We need three things to make a good first impression: an elevator pitch, a confident smile, and a personalized business card. The first two are purely intrinsic qualities to an individual. But a business card is different. There is a great dependency on designers to get one. And even after the to-and-fro communication, delays and all the hassle, there is no guarantee of a desirable result.
Enter, web-to-print and the included business card design software that lets your customers design their business cards by themselves. It is an elegant solution that makes life easier for both you and your clients.
Whether you’re a start-up or an established business, you must consider adopting web-to-print. It is the printing solution people are opting for today and can give you an edge over the competition. It’s actually not that hard to set up. Let’s take a look:
1. Market Research
The first step to setting up a new business is conducting market research. This would include everything from studying the demographics to segmentation. The insights that you gain from this research enables you to evaluate the risks involved and determine how you can avoid them. Following are some of the crucial steps in conducting market research:
Studying the growth, potential, and trends
Analyzing the competition
Determining the market segment that you intend to target
Identifying the selling points of the product and creating the USP
2. Documentation
Chalking down a business plan ensures smooth operation and helps align the various activities to your vision for the company. Therefore, you should create one even if you don’t intend to seek investment in the foreseeable future.
Depending on your goals, you might have to create different versions of the plan. But to start with, you can design a business model canvas. This activity also brings clarity about your product/service and strategy. You may further consult a business analyst to validate the plan.
3. Acquiring Assets
Next, you must consider the equipment you’re going to need. Your primary asset is the printer. Research the kind of printers available and which one would best suit your needs. Initially, you may outsource the printing and act as an intermediary. As you grow you can start acquiring the assets. You are also going to need a cutting machine as it might not be practical for you to cut bulk prints by hand.
Apart from these permanent assets, you need to stock up on inventory so that you’re able to cater to the needs of your customers. For example, you may receive an urgent bulk order. It is not desirable to wait for the delivery of the inventory in this situation.
4. Setting up an e-store
Now that you have the physical setup in place, you are going to need a storefront. More importantly, you are going to need a visiting card design software. This is the tool that your customers can use to design their visiting cards. Your business card design software is the crux of your business model so you must ensure that it offers the required functionality.
Ideally, it should be compatible with all the major e-commerce platforms out there. It should have the basic image and text manipulation tools and should support templates. At the same time, it should be easy to use and navigate so that it isn’t overwhelming for the customer.
5. Marketing Digitally
Once you have the store up and running, it is time to market it. The obvious way of going about it is through the internet. Every individual buyer is on the internet. It has become an instinct to ‘Google’ things. The first thing your average client is going to do when he requires business card printing services is to perform a search online.
You can leverage this information to efficiently promote your web-store through social media, search engine optimization, and through other digital channels. You may also consider advertising, depending on your budget and roadmap.
Conclusion
Web-to-print is a great way to broaden the scope of your printing business or to start one. Once you have established yourself in the visiting card printing business, you can expand your business to include other printable goods. That is why it is an added advantage to have a visiting card design tool which supports a diverse set of printable items.
Today it is more important than ever to stand out from the competition. Having a great design tool in your arsenal will help you with that. You can accomplish a lot more just by picking the right tool.
New ventures are exciting and challenging at the same time. Hopefully, going through this post helped you prepare for it. All set? The journey has just begun.
Mr. Pratik Shah is Creative Head of Brush Your Ideas, a Web-to-Print technology solution offering custom product design software and Web-to-Print Storefront Solutions. He is a tech enthusiast and an avid blogger and writes about ecommerce and web-to-print industry.