TIPS BEFORE INVESTING IN MAGENTO PRODUCT DESIGNER

The constant evolution of the printing industry has made no longer dependent on physical stores. It is growing in different ways after marking its presence into the digital market, it has opened the doors of endless opportunities.

And people are loving it! Because it provides them the freedom to be creative and has things of their choice through Web-to-print stores.

Whereas, on the other hand, the growth of Magento is phenomenal in recent years. 

In fact, Magento is currently the most preferred e-commerce platform for e-store owners. If you are considering starting your online store in the printing industry then I recommend using Magento as an e-commerce platform and integrating it with our product design tool. Here, I will be providing some guidance on things you must consider before investing in a magento product customizer:

Mobile First: This is the current demand of the market. Tech giants like Google are promoting the concept of mobile-first experience. A recent study shows that 84% of users face difficulties in completing mobile transactions. And that's a huge number. But, as a vendor, there is a huge opportunity for you to generate plenty of revenue by providing these users with the mobile-first experience.

Hence, providing your users with an interface that is compatible with mobile, it will be perfect. You can make sure that your users can easily do even the smallest of the task from your mobile-friendly design.

Support SEO: The marketing of your e-store is the most important part of your business. While purchasing a magento 2 product designer you want to make sure that it has SEO features.

Thinking, why is it important? If there is no visibility of your printing e-store on search engines then you won’t be getting the traffic->clients and this will not help your business to flourish. So, in this era of the digital world, you need to make sure that you have a strong online presence and grow your business. Make sure to check that they provide you with the features like targeted keywords, SEO title, meta description, etc. Making your store full-fledged and optimized technically will help you to grow your digital presence on various platforms and make sure that your customers can find you easily.

Customization options: This is the most crucial part. When your vision is to encourage your customers to design and create their own products. To prompt them to purchase and provide them the freedom to personalize their products by designing things that are not available online. So, to make sure that all these needs get fulfilled you need to make sure that your tool provides great customization options. Example: Multiple design areas, custom clipart options, custom design templates, etc. more the option, the better experience you can provide to your customers and grow your business.

User Experience: We live in a fast-paced world. Today no one wants to wait and we all want things to happen fast around us. Similarly, we want websites that we visit to load fast. So, while setting up the website make sure that it does not take more than 2-3 seconds, otherwise, your website may lose potential users. Simultaneously, also make sure that the tool you are purchasing is providing quick and is easy to learn and play around. The best part of integrating it with Magento is its high tech and speed. All you need to do is find the perfect product design tool which can work with the high speed and easily integrates with your e-store.

Storing downloadable file: As a store owner, you have the majority of the tasks related to management. You need to make sure that the files which you have are at a proper place and are easily accessible. Sometimes, you will be having many customers who are using your own services, in such scenarios you need to make sure that they don’t get mixed, delivery of the product is on time and your customer is happy.

Easy order/reorder facilities: Ordering and payments needs to be easy. You should also check the “My Design” section for your customers to easily check the design they create or purchase. You can also provide the tracking or reordering feature. These two features will make it easier for your customers to track their order like is it dispatched or by when it will deliver and if they have loved some particular design then they can easily reorder it as well.

Conclusion: To make your e-store stand out in this competitive market, you need to make sure that you are moving ahead with time. You also need to make sure that you are using the correct tools to the fullest of its potential and providing your customers with the best service.

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A Guide on How to Venture into a Photo Book Business

A picture is worth a thousand words. Therefore, photos hold great importance for everyone. With more and more smartphones flooding the market, people have started documenting their day-to-day life by clicking numerous snaps.

Imagine being in a business where you could help almost 2.7bn smartphone owners to create with those images. We are talking about photo book printing. One of the best options as a business for you if you love creativity.

But again, starting every business needs a lot of preparation and research. And of course, will power.

So, here are some steps to keep in mind before you start a photo book business.

1. Insightful Research

Three things to research well into before starting a photo book business:

Mode of Business
One thing you need to decide is whether you want to start this photo book business offline or online. Or whether you want to combine both offline and online modes.

However, unless you are very sure of immense success of your offline photo studio, it is better to start photo book business online. The reasons why starting it online has an edge over offline are:

• Print on Demand technology/process can help save money and resources.
• It lets customers utilize their creativity to design photo books as per their wish. And this personalizes their experience further.
• Lesser investment required to create a website than buy or rent space.

Or you can also go for a hybrid store too. Starting with an online store, you may expand it to an offline store once your brand gets popular.

Analysis of Competition and Customers
Understand the photo book market first. Keep yourself abreast of the big brands in the same business. Analyze them thoroughly and try to understand their ideas and strategies. Study their sites and product offerings.

You can add your own innovation to that analysis to come up with the latest trending products in the market. Don’t copy competitors but take inspiration from them.

