Summary
If you have a web-to-print store for some time now, you would know it’s no less than a constant struggle to keep it running in the first phase of its existence, yes, even later on. Once the effort dies, so does the ability to earn through a said medium. Anyway, back to the point. Even though proper marketing and other tactics work out to bring sufficient customers to the site, the next step seems to be more challenging to tackle. The scenario typically goes like this:
- Everything is ready; your web to print shop is up for the customers.
- The same tried and rather exploited marketing tactics goes into attracting customers to the site.
- You start making sales.
Pause. You start making sales but notice that your customers aren’t being generous with their shopping, and rather picking up a limited number of products every time. So, there’s a pause to the progress of your store here.
What now? Waiting is not a solution as the graphs aren’t going to improve magically. You need to make some efforts to encourage your customers to buy more, ultimately aimed to increase average order value of your web-to-print store.
PS: You should also try avoiding common mistakes that ultimately leads the web to print project to fail.
Let’s then check out the tried but ‘not yet fully exploited’ ways to increase the average order value.
1. Product Recommendation
Can you imagine the typical scene of a brick & mortar store? Here, let us help:
You are the customer. You go to a particular shop to buy a pair of jeans, let’s suppose. You are just done buying, or still at it and happen to spot a t-shirt on display that you had been looking for. Viola! The shopkeeper just made an extra sale, without any extra efforts.
So, now, how to do that with your web-to-print store? While your customer is moving through different product pages, recommend your popular products purposefully so that the customer not only is comfortably looking at what he wants, but also at things he might want to have!
Now, another way is cross-selling, which is the same formula but the products you recommend are somehow related to the product and hence the buyer is more likely to buy them. Adopting it for a web-to-print store might be a little tricky, but shouldn’t be a problem if your web to print store solutions provides you with options to design multiple ranges of products.
2. Free Shipping
There’s no doubt to the fact that free shipping attracts customers like a magnet. No, seriously, it’s the case with online shopping. In fact, you must have noticed the trend yourself at some point of time, while playing the customer’s role of buying something online. Agreed? So, you can offer free shipping to your customers. Not with all individual products, but on a set order value. That makes the customer mentally note to spend at least that much to get benefit from the offer. Also, make sure you promote it on your web-to-print storefront, in a way that it is one of the first things the customer set his eyes on when he arrives on the home page.
3. Effective Tools
It is quite apparent that your business is based on a product designer tool that allows the customers to design their own products. And therefore, it’s important that you choose a tool that’s not only easy to use, but provides ample options for the customer to try out on various products and eventually order them. A complicated product designer tool can end up irritating the customer deciphering its functionality and the first product they order might end up being the last one. But an effective, fun to use product designer attracts your customers to design more products and as customer psychology works, they end up buying almost all products they design themselves.
With the latest updates in product design tools like AI artwork generation, customers will have more fun customizing products. If you want to improve productivity and streamline workflow, a web-to-print solutions will be ideal. Web to print solution is a combination of a storefront, product design software, and ERP. This combo will make things easier for you to manage and reduce dependencies on manual labor. Investing in the right tool can help you reduce the costs. The work that would have otherwise taken days to complete can be completed within a short period of time with ERP.
Want an attractive storefront, a product design tool, and an ERP for your business? We have a perfect
combo for you!
4. Membership Programs
Though you must have heard about membership programs for ecommerce stores, it is still rare for web to print platforms. And that’s no reason why you shouldn’t opt for it too. Providing periodic offers under such programs ensure your loyal customers keep coming to your store frequently and design and buy products. In fact, there are so many creative ways for web to print store owners to materialize this. But, how?
Provide special/latest graphics, only to be unlocked by loyal customers, once in a month discount voucher, special discounts during festival offers, etc. This increases the odds that your loyal customers will be more used to such products and consider it for gifting and other purposes.
5. Up Selling
Another spin-off of product recommendation is up selling at your web-to-print store. The difference is that you don’t earn by selling multiple products but by selling a more expensive variety of the same product your customer is looking for. It’s a very popular method with stores these days, be it traditional or online stores.
Let’s see how that can help for your web-to-print platform.
How can I probably up sell when a customer visits the store to design and buy, say a t-shirt? Well, where there is a will, there is a way. Don’t just offer a single variety of t-shirt at your store. You can always offer something more appealing, better fabrics, different necklines, branded t-shirts, etc. Same goes for other products as well, highlight products that make an immediate impact on the buyer and he is tempted to buy the better version. It’s that’ simple, given you put in a bit of intelligent strategy to implement it!
6. Offers on Set Orders
This formula almost never fails. Provide certain offers to customers only when they reach a stipulate cart total. But how you use this formula counts here. You need to be tactical with the implementation. Make sure you promote the offer well. In fact, every time a customer is on the checkout page, let them know that adding an ‘x’ amount of shopping value to their cart will make them eligible for a certain offer.
And we all know somehow that it works. Even if your offer is less profitable than buying a product of the amount ‘x’, it’s the customer psychology or say, temptation to get something for free that works here. In fact, you can further increase your sales using this technique. When your customer crosses a certain cart value, offer them a certain discount on their next shopping. So not only do they buy more, they certainly return again! Isn’t that clever? But that’s how business works, doesn’t it?
7. Offer Discounted Add-ons
Discounted add-ons or making packages out of the sales is a good way to increase average order value. For web-to-print stores, you can be creative with this technique of increasing sales, where you probably aren’t selling personalized mobile phones, to offer phone covers on discounts.
So, you can use the designs that your customers created, as the tool to sell discounted add-ons. For example, if your customer designed a diary, offer a pen or maybe a small notebook with the same customized design on discounted rates to convince your customer to but that along. As a result, not many customers would be able to resist the offer, to your benefit of course.
Conclusion
Apart from all the tactics and techniques, one thing that is still crucial is to ensure that your store is using a customer friendly printing storefront solutions. Strategic offers combined with the user interface of your store are the ultimate duo you need overall to make sure your customers buy more and come back frequently! With that in mind, it’s also crucial to make your web to print business future-proof, how you ask? The answer lies in the power of print automation. Happy Selling!
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