web store... is it profitable?

[wonderings]

We currently have a B2B store, it is not utilized a whole lot by our customers, but we keep it as a service for some of them. I have seen various services out there that charge a monthly fee for a web store with design templates and even the ability to design your own business card and other such things on them. My question is, do you make money with this? Random customers ordering business cards, letter head, envelopes and whatever else. Not a whole lot of money in business cards, especially when you compare to places like Vista Print. Our greatest strength is our customer service and working with the customer to make things happen. I do not want to change this, but wondering if it is worth investing for the type of customer who might just be a one off.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

The “field of dreams” approach is not a good one, even more so for B2C ecommerce. You should have key B2B customers that will be using this service. These clients still need to be adding to the base income of your business, however they will also need to be contributing to the ROI on the ecommerce/web to print portal.


Stephen Marsh

 

[Digimc]

Hi,
I can see the benefit of having templates available when our design department is backed up and for the small quantity jobs ie one or two A0 posters where traditional design exceeds the print cost.
Can anyone recommend a good source for templates that I can add to my website that are available in European sizes and are on a pay per use basis. Most templates I have seen look a bit naff. Has anyone any experience with tweak.com or w3p shop although I think these may be out of my price range when the monthly sub is taken into account