Ecommerce Archives - Marketing, content, & technology to help printers sell more printing

Ecommerce is no longer a “wave of the future.” It’s a necessity. As part of that expectation, consumers are counting on your printing firm to be able to take credit card payments through your website and be trusted with the transaction details. Remember the pre-internet days of taking a credit card payment? You lugged that big slider thingy up onto the counter, put your NCR receipt paper in there with the credit card, and then slid it back and forth a dozen times until you magically created a semi-readable etching of the information. Ahh… those were the days; life was slower back then. Today, however, life’s quickened pace has meant that credit card payments have to hit on all markers of fast, secure, and safe. The creation of the digital space and the Amazon-like ordering experience means consumers, small business owners, and credit card companies need a way to protect themselves against digital fraud. Data and information need to be protected with just as much fervor as physical currency. And, if your printing firm wants to take credit card payments via your website, that’s where PCI compliance comes in. What is PCI Compliance? Payment card industry (PCI) compliance is a

Is this you? You’ve invested in a great website. You’ve worked hard to streamline the customer buying process. You’ve even got more website visitors than ever before. But there’s just one problem. Your print buyers aren’t buying anything online, leaving you to wonder, “What’s the deal?” Abandoned shopping carts plague even the best businesses. Here are five tips to help you better understand why it happens and what you can do to fix it. 5 Tips to Reduce Abandoned Shopping Carts 1. Don’t Take It Personally You should know right from the start that you are not alone in your abandoned shopping cart woes. According to Listrak, the average rate at which an average consumer abandons their shopping cart before making a purchase is 81%. Wowzers! To say that another way, even if you are doing everything PERFECTLY, 4 out of 5 people (including your print buyers) will leave their carts and never return if for no other reason than they got interrupted or distracted. What you can do: It’s essential to accept that not every print buyer who puts an item in their cart will buy from you, so be ready to move on without taking it personally. 2.

By the end of 2019, it’s estimated that there will be 224 million digital shoppers in the United States alone. That statistic is shoppers, not orders. How many orders do you think 224 million shoppers place annually? A lot — as in that’s-a-whole-lot-of-numbers-math-is-hard kind of a lot. But, if you think about it, online order numbers like that shouldn’t surprise most of us. We’ve all been known to engage in a seek-and-destroy online shopping experience while in our pajamas using our weapon of choice: our index fingers. That tactic seems to make way more sense than actually getting off the couch, driving somewhere, and becoming a participating member of the retail world in person. Seriously, why would you do all that work when what is needed is right at your fingertips? Since more and more people are opting for online shopping, it’s pretty easy to conclude where your focus needs to be for selling printing. It needs to cater to your online storefront. The Pricing “What Ifs” For many small businesses, one of the biggest hold-ups for selling online is the debate of whether or not to put your product pricing on your website. After all, there are so many “What ifs…”

What does the year 2018 hold for the community of printers? Here are five of our bold predictions for what will separate successful printers from struggling printers in 2018. 1) Less Competition in Your Mailbox Let’s face it; there’s not as much mail being sent these days. In the U.S. mail volume dropped from a recent high of 212.2 billion mail pieces in 2007 down to 154.2 billion mail pieces in 2016. Same thing in Canada: The volume of transactional mail in Canada dropped from a high of 5.5 billion mail pieces in 2006 down to 3.4 billion in 2016. Successful printers will realize there’s less competition in the mailbox and see this as an opportunity to make an appearance in that empty mailbox and rise above the noise. They’ll allocate resources towards the execution of a regular monthly direct mail marketing campaign. Struggling printers will view the decline in mailpieces as a trend, and decide to participate in that trend rather than take advantage of the opportunity it offers. 2) Popularity of Shopping Online Expands The comfort of shopping without leaving your desk usually trumps the need to gas up the car and make a trip to the mall. Bumping into someone

Websites, Ecommerce Suite, Sell Printing While You Sleep, Marketing Ideas For Printers

We’ve all been there. You hear about a fantastic new product on the radio or read about it in an article, and you decide you must get one for yourself. Within minutes, you’ve found a store online that sells that product, chosen the best shipping option for your needs, and even paid for it. Within days, it’s going to be on your front step. From the instant you first thought about buying the item to the moment you’ve hit the checkout button in the online store, your order can’t have taken more than ten minutes! Wouldn’t it be great if you could offer your own customers that kind of accessibility and convenience? With the Ecommerce Suite, available in the Conquer Bundle for your Marketing Ideas For Printers’ website, you can. Be Ready Any Time Let’s face it; your customers can get an idea for their next printing purchase at any time of the day or night. But, if you’re like most printshops, your sales team probably isn’t working around the clock. It would be ideal if you were able to not only take orders but also complete the sale right when they want it, instead of waiting until morning when their

Times have really changed. It used to be that PayPal lacked a certain credibility. It was often associated with homemade websites, and thought of as the Band-Aid way to get money from customers online when you couldn’t do it the “real” way. But PayPal is all grown up now, and while PayPal still fits its early niche as a payment option that can be easily adapted for sites (often in the business-to-consumer space) that need a quick e-commerce solution, it also has gained enough credibility to be used as a trusted business-to-business payment method as well. It’s from that backdrop that we can now say that PayPal is a supported payment option on Websites For Printers websites! If you’d like to offer PayPal as a payment method to your customers, here’s how you do it: Connect PayPal to Your Website You’ll first need to make sure your website is set up to use the Ecommerce Suite. Once that has been activated, all you need to do is follow these simple steps: If you haven’t already done so, set up an account at PayPal.com Once you have a PayPal account, go to your website’s Control Center and click “My Website” from

Every so often, I’ll hear one of our Websites For Printers customers get frustrated that their customers just don’t seem to want to embrace ecommerce. One of our customers was, in fact, very adamant in saying his main goal for using his website was simply to act as a tool to encourage customers to start telephone conversations. He was more than happy to accept business online, of course, but his primary objective was to use the website as a conversation-starter for phone calls. That’s how he wants to do business. It’s All About Selling Print There’s nothing wrong with doing business by phone. Orders over the phone turn into profits just as much as orders placed on a website do. Our goal is to make it fun and easy for print buyers to buy printing, and if that means printing is purchased through a phone call which was inspired by a visit to one of our customers’ websites, so be it. Mission accomplished. Landing a phone call that results in a print sale is a worthy goal, but it shouldn’t be considered the only goal. Please forgive me for stating the obvious, but these days website visitors expect to do business on the