Esigns / Build A Sign / Vista Print / The Sign Chef

[TXFB.INS]

Got bored to while waiting on prints to finish and started surfing the web, and these came up as top search hits.

beyond the online design program, which appears to be custom for each company. Wonder what they paid to get these coaded?

How do these companies take the design from the customer's screen into production? What sort of automation is being used?

What type of Programming / IT Hardware specs are needed to allow repeat customers to log into their account and review previous orders and either reorder that design again or take that design and make edits to it?

wonder what the SEO budget is to constantly have them at the top of pages?

 

[particleman]

Most of what you are talking about is simply custom software written for their needs. The cost is difficult to measure as some of the companies you named are into quite a bit more than just "signs". Some of them have spin off niches (separate websites) that cater to different sectors of the market. I know for a fact a few of those companies staff their own developers so the cost is whatever the employees cost. Having a 3rd party develop something like this would cost quite a bit. You need front end, designer, templates, and backend order processing. Beyond that you need a large marketing budget to break into an already crowded market (IMO).

As for automation, I'll use Vista Print as an example. Their system is quite complex although it doesn't appear to be on the surface. They are able to offer such rock bottom prices because of their automation. Early on they perfected batching orders together and producing them (such as business cards) as one instead of running orders individually. My guess is that they have extended this software into other areas such as magnets, banners, and other products on their site.

In general these design online signs should spit out pdf, vector, or image files suitable for loading directly into a rip. It wouldn't be hard to automate this even further to make the site drop a print ready file directly into a hot folder or such to queue as soon as an order comes in. Generally orders require review and one final "check" before sending to print I've found.

As for repeat customers/re order that is a function of the custom site software which has to be considered when designing the system. Ideally yes you would want a system that allows for reorders.

SEO Budget - I think you might be talking about Adwords, As far as PPC some of these companies it is feasible such as Vistaprint they could be spending in excess of $50,000 - $100,000 / month in PPC because of the vast keywords they target. Build a sign, possibly $20,000-$40,000? Just a guess really.

How do I know all of this? I have written software that does this sort of thing for about 6 years now.