Internet Marketing
Project #5 10/18/03
by Dave Reiss
Assignment 5 - VistaPrint.com
For my on-line product/service website I’ve selected VistaPrint.com,
a virtual graphic design company and printer of business cards,
brochures, and other related business materials. I’ll focus
on their business cards, as they are their most popular product,
and with good reason. This company allows their customers to design
professional business cards on their website using a wide array
of templates and graphic elements.
They offer 250 cards free if you use one of their
thirty-six free templates and if you don’t mind their logo
on the back of the card. (Included with their logo is the slogan
“Business Cards are FREE at www.vistaprint.com.”)
I’ve included several cards from VistaPrints.com as examples
of their final product.
Using the Vistaprint.com on-line design service is very straightforward.
Once you select what type of product you want to design, in this
case business cards, you are presented with a page showing what
their most popular designs are, as well as a list of categories
to choose from including: Most Popular, New Arrivals, Corporate,
High Impact, and Personal. If you choose to use their premium
business card service, your choices expand with a wide array of
templates broken down by image, style, and industry.
Once you select a template, you input the information you want
on the card and are presented with a full size composite of the
card, showing your custom text over the selected graphic design.
The first time you try this is truly a “Why didn’t
I think of this?” moment. Being able to see your results
with a mouse click is very gratifying. The wide array of styles
and layouts make the experience fun. You can save your information
and try other styles — very user friendly and efficient.
This service works on many levels. It is a virtual design house
at your fingertips. It is extremely easy to use. It has a very
low price point for their entry product, paying only for shipping.
Also, their minimum order is 250 cards, not 500 like most other
brick and mortar printers. The cost of 250 of their premium cards
with shipping is $25 and takes about two weeks, unless you pay
more for expedited shipping, then you can have your cards in as
little as two days.
Their original brand and associated messages to customers is one
of value and ease of use. Their website is designed with customers
in mind, not designers. Pre-designed layout choices for each style
of card make the customer experience of designing a business card
experience easy, fast, and fun. The free cards are not a bait-and-switch,
but a solid product and service.
Of course VistaPrint.com would like to do more than make free
business cards. They offer an array of products and services,
and once you set up an account you get a weekly offering via e-mail.
They have now included the ability to upload logos and other custom
elements, and are trying to compete with your local printer. The
site reflects this, as the card service is just one of the products
available including stationary, brochures, etc. The one limitation
to this is that you must be on a PC, because the browsers for
the Macintosh don’t support this service.
The top of their website is their logo and slogan, “VistaPrint,
Best Printing - Best Price.” This message I think hurts
their brand, which should be associated with ease of use and price,
rather than the quality and price message they are trying to get
out.
I would reposition their brand so their marketing
message would be:
1. Ease Of Use – the Vistaprint.com website is user-friendly,
full of design choices, and an effective tool for pre-visualizing
printed material.
2. Value – the Vistaprint.com service allows for limited
printing runs for smaller orders, deeply discounted and free entry-level
products, all done with high quality.
Instead, what they have done is raise their prices on their premium
cards as their service has become more popular, and want to generate
more short term profit. The opportunity missed here is the tie-in
for their existing business card customers.
Some marketing ideas for VistaPrint.com might include:
- Send every customer a sample set of stationary and envelopes
using the same design as their cards.
- Cultivate a relationship with their existing customers by enticing
them to purchase complimentary product extensions.
- Survey their existing customers as to what their printing needs
are, and offer discounts responding to the results.
The success of their service is based on the ease
of use and customization of their product, yet the relationship
to their customers reflects little of this successful formula.
Clearly this company is not positioning their service in a clear
and effective way. If they would shift from a traditional selling
model of a menu of products and barrage of sales offerings, to
focusing on their customers’ buying experience, which has
already proven to be effective, their marketing message and related
brand identity would be based on a more accurate reflection of
the experiences of the end-users and reflect the customer value
of their products and services. (Crossing the Chasm, 2003. p 148.)