Websites For Printers Archives - Page 6 of 10 - Marketing, content, & technology to help printers sell more printing

Have you adapted your sales cycle to accommodate the Digital Dialog? It used to be that your customers ordered printing from you either by a voice-to-voice conversation on the phone or a face-to-face conversation at your front counter. That still happens, of course, but with the Internet being at everyone’s fingertips, the conversations about ordering printing often start with social media, email, and the use of your website’s order forms. The Online Version of You Is the online version of you able to sell printing as effectively as the real you? It’s worth taking some time to study the answer to that question, considering how often the print ordering process starts online in the digital world. You need to think about the Digital Dialog when you’re ready to answer that question. The Digital Dialog is, very simply, conversation facilitated online. The Digital Dialog is the online version of you that starts conversations, builds trust, and develops relationships online, so you can sell more printing. The Dialog of a Printing Order Before we get into the details of the Digital Dialog, let’s pull back the focus and look at the dialog of a printing order. To sell printing effectively you have to manage this dialog, whether it happens voice-to-voice,

Think back to a time before the Internet. (My kids always give me a puzzled look when I tell them that such a time actually existed!) Print buyers ordered printing face-to-face over a front counter or voice-to-voice over a phone. That still happens, but today’s print buyers order printing from your website, too! It’s easy to be friendly face-to-face, but are you being friendly online? Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression. That’s why your online communication has to be clear, accurate, and friendly. Your online conversation, whether human or automated, is your digital dialog. Here are some tips to make your digital dialog as effective as possible. Say Goodbye to The Geek Your digital dialog shouldn’t be too geeky. Instead, it should be friendly … just like the face-to-face conversations you had before the Internet. Tips For Humans: Just because the conversation is happening online is enough to get some people talking geeky. Don’t. Imagine the conversation as if it was happening face-to-face, and then transfer that conversation into the digital dialog. Tips For Computers: This is where the geek-talk can really show up. Just because the message is automated doesn’t mean it can’t be warm and friendly. Use normal talk with real words. Put

Do you know anyone that does search engine optimization for a living? A typical day in their life might look something like this: Wake up. Put in an honest day’s work. Go to bed. Wake up. Discover that yesterday’s SEO rules no longer exist, and start learning new SEO rules. It’s not uncommon for Google to introduce big shifts to their ranking algorithm with little (if any) advance warning. However, the next big change is going to be different because Google has provided a solid date and plenty of information regarding the next big change they’ll be pushing our way on April 21, 2015. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Update According to Google, Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices. It’s no surprise that Google will be paying more attention to mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. Your Mobile Website Here’s something you may not know: Websites For Printers websites already have a mobile-friendly version, ready for you to use! For brand

Open a can of outstanding, we have some important news to share! It’s time to reveal a very big project that we’ve been working on for you; we are ready to roll out an update to the Websites For Printers order forms! The Best of…Everything! This update includes the best of the original Level 1 website order forms, the best of the Document Library order forms, and the best of the current websites’ order forms. These “best ofs” combine together to create a highly customizable, functional, and (dare we say) beautiful order form system on your Websites For Printers websites. We’ve also added items that we believe will show up on your “best of” list pretty quickly…things like the return of global questions, where you can define your question once and use it multiple times throughout all of your website order forms. We’ve also added question rules, so that the answer to one question (envelope size, for example) will determine the display of other questions (window selections, in our envelope example). Streamlined Pricing Management The new order forms will streamline the way pricing is displayed on your website. There’s now one place to manage all pricing displays for each order form. You’ll have the option to display everything from no pricing at all to a price calculated in real-time using a Harmony-enabled connection

I truly can’t get enough of graphic design. There’s always something new to learn, and often times it seems there’s more than one way to get successful results. Some routes save more time than others and, incredibly, the time saved using Adobe Illustrator’s Symbolism Tool can be measured in hours. Wow! That’s pretty amazing, no matter how you look at it. The Symbolism Tool helps you create elaborate, professional designs that use the same graphic element with varying colors options, sizes, positions, opacities, and tints. It takes something tedious and frustrating and condenses it down to a few simple, easy steps. No matter what your experience level is with Adobe Illustrator, this tool is incredibly quick to learn and user-friendly. My first exposure to the Symbolism Tool was in creating the design for the newest Design Tip added to each Websites For Printers website’s Ideas Collection: Add Some Sparkle to Your Next Design With the Illustrator Symbolism Tool. As I was working on this Design Tip I was pleasantly surprised by the versatility and power found in the Symbolism Tool. With a few simple clicks I was able to create visually stunning design both quickly and easily. It was exciting for me to learn about this new tool. I have

