There are dozens of off-the-shelf solutions now. I think the one with the lion's share of the market is XMPie. i found this link you might find useful:
https://www.veedeepee.com/w2p-s…..utions.htm
Adobe provide SDKs for people wishing to make their own using such things as indesign server, FLEX and XML.
Some W2P solutions are quite complicated such as https://www.offbeatguides.com/ or https://www.moonpig.com.au/ which appear to be custom-made solutions. the off-the-shelf ones tend to be aimed at printers mainly for overprinting stationery shells or for printing on indigo presses or colour copiers. The following deals with the latter.
I've had experience in using an off-the-shelf web-to-print solution for the last 18 months, which i won't name in case they don't like my opinion. This particular solution has been nothing but a headache in terms of setting up GUIs for customers, setting up the templates for their stationery, and general housekeeping.
On-screen, W2P is a great concept: lets an end-user set up their own stationery within brand guidelines and see a proof in real-time. They can then approve it without a contract proof and the printer receives a print-ready PDF fit for prepress. The payment is made prior to shipping the PDF and it all sounds very simple.
In real life however, the system easily falls down. Customers might see the demo and get excited, but when it comes time to actually ordering from it, they tend to forget their log-in to the site and then how to use the site, and it gets all too hard and they go back to what they're used to: over the phone orders, fax orders, email orders, etc. This is even moreso if several people are intended to use the site but have a medium-high staff turnover.
What i'd say to anyone considering W2P is:
* make sure it ties into the MIS. This way even if a customer isn't using the W2P solution, at least they can use it for their print management, warehousing and billing.
* make sure that setting up the GUIs for the customer is kept as simple as humanly possible. It will only take ONE hurdle before a customer gets startled and clicks on logout and then places an order another way.
* make sure that setting up the front-ends and templates for use by customers is easy to do and something that prepress staff can do easily, especially in the event of staff turnover.
* make sure its something that many of your customers WANT. if they're happy ordering the way they are, why change that? why put them through a potential ordeal if you don't have to?
* do the math first and make sure that even with a fraction of user uptake that the company will see an ROI. if 20 customers are keen, budget on 2 customers using it faithfully and properly.
hope that helps.
colly
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