Who's Doing Web 2 Print?

[Stephenedwardgraphic]

Is anyone out there taking orders online through an commerce shopping cart? I have been researching different web 2 print solutions where customers could design their own banner and then order it online. Anyone using anything like this? If so...what are you using?

 

[shoresigns]

Is anyone out there taking orders online through an commerce shopping cart? I have been researching different web 2 print solutions where customers could design their own banner and then order it online. Anyone using anything like this? If so...what are you using?

So you're looking to take on VistaPrint? That doesn't sound easy.

I think most of the members on here are running shops that deal either strictly or mostly business-to-business, so a "design it yourself" tool would not only devalue the work that we do, but it would be a disservice to our customers to tell them that their signage and design projects can be successful without a designer.

 

[Stephenedwardgraphic]

No, thats not what I mean. My roots started off in the offset print world and moved to the digital press world -- where many printers are doing web 2 print. I have many customers who already do their own designs and just want to upload and pay for their banner or sign and in a couple of days have the item ready for them. I know that we all have those customers who want us to design an ugly banner for them using combinations of papyrus and comic sans and are huge time wasters and the online designer would be for those people. Design your own ugly banner kind of stuff. Give me money and I'll print it. We also do custom t-shirts and the customer could use a tool like this to design their own tshirt.

Aside of the online designer, many web 2 print systems can be an online catalog of a companies marketing materials. Someone on their staff logs into the system and orders the marketing materials they need. Some sophisticated systems will do variable data where the customer can change certain elements on the item before printing, such as a name and phone number on a business card.

 

[Gino]

I'm not catching your drift.

We have a great many customers who have in-house designers, design departments and all the things you're talking about. They just do the design and either send it to us or we do ftp sites, zip files or many other ways, but having them dsign on our website, that sounds a little far fetched as mentioned.