I’ve really been having fun building the web2print stores on our site.
The first site I’m building is a B2C site, selling customized stationary and other similar products. I’m using a service called Elance to design some personalized birthday party invitations featuring dragons, princesses and castles. (I asked my daughter what she would like on her birthday party invitation and she says this is what she would want. She’s three, so I’m assuming that because she already knows everything, she’s not far off on this.) My cost for this is about $390. While Elance provides designers from all over the world, this designer is in southern California.
The new site will be called oiiiio.com (pronounced oh-ee-oh). The domain name reminds me of a car full of children, and having six children of my own, it’s a scene I’m very familiar with. The domain is currently parked, not set up to go to the server yet.
On the backside, I’m building the web2print interface. This part has proven to be very easy. To test the variable capabilities of PageDNA, the web2print system we acquired, I created a test business card with both static and variable fields. I then loaded it into the PageDNA system and within a few minutes, had the basic card done. A little tweaking and the card was ready to be sold as a ‘for profit’ item. All in about 5 minutes. You can click here to see what the card looks like and the basic store setup (before I add my CSS to it) on the server we’re using for testing. Go ahead and add text to the fields to see how they all map. Just don’t place an order; I don’t print for free 
The basics of setting up the card was to create the design in Adobe Illustrator and then import the design right into my PageDNA account. Any text I converted to curves becomes the static elements; any font left as the original font converts to the variable info. From there I can assign my fields to each variable element, although PageDNA did a great job figuring out what each field was automatically.
Also on my business card is a QR code linking my card back to my website for the Social Print Experiment. I cannot stress enough how these codes could help you to grow your own business by providing a link to a virtual brochure on your company every time you hand one out. I plan to add a QR code to every product we sell, every marketing piece we send out, which will provide me with opportunities to showcase my company.
Now, one caveat to our web2print solution. PageDNA has been great to work with. Support is very responsive, and I find the interface very easy to use. But they tell me that I am an anomaly when it comes to creating my web2print stores.
The night we signed our contract, I sat down and built my first storefront in a matter of hours. That’s not the way it happens normally. There are training webinars; video presentations; and hand-holding to make sure your site comes out just as you envision it. In fact, when I went through the presentation with PageDNA, they told me it would take 2-3 weeks to build the store. (That was the same amount of time Online Print Solutions estimated it would take as well). I chuckled when I heard that. I built my first store in five hours, and probably if it was my sole task (this is where my ADHD kicks in) it would have gone even quicker. But I would tend to agree with PageDNA, and don’t think that my experience is the norm. There is more to putting together a complete store, and if you design by committee, it could take even longer than the 2-3 weeks it should take you.
There are probably aspects of the store I haven’t learned to use yet, but for an out-the-door solution for me, it works great! I’ve created three storefronts so far, with one of the three already accepting orders (and has sold about $250 in orders in the past three days since we opened it up.). When oiiiio.com launches, we’ll have another channel in which to sell profitable, customized print pieces for the DP60 digital press.
Toolbox:
PageDNA – Starting from $225 a month
Elance – Varies in cost
Related posts:
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Andrew: The trend I’ve noticed over the past 12 years with regard to the firms that are able to turn a project around quickly (like you have with PageDNA) boils down to three factors:
1) Clear definition of goals
2) Storefront builder has been given time to learn
3) Storefront builder is motivated
Let me expand on those a bit:
1) Clear definition of goals.
Obviously, you know what you want, and are going for it. There is no committee or – as commonly see – an end-user corporation involved in storefront design and review of their project. The B2B storefront space is especially notable for having more of this revew process, more templated products, Look and Feel tweeks by committee, etc. That is where 2-3 weeks becomes more typical.
I may add that your initial goals are pretty basic – we have some storefront projects that involve building dozens of templates, importing thousands of users, integrating into a corporate enviornment (Ariba, Single Sign On, etc)…. these also add time requirements on both sides.
As a sidebar regarding goals: We are often approached by printers and print resellers who ask us for advice on where to start building W2P storefronts — asking me where I think they “should” start building first. Sometimes these are smaller printers who want to be the next VistaPrint, but have no ideas/budget for a marketing gameplan. In B2C, you cannot simply “build it and they will come” – and I am sometimes the bearer of this bad news to printers who have idealized visions of how easy it will be to get eyeballs on their storefront.
Other firms that approach us have many corporate customers but don’t know which to build for first – that is an easier scenario for us to help with: I usually suggest they sort accounts by revenue and then within the accounts sort by product type, by sales volume. Start with the largest customer and biggest product line… then move outward.
Alternatively: they may wish to start with a customer unhappy with a current ordering process – or start with a brand new customer – and use them as the guinea pig, so to speak.
In any case: You don’t knock down an old bridge, and THEN build a new bridge. Instead, you build the new bridge (W2P) alongside the old bridge (fax/phone orders or older W2P system) and then move traffic over gradually.
2) Storefront builder has been given time to learn
It is critical that the storefront administrator is given a “runway” by management… in other words, they need to have time carved out for them to learn the system – especially at the beginning when the learning curve is steepest. Versus the approach of management just adding another chore to an already-50-hour work week… which doesn’t help with our final factor:
3) Storefront builder is motivated
This is one of the most difficult areas – is the storefront builder excited about learning? Do they clearly understand the importance of this system – and their new role in helping build and maintain the storefront?
While we see it less and less, in the “old days” we’d occassionally have internal operators sandbag W2P operations, because they saw the system replacing parts of what they did internally day-to-day – for example, a typesetter would have “problems learning” W2P but were happy to sit for hours typesetting and hand-imposing business card orders. In some cases, the owner would take over maintenance and have to show the employess “look, _I_ can do this, and you need to do this, too” or just become the storefront admin personally, going forward.
This situation is equivalent in my eyes to an ATM machine being rolled into a bank, and the bank tellers saying “No… we don’t need those machines here”.
First: you can’t UNinvent the ATM machine, the technology (W2P) is here and your competitors have it. More importantly: your customers WANT the ATM experience for ordering simple print jobs (why do I need to talk to someone to get a quote on a $200 print job?). Lastly: print firms NEED to optimize the internal workflow to remain competitive.
I might add that most of the firms who had internal staff “sandbagging” are no longer in business. The typesetters are no longer typesetting – they have moved on to other industries entirely… would that be the case had they embraced the technology and allowed their internal role to evolve (and expand) into W2P?
We may never know.
-steve
Steve Enstad
http://PageDNA.com
Hi Andrew,
I love the Social Print Experiment you’re running. I was reading about you’re development process and got to thinking. Wouldn’t it be easier to, instead of build a whole new site, customizing something like Printfolder (www.printfolderapp.com) instead?
Just a thought.
Good luck with the experiment!
Runno Allikivi
http://www.cannedapps.com
Steve,
Great post. We use your software and will have over twenty sites up this year that process profitable business.
Roy