s who have been in contact with us and asked us to evaluate their systems as well.)
The two contenders for Web2Print were PageDNA and latecomer Online Print Solutions. I say latecomer, because we had gone through an initial list of Web2Print solutions and they shot us an email at the 11th hour asking us to look at them. Having never heard of them, I agreed, but only if they would do a demo that Sunday at 1pm. They did, and it was impressive enough to add them into the final evaluation.
We had a number of criteria we used to evaluate each system:
- GUI / Interface
- Storefront Design
- Storefront Management
- Incoming Order Workflow
- Ability to Outsource Orders
- Job Tracking
- External MIS Connectivity
- Host Provider Stability
- Fees & Cost
Storefront design was a big part of the equation. One of the drawbacks we saw with the EFI Digital Storefront offering was that all the customer facing storefronts looked exactly the same, almost like living in a housing development with a strict Homeowners Association (you can paint your house any color you want, as long as it’s pink). So, this was an important criteria. In both PageDNA and Online Print Solutions, you could customize pretty much everything you wanted. The process that PageDNA uses for building their storefronts, though, was unique in that you can see the storefront as the customer sees it, and next to each element are little boxes that say “Edit”. Click on them, and you edit the properties of each of those components. Very nice!
Both providers also offered imposition as part of the package, and you could select which files would be placed onto the imposed sheet, with instructions on how many sheets needed to be printed to complete each order. PageDNA has a feature that “polls” each storefront for orders, and then picks up the files that can be imposed and adds them to an imposition sheet automatically, providing a digital press operator with work “ready to print” each day. This again was a very cool feature.
Online Print Solutions had a social media module that PageDNA did not have, and we discussed it at length in our internal board meeting. Billed as a Cross Media add-on, this allowed you to utilize different communication channels such as email, as part of a storefront strategy. As you know, the Social Print Experiment relies a lot on social media to help make it’s case, but in the end the board was not convinced this was not enough of a showstopper for PageDNA.
Overall, both companies had very impressive offerings and both show age and stability in the marketplace. This part of the decision is equally important, since you’re betting the farm when you add web2print, and switching horses after a year or two can be very costly, especially if they go out of business. Neither of these two companies had anything to worry about, with over a thousand customers each and longevity in the market. Some of their customers were very impressive names, so there evidently was due diligence on their part as well.
Once we got through each of the different criteria, we attached a score to each. That made it easier to select a suitable platform for us, by adding up the points. With that done, we welcome PageDNA to the Social Print Experiment.
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{ 1 comment }
Andrew:
Steve chiming in from PageDNA. We are humbled and flattered to be your selected platform. Obviously, now it is time to turn on the afterburners – on that note, it appears you have been burning the midnight oil in starting your first storefront project, which is great to see.
I’d like to emphasize at this point to both the followers here who are print sales organizations as well as to our competitors, that while the W2P platform is certainly important, what is far more important will be what SPE does in terms of the Social Media marketing side of things, in order to reach their stated sales goals.
I’m sure our competitors would agree, that platform selection and ideas do of course matter – but what is far more important is execution…. specifically in your case,
• how to you drive eyeballs to your store(s)?
• how do you incentivize them to return and order again?
• how do we turn some B2C customers into B2B users?
• how do you incentivize your followers to become promoters?
…and so forth. In other words, ideas are cheap – making it happen is the difference, and… well… the ball is largely in your court on that front.
I look forward to the next year working together and thank you for this opportunity. I agree with your analysis – there are many good W2P options out there… what the industry needs is new ideas, and I think you are well on your way to shining a light on some new paths for all of us.
Best Regards,
-steve
Steve Enstad
Co-founder, Sales
PageDNA
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