When it comes to reducing the cost of a print job, there are several techniques print buyers learn over time that can end up saving them big on future print orders. Due to the wide array of capabilities and skill among commercial printers, it’s understandable why it would take so much trial and error to get ordering print right.
While there will ultimately be a little trial and error needed to find the right commercial printer with the right print products for your business, there are a few tips that can help you avoid most of the pitfalls many first-time print buyers regret making.
Tip #1 — Don’t overbuy to decrease unit cost.
For their first order of print from a commercial printer, many buyers will often order way more printed pieces than they know they’ll actually need. This is often because they’ll see the per unit price of the order going down as they increase their quantity by a certain amount. While ordering this additional quantity of print may decrease the per-piece cost of the order by a few cents, it ultimately adds up to a greater total than it was before.
While this amount will only be a few dollars more than the total for the quantity of pieces they actually needed, it’s an amount that doesn’t really need to be purchased since they’ll just end up throwing the extra pieces away.
Marketing and visual trends change so quickly it’s hard to keep up, so who knows? You may want to change your branding on the printed piece a month after ordering them or long before you run out of the quantity you ordered. Thrown away print is wasted money, so making sure you’re ordering approximately how many you’ll be using is an ongoing dilemma for print buyers.
As you become more familiar with how quickly you use printed materials, you’ll more intuitively know how much to order. But, in the meantime, you can avoid the possibility of overspending for the sole purpose of getting the “per unit” price down. If you find yourself running through your materials faster than you expected, you can always order more – this can be more efficient than having a huge stockpile of print left over when you want to update the design and content.
Tip #2 — Print with a web-to-print company that has a digital press.
When you order something from Amazon.com, you often find that your price is lower than what you would have paid in a brick-and-mortar store for the same item, sometimes much lower. Why’s that?
The item you ordered had to be individually packaged and shipped to you, which seems like it’d be way more trouble for the store and the carriers who delivered the item to you.
The reason it can be the same price or cheaper to purchase something online as it is in a brick-and-mortar store is a matter of scale. Online retailers have a high enough volume for the increased costs imposed by shipping to be undercut by the increased profits of a relatively higher volume of orders. This allows them to charge the very same amount as the brick-and-mortar retailers who are paying less to get their items into the hands of customers.
Why are we going on so much about online retailers? Because, they’re not so different from a web-to-print printer. Conquest Graphics has a high enough volume of print orders for the costs associated with shipping and handling to be decreased enough for us to charge the very same, if not far less than your average local printer would charge.
Since online printers like Conquest Graphics have much wider audiences, they’re able to provide the low prices that undercut their regional and local competitors.
Knowing this will allow you to avoid the struggle of going with a brick-and-mortar printer and having to go through a trial and error period with them to figure out how to get the print products you need.
Tip #3 — Sample a printer’s papers, coatings and printing techniques before buying.
If you’ve ever purchased anything online without seeing any pictures of it, you probably know how anxiety-inducing it can be waiting for it to finally arrive. Without any visual preview of what you’re ordering, you don’t really have much to base your expectations on.
While descriptions can help a little with certain products, many aspects of a product are very subjective and can be liked or disliked by people with differing opinions.
While this method of online shopping may sometimes bring you satisfactory products, it’s a relatively risky way to shop online since aligning expectations with reality doesn’t take place until it’s arrived at your front door.
Sometimes situations like these can end in disaster, especially when there are tighter deadlines involved that remove the possibility of trying again with a different vendor. In these situations, a print buyer can lose a ton of time and money as they use a trial-and-error technique to finally find an online printer that suits their business’ needs.
To avoid a nightmare scenario like this, a print buyer can simply request a paper sample book to get a visual and tactile idea of an online printer’s capabilities and offerings. Almost all online printers have paper sample guides that they provide absolutely free of charge to prospective customers as a kind of sampler of their printed offerings.
Paper sample books are very powerful tools for saving yourself a ton of money on wasted print. Not only do they allow you to get a feel for the different types of paper a printer offers, but they also allow you to get an idea of the quality of print an online printer is capable of.
Once you find a printer you like, hang on to their paper sample book, as it will be an excellent reference for all future print buying needs. Even seasoned veteran print buyers have to reference a paper sample guide every now and then to remind themselves of the way a certain weight of paper feels.
Not only do paper sample guides help you get an idea of what to expect with paper selection, but they also often include examples of uncoated versus coated papers so you can see how those will affect your final printed piece. They also often include samples of various types of coatings so you can get an idea of how they affect a printed piece’s durability and overall appearance.
Get started on your commercial printer hunt by ordering one of our Paper Sample Books or Direct Mail Idea Packs, both absolutely free of charge!
If you find an online printer who doesn’t offer paper sample guides, you should ask for them to mail you samples of previous work at the very least, should you choose to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Many printers will also include options for specialized versions of their paper sample books, such as Conquest Graphics’ Direct Mail Idea Pack, which can also be mailed to you free of charge.
While these free samples may not seem to be the most important at first glance, they’re actually one of the most powerful tools in cost-conscious print buying, and they can save you from making big mistakes by choosing bad online printers.
Tip #4 — Proof before you print.
The final and debatably most important tip our print buyers wish they had known sooner is to always proof your final designs before submitting them (as print-ready PDFs) to be printed.
This may seem to beginner print buyers like a very simple directive, but it’s actually one that’s deceivingly difficult to do correctly and thoroughly. One of the most important skills to possess to do this correctly is attention to detail.
It's absolutely heartbreaking when you print out a beautifully designed brochure that seems to be perfect, only to discover a major typo somewhere in the text or, even worse, in the header. In such situations, it’s common for the person who ordered the printed piece to feel 100 percent confident the piece was perfect when they submitted their artwork.
Nevertheless, when they look back at their files they had submitted to their printer, the mistake had been there all along, and it’s truly one of the most embarrassing and distressing situations possible in the world of business.
Not only are these kinds of mistakes embarrassing, but they’re also extremely wasteful since it may require a reorder or makeshift correction. This is why it’s so important to check your final copy, and then check it again before checking it another 10 times.
We often recommend taking a break between when you finalize a design and submit it for printing, as it allows you to look at the piece with fresh eyes so you can see the mistakes that would otherwise be ignored because of familiarity or fatigue.
In total, following the advice of each of these guidelines can save you big time so you don’t have to make a number of first-time print buyer pitfalls that many of us have to face the hard way. Keeping these items in mind, you’ll confidently be able to order print online without any hesitation or fear.