By now, you either have heard or will soon hear about a security vulnerability called the “POODLE” vulnerability. This is an internet-wide error that impacts very old browsers in particular (like Internet Explorer 6). Some of you have received notices from Authorize.net regarding this issue, and may be wondering: is my Websites For Printers website okay? In a word, yes. We have completed a thorough inspection of our sites, and found only a handful of areas that made use of the SSLv3 model (the protocol at the heart of this vulnerability); none of which were in areas that exposed sensitive data. Our key technology partners are ramping up security on their own sites to manage this bug, and we are actively in the process of reprogramming our own features to match those new standards where applicable. The most important thing for you to know as a Websites For Printers customer is that we’ve got you covered. It sounds so predictable to say “The security of your website is a top priority for us.” That’s predictable…and it’s true. Your website is safe with us. Want to know more? The details about this exploit get very geeky very fast. If you want to learn more about the POODLE

We love adding fresh content to Websites For Printers websites! Earlier this week we added a new Design Tip to the Ideas Collection of the Websites For Printers websites. The new tip, Grab Them Right Out of the Gate, educates print buyers on how to use a gate fold to present big information in a small brochure. This is the kind of information that not only educates your website visitors, but positions you as the go-to printer with answers and solutions. Have a look at Grab Them Right Out of the Gate as it appears on one of the Websites For Printers demo websites. The new tip made its appearance not only on the website, but also in the latest issue of the twice-monthly Printer@Work email newsletter built into each Websites For Printers website. Each issue of Printer@Work features a tip from the Ideas Collection plus more fun sales-building content.

Sonny and Cher. Peanut butter and chocolate. Direct mail and websites. All of those pairs really work well together. Here’s one more to add to the list… ColorMatters postcards and Websites For Printers websites. Starting now, Marketing Ideas For Printers customers can promote a new landing page that not only talks about the benefits of color printing, but also includes a clear call to action to encourage website visitors to purchase color printing. This new landing page is built into the website of every Marketing Ideas For Printers customer that uses both ColorMatters and Websites For Printers. Here’s how it works. Produce your ColorMatters postcard just as you always have, but add /ColorMatters to the end of your website address, like this: Now, when your customers see your ColorMatters postcard, they’ll be directed to the new ColorMatters landing page (AcmePrintingUSA.com/ColorMatters, for example). On the landing page, they’ll be greeted with graphics that match the ColorMatters postcard you sent them, along with a strong nudge to purchase color printing from you. But what about customers who might not have received your ColorMatters postcard yet? What if they’re just coming to your website unprompted? You also have the option to display a Home Page Callout Box that

Security has been a big topic in the past several months. As we continue to hear stories about security issues like the Heartbleed bug and the Target breach, security has been on everybody’s minds. So we thought now would be a great time to make an important change to how your websites handle your customer’s passwords. Starting July 1st, your customers will no longer receive plain-text passwords through their email when they indicate they’ve forgotten their password. Instead, we will be implementing the same password reset procedure that is used by many of the web’s top sites: users will receive a link to their email account which they can use to reset their password. You Are An Important Member Of Our Development Team! This update is an example of a change we made to the system based on input from our customers. You and your customers are an important part of our development team. You’re in the trenches, selling printing everyday, and using your WebsitesForPrinters.com website in the process. When something isn’t working as well as it should, you’re often the first to know. So keep those ideas coming, because you’re helping us build a better website — for you!

The Rule Of The Day: Explicit Opt-in The Canadians are implementing a strong anti-spam law beginning July 1, 2014. In preparation, we’ve made some adjustments to the way Printer@Work subscriptions are handled. Though it is a Canadian law, we’ve chosen to make these changes for all of our websites, because they represent best practices when it comes to building a subscriber list that won’t get your content flagged as spam. The changes we’re making have two goals in mind: Ensure that every subscriber to the Printer@Work wants to subscribe to Printer@Work Staunchly protect our customers from any allegations that say otherwise We are implementing the following changes as they are developed. Some you may already have noticed on your own site: Remove uploadable subscriber lists Remove pre-selection of the “I want to subscribe to Printer@Work” checkbox Allow printshops to unsubscribe users, but not subscribe them Remove requirement for user to confirm their email address when unsubscribing Moving On To Plan “B” We know these may not be popular changes, because they tend to make it more difficult for you to add subscribers to your newsletter. Meanwhile, your customers are still able to subscribe to it themselves as they always have.

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