Upgrading your website more than an online company advert can reap rich dividends, and clients are now expecting to relate through the internet
This statement seems to be an increasing theme, but why are people coming to that conclusion? In order to best advise them, I ask the question ‘What is it you want your website to do that it does not do for you today?’ and I am always a little surprised to see the answers, although often they do not have an answer. Many companies look at their website as a necessary evil rather than a source of opportunity, but customer demands and enhanced capabilities might require a modern facility to re-think that mindset.Most companies’ attitude towards their internet presence is usually covered by statements like: ‘We have a site that shows a little about our facility, and how to get a hold of us, but that is about all we do with our website today… we want to do a lot more.” The print services industry has traditionally looked at the internet as a glorified classified advertisement or billboard, and a means to contact for further information. People thought that showing up when someone types ‘New South Wales printery’ into Google would be the goal of a website, and initially it was, but now people expect more from their website, or their users are more correctly.
Enter the world of the www enabled MIS, web-to-print portals, and asset management solutions, and the role of a website for a modern-thinking print service provider begins to take on a much expanded, and even critical role. What had once been almost an afterthought to print, is now becoming what might be the deciding factor on new business, and existing client partnering. The modern print service provider’s website is as important to a modern facility as its entry foyer, or grounds, and can potentially become the newest source of revenue.
Taking your website to the next level requires a bit of planning and preparation.
Hollywood Film
When a movie is made, they storyboard it by making an index-card for every scene they intend to shoot, and that analogy that I find is extremely helpful to help plan a website. Drawing up a tree-hierarchy with branching
links with the trunk being the main landing page, and the different roles and services being each branch gives a visual representation of what interfaces and roles you will need to develop pages for. Even a simple white-board diagram will help you determine what modules will need to be developed, and how they are going to be navigated to and from.
Evaluating the roles that a modern website can fulfill is the fist step to see what is perhaps appropriate. It is important to not look as though you have to do these things, but since our customers are aware of these technologies existing in other industries, it is high time that we also modernise the www presence of most in our industry. Just because you can do something does not necessarily mean you should, but if you have requests for some services, they are obviously a priority. Here are a few website/internet features that people may begin to expect from their print service provider.
• File-submission and transfer
• Virtual tours and capabilities/equipment lists
• Online job submission and approval
• Asset management portals and data warehousing
• Virtual/remote proofing
(each of these subjects would be topic for an entire article to cover properly, but suffice to say that there is much more to a modern website than a phone number and an email address.
Any one of these roles will open up a host of new opportunities to partner with existing clients, and to expand capabilities to a more symbiotic customer-printer relationship that benefits all. Notice that virtually none of these roles seem like traditional roles of a printer, but in the long and the short of it all, they are integral roles and services to a modern print service provider. The day our industry became dependent upon computers for designs, layouts, and prepress, was the day we made the digital file the asset, and the day we enabled the internet to become an essential part of print.
Use the planning of your website as an opportunity to evaluate what your existing systems can do with internet connectivity. Many existing MIS systems allow a www interface for job submission, or tracking, but have perhaps not configured or implemented them into a facilities www site yet. In other words, it may mean a few simple configuration changes or upgrades to your current system to make it a much more dynamic internet-enabled solution. In these times of cost-cutting measures, most of us are looking for that simple solution that has long-lasting benefits and a solid internet presence is one of the easiest and most expeditious means with which to do so.
So, maybe a website audit is in order, with the feedback of customers and CSRs on what they would like to see or be able to do from your site. Most people do not want to jump through hoops, but would like a simple ability to upload a new file to the www site, or to be able to look at the status of their job. It might be surprisingly simple to do so with your existing solutions with minimal configuration and fine-tuning. Maybe a full-featured website is not as much of a luxury as it is a pragmatic plan for business and professional client relations. A good website is what good clients will come to expect.
