In the past few years, due to increasing technology and the trend of online services, the printing industry has been revolutionized. For years, a great deal of the traditional printing industry built success on in-person services and face-to-face customer consultations but with an increased preference for speed, customization and convenience comes a new opportunity — online design tools. In this extremely competitive market, an online design tool has become more of a necessity for companies that operate in the printing sector than just some luxury.
Throughout this blog, we will delve into why every printing business must invest in an online design tool and understand how it helps to enhance a print company whilst proving to you numerous benefits that point out reasons for investment. Enough with the talking! Let us show you some concrete points as well.
1. Meet The Increasing Demand for Custom Features
In this increasingly custom market and society, customer demands are for a high level of customization in anything they buy — printing services included. Business cards, flyers, banners, or personalized gifts — no matter what you want to print on — the buyers desire that they can design it themselves.
Pros of Customisation Via Online Design Tool
- Personalization: Enabling consumers to design the product according to their tastes and needs provides a nice personal touch. It gives creators the control they need to create these products.
- Interactive and Fast Feedback: Customers can create their designs online, and they will know how the end product looks in real time. This dramatically decreases error, miscommunication, and rework.
- Higher Conversion Rates: The easier you make it for users to start designing within your interface on a website, the longer they are likely to remain exploring around trying different design variations back and forth before purchasing at least one of the designs.
Online design tools can be a great option for printing businesses and allow them to leverage this emerging trend of personalization catering, not just B2C customers but even companies looking forward to ordering customized products from time to time.
2. Expand Your Market Reach
This simply means that having a retail store in a physical location limits the number of customers you can reach. With an online design tool, you can reach out to customers all around the world. This is really important if you are a business that is ready to scale and looking to expand or target different customers outside your community.
How It Expands Market Reach:
- Get Remote Customers: People from different parts of the globe can avail of your services now and design their print products online in homes or offices.
- Customer Service: There is no comparison between the service of a certain store and online design tools are available 24/7 to provide support for customers around the world in different time zones.
- Every Product Gets the E-commerce Ability: Integrate your design tool with an e-commerce platform to enable direct order process & payments and delivery anywhere, globally.
3. Optimize Workflow & Save Money
Not only does an online design tool make it easier for customers to take action but also simplifies your operations. Your team needs to provide fewer consultations, proofs, and revisions since your customers design the products themselves.
Operational Benefits:
- Automated Workflows: It also provides for automated workflows as the design files from customers are print-ready which means your team will have less manual work to process and each production workflow can be much faster than usual.
- Mistake Prevention: When clients approve the designs, you avoid mistakes and reprints that can cost you time & money.
- Lower Labor Costs: If customers are leading design, you might not need in-house designers or at the very least remove some of the burden from their shoulders so they get to work on bigger projects.
4. Customer engagement and loyalty boost
By providing an intuitively crafted online design tool, customers spend more time engaged with the platform exploring and trying their designs which increases satisfaction. It gives them a feeling of completion when they finish and accept their design.
Ways It Increases Engagement:
- Making online design tools as an interactive experience: People love the freedom they have with creativity. Using this type of tool reinforces the idea that you are interested in engagement and follow-up business is also something that benefits most models.
- Design Templates: Your pre-made templates can ease the design process for non-experienced graphic designers which will provide them with a blissful buying experience and reduce frustration.
- Loyalty Programs: Have your design tool connected to a loyalty program where customers will receive points from purchases, resulting in more customer retention.
5. Enhance Your Competitive Edge
With the printing industry being very competitive, innovation is important and for those companies that do not innovate, they will simply get left behind. Providing an online design tool sets your business apart from competitors that rely on traditional methods.
Competitive Advantages:
- Consumers love convenience: Printing or hosting-service businesses with online design services are going to appeal more directly to consumers who just want a fast, self-serve approach.
- Tech-Savvy Appeal: If you stay up to date with upcoming technologies, your business is sure to attract a younger crowd more accustomed to dealing with the digital realm. For instance, you get an upper hand when Marketers aim to target startups or creative and like-minded folks who prefer doing things all online.
- Shorter Turnaround Time: If the design brief and vision are available online, it directly translates to shorter time from concept to execution — this results in quicker delivery; thereby higher customer satisfaction.
6. Better Information, Better Decisions
Think of an online design tool as more than a customer interface, but also as data on the behavior and preferences trending among your customers. With this information, you can work to enhance your services and marketing efforts.
How Data Helps:
- Study the Designs That Customers Love: You can analyze the popular design elements and templates used by your customers so you can sell more of these templates in the future.
- Customer Feedback: Monitor the features customers most commonly use and unlock the ones they avoid, so you can continue to build a better tool that provides both value and clients’ love.
- Ad Retargeting: Reflect the items viewed by this customer in previously web-viewed design elements, for brand consistency and account personalization.
7. Future-Proof Your Business
Purchasing an online design tool is a move towards securing the future of your business. These growing pains in response to a transforming customer landscape spell uncomfortable times ahead for businesses that have been reluctant to adopt digital processes and make the most of new technologies.
Long-Term Benefits:
- Scalability: An online design tool is elastic like your business. This helps to ensure your online platform remains responsive as the number of customers grows and orders are processed, without having a need for additional staff (in proportional terms).
- Sustainability: Digital means fewer physical resources (e.g. proofs, consultations) which is sustainable because of zero waste.
- Continuous Penetration of Technology: It’s an ever-updating technology—Start investing now—and you are good to go for further adaptations.
Conclusion
Simply put, if you want your printing business to compete in today’s fast-paced digital-first world and tap into new customer segments, an online design tool is a must! These advantages— from better customer satisfaction and engagement to operational efficiency, and cost savings—are key elements of future business growth.
Leveraging this technology allows you to set your business up for success in an inherently dynamic market, primed and ready to fulfill the unmet needs of today’s customers while being flexible enough to do what it will take tomorrow as well. Now is more than ever the time to jump in and give online design tools a try if you are working on a printing business.
Check out the iScripts PrintLogic Demo.
