Press-ready Web-to-Print

What is Web-to-Print?

Web-to-print, also known as Variable Print or Dynamic Print, is a technology for your company store that enables customers to customize fields and other content on a printed item while maintaining the overall layout and identity standards for printed material.

Why would you put printed items in a company store that’s handling merch like promotional products, apparel, drinkware, hats and so on? Because printed collateral is another branded item, and for many companies it’s ordered along with other company merch. Think about it: If you have, say, an onboarding redemption store where employees can pick their welcome kit of apparel and promo items, chances are they might need to order their business cards at the same time. A company store with web-to-print products is great way to handle all the branded needs of an employee at once.

What is a web-to-print product? Web-to-print products generally fall into the following categories:

Business Cards: By far the most popular variable print collateral, business cards are setup with a template that includes logos, colors and non-changing information like toll-free numbers and website addresses. The employee name, phone number, email, location and other fields are filled out when the product is added to the cart and validated according to the rules you set up, like telephone number formats or the allowable length of name fields.

Postcards: Postcards of all sorts are ideal for web-to-print. A realty agency may have a template for new listing announcement postcards, but the address of the listing and the agent contact information needs to be added for the specific listing. A variable print postcard template allows the agency to maintain their branding standards across many agents and listings while giving the individual agent their own name, contact info and even a headshot.

Sell Sheets: Similar to postcards, sell sheets are used in everything from real estate to trade shows. The primary differences between a postcard and a sell sheet are size (sell sheets are usually larger, often letter-sized) and distribution (postcards are mailed, whereas sell sheets are generally handed out). Field customization is much the same, with the information for a local office or event dates added to the general product information.

Collateral: Another popular use for variable print is collateral materials like letterhead and envelopes. Companies can maintain logos and colors across dozens of different types of collateral while individual offices or branches can have their local address and phone information on the letters and envelopes they send out.

Rules and Proofing

Why do I need a web-to-print tool to handle print orders? Other than making some parts (logos, colors, etc.) of the printed collateral uneditable, a variable print system creates a set of rules on how information can be entered. This is important for keeping things like phone numbers consistently formatted, and many pieces of collateral have limits on things like how many characters can be entered for a given field. As an example, because the space on business card is very limited, you may have to restrict the number of characters that can be entered for a name or email address.

How do I know everything looks good? The last and maybe most important step in ordering a variable print product is the proof. Once the fields have been entered, the web-to-print system generates a PDF proof for the buyer to review prior to placing the order. They must acknowledge that the proof is accurate before adding the product to their cart. This lets the printer know that the order is good to go.

Printing: The variations of digital printing methods and equipment are far too complex to review here, but nearly all digital printing presses and printers accept PDF as the input method. PDF/X and its variants are accepted by most printers. storeBlox CS produces press-ready PDF/X files in full resolution and vector format for accurate reproduction. Once ordered on the site, the press-ready PDF is uploaded to a server where the printer can easily retrieve it along with the rest of the order information.