aaronsimmons, Author at Marketing, content, & technology to help printers sell more printing

As you may recall, the publication of Design Tools Monthly has ended. We’ve now begun the phase-out process, and recently added a message to the Design Tools Monthly section of the website to notify your customers that it is drawing to a close: We’d like to think Design Tools Monthly could go on forever, but unfortunately it has reached the end of its run and is no longer in publication. We hope you enjoyed this newsletter as much as we enjoyed providing it for you! At the end of this year, we’ll be removing all entry points to the Design Tools Monthly product. We’ll be keeping the issues live indefinitely, so anybody that may have bookmarked them will still be able to access them, but no new visitors will be able to reach them.

Easier To Assign To Companies, Branches and Contacts This week, we turned our attention to refining the Document Library Editor tools in the Control Center. In the Customers section of the Document Library Editor, we’ve made it easier to find the right company, branch or contact and assign your document to them. Now, when your search results find a single contact, the contact’s name will be auto-selected in the contacts pulldown menu, and the company and/or branch they belong to will also be auto-selected. Plus, there are now “Add” buttons next to each list, so if your search returns one contact but what you really want is their branch or company, you can add it with a single click. No More Unsaved Changes We’ve also added a line of defense in the battle against unsaved changes. Previously, there were portions of the Document Library Editor that allowed you to navigate away from the editor with unsaved changes, losing them forever. Yikes! So we’ve now added a warning message when you attempt to leave unsaved changes behind, giving you a second chance to keep them for posterity. More To Come There are more updates on the way. We have some very

This week, we’ve added the ability to give your proofs a non-geeky plain-English name. Now, instead of getting just the file name which may or may not mean anything to the client, you can also assign a name to the proof. That name will appear in all the same places that a product name would appear in your workflow and in confirmation emails to the customer. This is a feature that was available on our Level 1 sites, but didn’t initially make the cut for the Level 2 and Level 3 sites. But now, it’s back by popular demand. As an added bonus, if you were using this feature on a Level 1 site and have since upgraded to a Level 2 or Level 3 site, the names you applied to them previously will now appear automatically in your new website.

Now it’s easier for your customers to find their previous orders Continuing our “popcorn updates,” this week we added a search tool that your customers can use to locate previous orders. These new tools allow your customers to search by date, keyword, and even type of order, like estimates, files sent, and standard orders. This makes it easier for your customers to place reorders, and also makes it easier for them to get information about the status of current orders. See you Monday Our offices were closed Thursday to allow our employees to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families, and remain closed Friday. We’ll be back on Monday at 8AM Central Time to continue to serve you. If you have any questions, please take a moment to search the Knowledgebase (located in your website’s Help Center). There may already be an answer to your question in there. Otherwise, send us your request (also in the Help Center), and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can on Monday.

With DesignEdit completed, we’re now turning our attention to a series of “popcorn updates” — small changes that can be made to the website in a relatively short timeframe. The impact of any single update is slight, but as a whole they combine to make the website simpler to use and more reliable. This week, the most notable popcorn update is the addition of a shortcut to the Control Center directly from your website. This was actually the most-requested change that our customers have been waiting on, so we hope you enjoy it! To see it in action, just go to your website and click the “Sign In” link in the upper right. That will either bring you to a login page if you aren’t already logged in, or take you to the account summary page if you are logged in. Once there, click the “Account” link in the upper right, and choose “Control Center”. That’s it! More On The Way As the dust clears from the big DesignEdit launch, we’ll be tackling many more of these updates. We have over 200 updates on our “to do” list, both big and small, so we’re going to be pretty busy! Keep

Well, here we are: we’ve been talking about DesignEdit for a couple of months now, and given you several peeks behind the curtain at the ongoing development. Yesterday, we officially launched DesignEdit for your use (or more importantly, for your customers to use). This is going to be fun! There isn’t really much more to say, other than get in there and sell some printing! DesignEdit is a BIG deal, and we want to make sure it’s one of the most effective selling tools you have available to you on your Level 3 website. So while you’re in there, can we ask a favor? If you come up with any ideas for making DesignEdit even better than it is while you’re using it, please let us know. You can get a hold of us at 1-800-736-0688, or at [email protected]. Enjoy!

DesignEdit’s Ready! Here Are Your Next Steps DesignEdit, the online design tool businesses and consumers love to use to create print-ready design online launches today! Now that DesignEdit is ready for use, here’s what you need to do to make it ready for your customers: Kick the tires on our demo site It wouldn’t hurt to know what the fuss is all about. So first, be sure to check out our own demo to see DesignEdit in action. Just scroll down to the middle of www.websitesforprinters.com/optional-features/designedit/ to view a live sample of what your customers can do with DesignEdit. Skim the documentation Now would be a good time to skim through our Knowledgebase document, How To Use DesignEdit. There are lots of step-by-step instructions in there that guide you through activating the DesignEdit functionality to an order form. No need to actually follow the steps yet (unless you’re feeling adventurous). For now, just get a sense of what the instructions cover. That way, you’ll know where to go if you need them later. Activate DesignEdit on a System order form Okay, now that you know the territory, it’s time to get started. Do you still have “How To Use DesignEdit” open?

The Marketing Ideas For Printers LinkedIn Group Our Chief Marketing Officer (and printing rock-star) Mike Stevens is moderating a marketing users group for print owners on LinkedIn.com. The group is called Marketing Ideas for Printers, and membership is free! All you have to do is go to the LinkedIn group page and click the yellow “Join” button. Get in on the conversation right away to discover fresh, new ideas that will help you sell more printing — or share your own time-tested success tips. DesignEdit Information Page Now Online On the DesignEdit front, the house is built, and we’re adding the final trim. We’ll be opening the doors imminently! In the meantime, we’ve added the DesignEdit information page to WebsitesForPrinters.com. If you’ve been following our DesignEdit news from day 1, it may just re-iterate what you already know. But if this is the first time you’ve heard of our DesignEdit product, be sure to check it out — it even includes a live demo!

Out With The Old… It may be cliche, but it’s true all the same: all good things must come to an end. Our good friend Jay Nelson, publisher of Design Tools Monthly, has announced that after 21 years of producing the Design Tools Monthly newsletter he will now be taking an extended vacation. He’s definitely earned it, but we’ll be sorry to see it go. An online subscription to Design Tools Monthly was available as an add-on to Websites For Printers Level 2 websites, and bundled into Level 3 websites. So, where do we go from here? For the time being, we do not have a replacement for the Design Tools Monthly newsletter. (We tend to think that Jay is irreplaceable!) The existing issues that are currently on your site will remain there in the near term. But they’ll start aging pretty quickly since they do such a good job of providing current news, so we plan to remove them at the end of the year. …In With The New While we’re sad to see Design Tools Monthly drawing to a close, we are happy to showcase the recent release of an exciting new feature: Private Label Websites. More and more print buyers

Pop quiz: How were you directed to the latest “viral” video or photo online? (Hint: Not through Google!) There once was a time when it seemed like social media was just a fad that could be safely ignored, but those days are far behind now. When it comes to getting your message spread far and wide by your strongest supporters, social media is the engine that powers success. Social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter make it easy for users to share information with friends and other trusted sources, who in turn share that information with their friends. This way, the message spreads from one trusted source to another, ensuring that it’s always…well, trusted. Search Engine Optimization may help potential customers find your website; but social media not only brings people to your website, it keeps them connected with your organization so that they keep coming back for more! To stay connected with your customers, though, you have to say something. And that may be the most difficult part of doing social media properly — how do you keep coming up with something to share? Don’t worry, we have you covered. Our social media content engine, The Buzz, automatically supplies

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