Grafenia has upgraded its Marqetspace web platform to make it easier for customers to locate and order products.
“We’ve listened to feedback from more than 2,000 trade print clients,” says CEO Peter Gunning. “Mostly this has been where our account managers have met clients at their premises and they’ve shared the things that slow them down or they find tricky. We’ve systematically worked through those one by one and improved the whole process, start to end.”
That process is continually ongoing, he explains, with constant tweaks to how products are displayed or described. However work underway since the start of the year has resulted in what Gunning calls “a fresh look that is a bit ‘sci-fi/industrial’ with a simpler style and a modern colour palette”.
The refreshed look is also designed to work better on mobile devices. There are few instances of companies uploading artwork through a tablet, but customers are using tablets to check for pricing and specification during meetings with their clients.
The display of effects that are offered has been improved, says Gunning, because “customer used to tell us they found it difficult to find spot gloss laminated flyers with die cut amongst such a big range. Now that can see prices for every paper or card type, in every finish all from one screen, all selectable through dropdown menus”.
Work on the Marqetspace website began five years ago, built on the W3P SaaS ecommerce platform that Grafenia developed to licence to printers and others wanting to create their own online print shop. They benefit from the incremental changes applied because of the need to make the Marqetspace and printing.com web sites as smooth as possible.
Everything is then printed in Grafenia’s Manchester factory including soft signing and large format products. These will be featured during the Print Show in October where Grafenia will participate in the Fabric Bazaar, itself part of the Diversification Zone.
Marqetspace’s Trad3 robot mascot will be in evidence with Gunning hoping to feature the character in some way during what will be an interactive stand.
The company will also emphasis that its production is UK so will not be held up in travelling from European based plants.
“We’ve listened to feedback from more than 2,000 trade print clients,” says CEO Peter Gunning. “Mostly this has been where our account managers have met clients at their premises and they’ve shared the things that slow them down or they find tricky. We’ve systematically worked through those one by one and improved the whole process, start to end.”
