Sales

Flexible shopping basket

Like every online shop, buyers choose a product and add to their basket. But behold. As soon as they register or sign in, the studio team gets a newsfeed. We share the client’s basket. It’s like being in a supermarket queue, peering over their shoulder.

If the buyer doesn’t checkout promptly, Nettl studios can make contact. Maybe to assist with questions, or take control of the basket and complete the order. It’s the modern equivalent of a quote request. They’ve told us what they want. Now, it’s up to us to help them buy it.

If studios list their own range, clients can add those products to the same basket as those made in our hubs. They all blend together seamlessly, like finest seamless trousers.

Files, turnaround schedule, delivery address and courier service can all be edited in the basket. And if the lucky buyer has a gift voucher code, they can apply it here too.
Finally, they’ll see payment options. More about those in chapter six. If payment is approved, the order could go straight into production. If that’s the way they like it. Uhuh. Uhuh.

Self service client account area

“My clients love the personal service we give them”.

We hear that a lot. And we truly believe it. Did you know that 67% of people surveyed by Zendesk said they preferred self-service, over speaking to a company rep? Sure, it’s nice when people do stuff for us. But the truth is, that doesn’t always suit us.

Dolly Parton had a few things to say about working nine to five, but she missed a big point. Those 40 business hours, makin’ a livin’ are less than a quarter of the total 168 hours in a week. Maybe you run out-of-hours support. Maybe you’ve got people on call. Maybe you divert calls to your mobile at weekends.

We think the best service is complemented by self service. Let clients do things for themselves, when the studio is closed. Without waiting for long email Sally’s reply next morning. Or for Colin to return from lunch. With egg on his shirt. Again.

When clients sign-in to Nettl.com, they’re taken to a dashboard. Each coloured tile is an app, which can be customised for groups of customers. Each app let’s them do self-service tasks. We’ll cover more of these apps in section six.

Branded multi-site private client portals

“Add value blah blah”. Ah, gurus. “Yaddy yada, avoid the race to the bottom”. Those seminars. “Don’t sell on price, sell the value”. Yawn. You’ve probably sat through enough lectures on escaping commodity traps. But how though? HOW THOUGH?!

With a headache. Eh? A client’s headache. Ah! Find something that causes them pain. And solve it. Rub a paracetamol in it.

As businesses grow, controlling their brand gets trickier. Logos get stretched. Wrong colours used. A local branch uses Comic Sans and a million brand managers cry out in terror.

We can end brand dismay, with private client portals. Branded in a client’s logo, colour scheme and style. The same self-service tools as Nettl.com, with an extra management layer on top. Clients add their own users, departments or branches. They get a digital asset store, for their logos and brand images. Plus online editable templates, with style and approval rules built-in.

A splendid way to add-value for franchise networks and multi-site businesses. To create stickier relationships.

Eat sleep re-order repeat

Fourteen years.

That’s the longest gap between original order and re-order we’ve seen. Believe it or not, without any changes. Mad!

Most clients have some things they re-order over and over again. Loyalty cards. Forms. Letterheads.

Remember The Archive earlier? In w3p, every client has their own personal online order history. Everything they’ve ever ordered, even if they placed the order by email, in studio or by phone.

That makes re-ordering simple. Client hits re-order, checks the artwork is right and pays online. w3p copies the files to a new job. Depending on the studio preferences, the job can be FileChecked and sent straight to production. Lights out.

Without the team having to remember who originally printed it, find the files, see if it’s the same price and type in a fresh order.

We also lock jobs with discontinued products or which had quality issues reported. So we don’t repeat the same mistake twice.

Wouldn’t it be great if real life has a lock like that?

Keep track of every quote

How infuriating is it when you need someone to do something for you. You do your research. Visit a website. Ask for a quote. And they don’t get back to you. Boils our saliva!

Maybe they’re too busy. Work coming out their ears. Or maybe they don’t have a proper system.

There’s plenty that our clients can do for themselves at Nettl.com. Most of the time they can find prices, place orders and re-orders, without needing assistance from a studio.

Other clients need to get three quotes. Because procurement rules, natch. On nettl.com they can build quotes themselves, by converting their basket into a printed quote with one click.

But most likely, the studio does it for them. It’s a rare breed of client who only wants one option in one quantity. So w3p lets studios list multiple product options and select quantity breaks.

Teams use tracking reports to follow-up. (Secret: Always. Follow-up.) When the glorious day arrives – when they accept the quote – with one click, it’s converted into an order. And flagged for success!

The matrix has you and your sales

Nettl studios don’t just take orders. Sure, they get recurring revenue from search engine optimisation packages, monthly hosting subscriptions and website care plans. But we’re an outreach business. That means we get on our bikes, we go out and we look for new clients, for new opportunities. It’s critical we have sales executives and account managers who build relationships and understand client marketing objectives.

Nettl teams are small. Typically two to ten people. As a team grows, we split them. And multiply. A bit like a virus. Only our ebola is called a workgroup. We think smaller teams work better together. Everyone is more accountable and more responsible.

We set our company stores monthly sales and margin targets. They use The Matrix to track performance live. The whole team see top level sales versus last year. We segment by product type, since each has different margin characteristics. And the team can drill down to see individual orders.

Nobody can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

Build online editable templates directly from InDesign

Clients want to do more things self-service. That might include personalising stationery and marketing material online.
Multi-site businesses and franchise networks also want to control their brand, so Jonny from Falkirk can’t print yellow leaflets with cyan “50% aff” in all caps Papyrus.

It’s easy to build online editable templates in w3p.

In other systems, programming templates is left to developers. In w3p, it’s done by designers. They simply create an InDesign file. No plug-ins are needed. They just name layers, swatches and paragraph styles our special, secret way. Upload the InDesign file to w3p and watch it build a template automatically.

Licencing fonts for online template use is expensive and a legal headache. We’ve integrated thousands of fonts from Linotype, Monotype, ITC and Google libraries. When designers upload a file, we scan for fonts. They choose alternatives from the list and w3p substitutes properly licenced versions. But not Comic Sans. Nope. Don’t you even dare. We mean it.

Make Design part of the sale

We emphatically believe that great design is the most powerful sales tool of them all. When a Nettl studio creates a marketing work of beauty, clients fall in love. They want to show it off everywhere. On their premises. Vehicles. In more marketing. Great design sells more print.

Every studio has in-house creative. We don’t licence Nettl to businesses that don’t have it. As any designer will tell you, it takes many years of graft to perfect their craft. And learn rhyme.

Great design is a mix of elegant typography, emotive copy and powerful imagery. Nettl studios get a head start.

Over one hundred million royalty-free stock photos are built-in to w3p. Search for the right vector, illustration or photograph and download in two clicks. No need for credits.

Partners are licenced to use the images in client designs they create for print, web and social media.

That’s 100,000,000 choices. A lot of 0’s, for not a lot of dough. In fact, the image price is so low, we’re not allowed to publish it.