Also, try to figure out the potential customers of your business and the price they are willing to pay for your products.

Accordingly, decide on the products you want to sell and their prices.

Financial Strategy
Budget plays a crucial role in any business. So, your financial strategy should not fall flat in any case. Your strategy should take into account everything - run-time and anticipated expenses, monthly and yearly profit margins, funds for investments, etc.

2. Selection of Products

After researching well and building an idea, the next thing is selection of products. In the business of photo books, selection of covers and papers of photo books is important. Selection of these two depends on market trends, price, profit margins, requirements of your store, etc.

The main types of photo book covers available for you to choose from are:

• Flipbook - A soft-cover photo book. It’s very flexible and durable like a magazine.
• Hardcover - Feels like a real book. Comes in hinged and layflat forms.
• Booklet - 2-staple binding on the spine helps flat opening. Ideal for small-size photo books.
• Linencover - Outer covering of real canvas. Gives a classy and elegant look.

The main types of paper you can choose for your photo books are:

• Matte - Non-glossy and ideal for designs with enough text on it.
• Glossy - A paper with a very ‘shiny’ surface. Lighter than the matte paper. Ideal for vibrant photos.
• Satin - Lies midway between matte and glossy papers. People also call it ‘pearl’ paper.
• Linen - Has textured lines on its surface. Feels like a linen cloth. Suitable for presentation folders, wedding invitations, art paints, etc.

3. Judicious Selection of a Supplier

A supplier should be consistent in supplies and quality. Once you set up a store, you’ll need stuff like photo book pages, spirals, covers, etc. So, make sure that the supplier you pick is capable of delivering everything on time. And doesn’t leave you with an irregular supply or bad quality products.

4. Selection of an E-Commerce Platform

Choose an e-commerce platform judiciously. Consider factors like hidden charges, mobile and SEO friendliness, support and security updates, etc.

Here are the types of platforms you can choose from:

• Traditional - Pay a fee upfront and get the annual license of the platform for a year. Hybris, IBM or Kentico, etc. are good examples of traditional platforms.
• Open-Source - You don’t need to pay any license fee annually. But you’ll need to pay for implementation and customization. Magento is the most popular platform in this category.
• Cloud - Traditional open-source platforms with an upgrade of a hosting system. Demandware, Salesforce, Common, etc. are good examples.
• SaaS - Software-as-a-Service platforms are cloud-based platforms accessible across all browsers. You only need to pay a monthly subscription fee to the third-party provider for maintenance, performance, and security.

5. Selection of a Right Designer Tool

• Choice of suitable Photo Book Design Software is a crucial step. The design software for your photo book business should provide:
  
  Editable Templates
• Management of multiple image slides
• Skew Effect
• Drop and Shadow Effect
• Cost-Effectiveness
• SEO Friendliness
• 2D and 3D Previews

And more.

6. Selection of a Right Printing Method

Despite the availability of umpteen print methods like flexography, screen printing, lithography, etc., digital printing is ideal for photo book printing. As it involves reproducing digital images on a paper. Further, you can choose from a variety of color combinations using your Web-to-Print Software.

7. Operations

Printing
Find a suitable printing service provider for your printing business. Make sure that they provide fine quality prints. Also, upgrade your offices and hire professionals to complement your business as it grows.

Logistics
Managing deliveries by yourself can be possible when orders are few. However, when your business expands, find a reliable delivery company to collaborate with. This collaboration will streamline your delivery process.

8. Launching and Marketing

After all the steps comes the time of launching your business. It is better to start marketing about your launch in advance. This will build up curiosity among people.

After launching your business, market it through:

• Optimizing your website for SEO
• Blogging
• Making YouTube videos and vlogs
• Using referral programs
• Social Media Marketing
• Offline Marketing
• Pay-Per-Click Marketing (if you have surplus budget), etc.

Takeaway

So, a photo book business is always a good business idea. You’ll be helping people relive their favorite moments. Just take care of every step and you’ll soon ace in this vogue business.

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8 Ways to Maintain Customer Loyalty in 2020 amid COVID-19

According to a study by Digital Commerce 360, 67% of online shoppers have changed their shopping behavior and 55% of online shoppers have placed more orders online owing to the Corona outbreak. This shows that customers are turning to online shopping in the wake of this pandemic.

However, keeping your customer base intact amid the prevailing times of uncertainty isn’t that easy. And customer loyalty may go down due to one or more reasons below:

• Lack of engagement or interest.
• Poor customer experience.
• Failure to fulfill customers’ demands.
• Weakened brand equity.

As a result, your overall sales and revenue may plummet.

Therefore, besides acquiring new customers, maintaining existing customer loyalty is also crucial. To win your customers’ trust and loyalty, you may have to ‘walk the extra mile’ to retain your customer loyalty – especially this fateful year.

