The world of online print is dominated by only a handful of large national companies.  They target an easy-to-reach, audience with unsophisticated needs.  They focus on offering only simple products with limited options that are less error-prone in production.  In addition, these products don’t cost a lot to ship, are not time sensitive, and are of “good enough” quality for the long-tail consumer and micro-business audience.  Production is homogeneous and as automated as possible to further cut timelines and costs.  

These players are much more focused on marketing efforts than they are on the print craft.  They are very much in the transaction business driven by order volume; where each order is relatively small.  As an example: VistaPrint serviced over 11 million customers last year, each placing an average of two orders of around $36.  Obviously this type of business should be focused on up-selling each one of those average orders and not investing heavily into building a relationship with the customer.  This is also why the product offered cannot be over-complex, risking a high error and reprint rate.

In contrast, a typical commercial print service provider (retail quick-print inclusive) has much fewer customers – servicing each regularly.  The average order, however, is usually in the hundreds or thousands of dollars.  These types of customers are won and lost on the customer-perceived quality of the relationship and convenience. Most print service providers will often make illogical promises to keep these customers from walking down the street to a competitor. 

“Above and beyond” is the norm for relationship-based print service providers.  However, they often miss what’s important to their customers.  The perceived quality in the customer’s eyes is a fragile combination of: responsiveness, fair pricing (and not necessarily cheapest), end-product quality, low occurrence of mistakes, how mistakes are handled when they do happen, range of capabilities (everyone likes a one-stop-shop), and above all management of expectations via good communication.

Often, otherwise relationship-focused, print service providers attempt to get into the online transaction-driven business by emulating what they see on the surface of the large national players.  The benefits of moving to an online workflow are often misunderstood as a way to simply generate a new channel of long-tail business print service providers cannot reach otherwise.  Without the marketing fuel to consistently develop prospects and convert (a single-digit percentage of them) into customers, along with all the production considerations, this can be a very dangerous distraction.  

Most print service providers would be better served using online tools and modern tactics to improve communications and the overall experience for their existing customers first and foremost.  Fortifying the existing customers base, reducing costly errors and customer service overhead, and creating customer evangelists who will recommend the provider to anyone who would listen, is a company-maker.  

When you are developing an online strategy and aligning your resources to support it, ask yourself what business you are in. 

Want to learn more?  Download our free White Paper: “Five Paths to Success Online for Print Service Providers”