Do printing companies need a webshop?

Online shopping has very quickly gained popularity and today we cannot imagine a life without it. Around 2 million people buy products online. More than 50% of people prefer to buy products online, and not in physical stores. Due to the various benefits that online shopping provides, it is expected to grow even more in the coming years and become the dominant way of shopping.

However, what is the situation in the printing houses? Do they really need a webshop considering the complexity of the products they offer?

Our answer to this question is yes, printing houses also need a webshop today. In this article, we will try to explain the main reasons for that.

The practicality of the webshop

Most customers today want to get their products as easily and quickly as possible. Also, they often want to avoid direct contact with the seller, and that's why the web shop is the ideal solution for them. Ordering directly in the office or by phone requires that it be done at a certain time, i.e. during working hours.

The webshop offers customers the opportunity to order their products at any time of the day and from any location. In the webshop, they have a clear overview of all available products. The entire ordering process is much simpler because when selecting a product in the webshop, they immediately enter all the necessary data without the need for additional communication.

It saves them a lot of time and therefore it is not surprising that most customers turn to this way of shopping. For many customers, the existence of a webshop will be a decisive factor when choosing a supplier, and they will always prefer to order products from a printing house that has all the necessary information about the products on its website.

Wider customer reach

One of the main advantages of a webshop is the possibility to reach a wider audience. Unlike other ways of shopping where you are usually limited to one city, the webshop allows you to expand your range of customers to other cities or even countries where the competition may be less intense. This opens up many other markets and enables additional growth for printing companies.

The competition in the printing industry is growing every year and it is necessary to increase the customer base in other cities/countries in order to remain competitive.

Advantages of Toscana Webshop for printers

The printing industry is quite specific because most products are made to order and are rarely repeated. That's why Toscana designed a special webshop for printing companies that almost completely automated the ordering process for customers. In the webshop, there are already built-in calculations, which offer all the necessary parameters that you need to make an offer to the customer. Calculations are greatly simplified and made so that all customers can place orders without much hassle. In the Toscana webshop, there are calculations for most printing products, from flyers, letterheads, business cards, brochures, stickers, calendars, and much more. Once the order is made, it is immediately available in your ERP system, and if all the parameters are entered, it can immediately go into production. This way, you can process more inquiries than if those inquiries were received by email or phone because the customer immediately knows when making a purchase which parameters are necessary to enter, which significantly shortens the time necessary for you to process that order.

For big customers who often order the same products, Toscana has developed a special customer portal through which they can order and track their orders in real-time. In addition to the catalog with their products, complete order history is available to them so that they can easily repeat orders or make a new order from the catalog created for them. This tool allows you to process a large number of inquiries in one day and be much more efficient in communicating with customers. You will achieve a better relationship with customers because this process makes it much easier for them to purchase and track all the necessary information related to the order. There is no need to call or send emails, everything is available to them in their portal.