What Is Web to Print and Why Should We Be Using It?

At its most basic, Web-to-print allows you to set up a digital storefront for your customers. You may set up a public access portal for occasional customers, but the heart of the process is to design dedicated portals for individual clients. That portal then resides on their desktops. Personalized storefronts can store a catalog of existing documents and a history of previous orders for each client.

Those clients can use the library to reorder, edit documents, check invoices, get instant price quotes, and even allow their employees varying degrees of access to the site. This aspect is particularly valuable for companies that have multiple locations and want to maintain control over the uniformity of their printed collateral without having to micromanage each site.

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Of course, they can place new orders through the system as well. When customers have a print job, they only have to click on the portal's icon, upload the file, and fill out the information necessary to complete the order. Most software makes this part of the process quite easy for the customer. The system will ask for standard information such as quantity and the deadline for delivery.

It can also be configured to help customers make decisions about subjects such as paper weight, ink colors, and finishing options. For example, if the customer doesn't know whether he wants a booklet to be stapled, perfect bound, or coil bound, you could set up the system to offer illustrations, guidelines about when each application is practical, and variations in pricing.

Once the order has been placed, the job enters into your shop's workflow. Typically, it will be registered in your accounting system, a job ticket will be created, and the file will be routed to the prepress department to make sure it is printable. (You are already using a PDF workflow, aren't you? It isn't strictly necessary, but will greatly streamline the entire process.)

After the file is deemed printable, a soft proof will be sent to the customer for approval. Once approved, the job flows seamlessly into your production process. You can even set up most systems to send email alerts to customers as their jobs move through the system.

Web-to-print saves time and money for everyone in the equation. Customers save time by being able to place their orders whenever they need to. This gives them the 24/7 convenience that allows your company to match any Internet printer, but with the local support that the remote facilities can never hope to offer. And you don't have to answer your cell phone at midnight.

Clients can also control their print budgets by being able to try out various permutations of each job and get on-the-fly price estimates for comparison. This allows them to make every print job-especially the smaller, repeat jobs-as cost effective as possible.

What Is Web to Print and Why Should We Be Using It?

Francis works for one of the UK's leading Web 2 Print software providers, Online Print Solution.

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