The Future of Online Print
Posted: Tuesday, August 03, 2010
by Tony Goold
printclever
Online print is a growing business and it is the site owners themselves that can control the content. It is important to layout a website that is intuitive so the user can quickly find what it is they want. So it is vital that initial site structures are put in place that allow a website to grow its product range and still work within the framework of the design or customisation process.
User interface design is of paramount. Getting this right is as important as search engine optimisation. It’s all well and good getting the traffic to your site but if the users can’t follow the product selection, editing and order process you’re not going to make the sale. I don’t want to show my age here but when I went to college we did not use computers, yet I studied product usability and interface design. We were asked to design control panels that would allow users operate various machines. The one thing that is common across all control panels or user interfaces is to keep things simple. Present just what is necessary for the immediate decision at hand, keep the user informed as to where they are in the overall process and give the user a sense of progression. Users have to feel that what they are doing is getting them to a conclusion. Above all keep the overall process as short as possible, since the advent of the Internet, McDonalds and instant Coffee users want everything to be completed with a few clicks of a mouse button.
Print is the perfect product to order as it is an item that is required by every person at some stage. It usually falls into one or another category such as A4 letterhead, Business Cards etc. Once you manage to organise a good product offering and present the option to the user in a clear concise way the user can customise the products to their requirements and automated scripts that are becoming more and more common will enable the user to deliver press ready artwork already proofed and ready to go, all the printer has to do is print and deliver it. However an internet print business is not the same as a conventional printer. An internet print business is a streamlined process from the customer selecting a product, customising it, artwork generation through to print production, finishing, dispatch and delivery. A complete start to finish process has to be fully automated in order to allow the print volume to occur and allow for maximum profit to be obtained from small print jobs that a conventional printer could not process profitably. Putting in systems minimises human interaction and ultimately speeds up the process into a high volume low margin company. A variation in the percentage of waste could be the difference between profit and loss.
Getting all is key in this modern world, where success is in the detail and not the idea. The internet is a great place but customers won't tell you why they don't come or why they got lost in the path you lay before them, you are expected to find that information yourself with the tool available to you. So don't be afraid to ask, that's the beauty of the internet, all the information is there
At Printclever You can take one of our range of professionally-designed business cards and customise it, or you can design your own with our full-featured online design tool. Whichever route you take, there are no extra charges. Our prices are stated up front and clearly. And our quality is too. With http://www.Printclever.ie what you see is what you get.
This Article has been viewed 232 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)The future has so much to offer. Technology is greater than it ever has been in this decade. The Internet has changed the way we do business, but we must be weary of the dark side (hackers, scams, malware, viruses etc.)thank you for your comments, but if a company is serious they will implement a set of security levels that should take care of these issues.Yes James technology has a lot to help us with, but it can also get in the way and make some tasks harder to complete
Tony,Do you have a section on every page of your website above the fold that asks a person looking at your site to give their opinion? That might be a way to help get more feedback and make sure there is more profitability.Grace
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.