Read on to know a few customer retention strategies that can come in handy and retain your brand loyalty among customers.

• Ensure to take Emergency Measures

This is the first and foremost step towards retaining customer loyalty. Setting up an emergency response team is crucial for timely measures. This team can help assess the risk factors, supply or inventory related issues, online store operations, workforce,
and consumers’ sentiments.

After considering all these factors, this team can plan and work out strategies to adopt for marketing and sales. Further, it can also discuss these strategies with the top officials and experienced employees in each department and tweak them further.

Thus, it will help create an effective roadmap to guide your company through this crisis.

• Assure Customers about Product Safety

The word ‘social distancing’ has had a deep impact on people’s minds and hearts. Trusting your brand would be difficult for even your existing customers– unless you show them you care for them. Reassure them that you follow stringent hygiene procedures and guidelines for customers, employees, and products with utmost attention.
For that, you can inform your customers by creating a video, blog(s), or even a full dedicated website page for CORONA where you can inform them how your brand is responding to this global pandemic.
For instance, if you have an in-house manufacturing facility, you can record a small video showing the entire procedure of manufacturing, packing, dispatching and delivery. You can also post videos of your employees following precautions like wearing masks and gloves, sanitizing machinery, cartons or other packaging materials, etc. on social media.

This all will help customers regain confidence in your brand and win back their trust.

• Provide Personalization

Personalized approaches may work well for an online store seeing the current scenario. Let’s understand it with an example.
Suppose, you are an online print store owner. In general times, people would buy anything and everything from your store. But would they do that today? Of course not! The reason is the change in customers’ shopping preferences. They have grown smarter and research everything before buying anything – especially in current times. They won’t pick anything that can’t stand out or isn’t ‘really’ valuable.

What to do then? The answer is – offering personalization. By providing freedom of customization through product design software like Magento Product Designer or any other, you can engage customers better.

• Accommodate New In-Trend Items

Hunt for the products or services people are seeking in your industry. Incorporating in-trend items or services is highly helpful.
For instance, if you own an insurance company, it is high time you covered Corona under your health coverage policy just like other renowned insurance companies like Reliance General Insurance.
Similarly, you can offer COVID-19 masks to your customers if you are an online fashion store just like Wildcraft has done.

• Prompt Online Customer Support

While online customer support is always a valuable asset, strengthening it further can help even more in such times.
Equip your customer support team with all they need to respond to customers anywhere anytime. Keep multiple lines of communication open for your customers. Facebook Messenger, official whatsapp number, customer service number, or other messaging platforms can help. You can even offer them the ‘video conferencing’ option through Skype or FaceTime for a face-to-face interaction and strengthen your customer relations.

• Zero-Contact Delivery

Out of the fear of getting infected, people are abstaining from touching any surface, or even each other! To allay such fears, offering them ‘Zero Contact Delivery’ can be a very innovative option. Adjust your store backend configuration and display the option of Zero Contact Delivery on your product page or Checkout page for customers. This will reassure them that you follow the social distancing norms ‘actually’ and their safety is your topmost priority.

• Social Media – Make it Your Right Hand

Undeniably, a website is a must for every online store. However, social media visibility is not behind. When people are indoors checking news about Corona now and then on social media, you can leverage this opportunity to strengthen your social media presence.

Keep posting useful content, details of new launches, offers or discounts, etc. on your social media pages on various platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Remember, the content you post should be informative or exciting, and most importantly – positive.

You can also run customer loyalty programs, offers and discounts; and maximize their outreach via announcements on social media. This will help attract your existing customers’ attention back to your brand. Not only the existing customers, but also the new audience may stumble upon such programs or offers, develop interest, and become your customers.

This way, you won’t only be able to retain your existing customer base but also broaden it.

• Tap into the Real Power of Content

Last but not the least, make sure your content is meticulously created. People often fail to realize how content can work wonders for a business. After all the marketing efforts you invest in, it is the ‘content’ that they see first on your site, social media page, email, and literally everywhere.
Therefore, if you really want to rule the hearts and minds of your audience, making your content engaging is indispensable. Especially when decision-making has become harder for customers and they want help choosing between various products/services/offerings by various companies, content can be their guide.
Make sure that your content is insightful, informative, motivating, engaging and of course – optimized for keywords. Use various tools to research keywords around COVID-19 and optimize your blogs, articles, listing page content, etc. with them.

Afterall, CONTENT IS KING for Bill Gates and broadly – for every business.

Summing Up

COVID-19 crisis has undoubtedly toughened maintaining and building customer loyalty. However, with several effective customer retention strategies as discussed above, you can win back your customers’ trust and retain their loyalty.
Good luck with building your customer loyalty!

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