Sell printed products
Some suppliers do not hold stock at all. A trade printer makes each job when it is ordered, so there is nothing to count. What a shopper needs instead is a price for the size of run they want, and a date it will land.
StockBoss connects to one of those, Tradeprint, and puts that on your product page as a table. A shopper picks a cell. You check the order before it goes anywhere.
What a shopper sees
Section titled “What a shopper sees”Quantities down the side, delivery speeds across the top, a price in every cell. Under each price sits what one costs at that run size. The per-unit price is the whole argument for ordering more, and nobody should have to do the division in their head.
Three things worth knowing about the table:
- The prices are the printer’s, live. They are fetched for the exact specification a shopper has chosen, not read off a list you maintain. Change the paper and the whole table changes.
- A cell that is empty says why. Printers do not offer every speed at every quantity, and the gaps are not tidy. Rather than a blank, the cell says “not at this quantity”.
- Each choice narrows the next. Pick a size and the paper list only offers papers that size can be made in. Pick a paper and the finishes narrow again. A shopper can never assemble a combination the printer does not make. If they reach a dead end anyway, the message offers the way out. “Change any one of these and it can be made”, with the choices listed.
- The printer is never named. While prices are fetched the page says “Checking prices…”, and an impossible combination says “That combination is not available”. Your shopper sees your shop, not your supplier.
Dropdowns with numbers in them, sheet counts, paper weights, run sizes, are sorted as numbers. Nobody is offered 100 after 1000.
Under 640px the table stops being a table: speeds become a row of cards and the run sizes become one column. A four column price table on a phone is a sideways scroll, and half the traffic is on a phone.
What you control
Section titled “What you control”On the supplier’s connect screen:
Your markup. Under Your prices: a percentage on top of the printer’s trade price, set once, and every product built from their range is priced from it. The rounding below is applied after it.
Which speeds you offer. Under How you sell: untick a delivery speed and it disappears from your price tables.
How much of your colour it uses. Three settings, and every one of them is the same table underneath. What changes is how far your brand colour reaches into it.
| What carries your colour | |
|---|---|
| None | Nothing. The table is black and white and disappears into the page. |
| Accent | The price a shopper picked, the “Best value” badge, and the column they are in. |
| Bold | All of that, plus the heading band filled with your colour. |
Leave the colour box empty and the table follows your theme instead. If you do pick one, the text on it is worked out for you. A colour nobody could read white on gets deepened until they can. There is no combination you can choose that produces a price somebody cannot see.
Round prices to. Trade prices arrive at whatever the printer charges, and few shops want to sell at £28.4913. Pick an ending and every price on the table is rounded up to it. Four common ones are in the list. The fifth entry opens a box for anything from .01 to .99, so a shop whose prices all end .97 is not told to pick .95 or .99.
Rounding is always up. Rounding down would sell below the margin you set.
Delivery dates. On by default, sitting under each speed, because a date answers “when do I get it” before a single price has been read.
Turn it off if your lead times move about. A quoted date is the printer’s working days plus a carrier, and a date you miss costs more goodwill than one you never gave. Switching it off also stops the request that fetches them, so it is one fewer call, not hidden text.
Quantities a shopper can pick. Printers sell in set run sizes. Leave this on the first setting and a shopper picks from the sizes the printer actually runs. The second adds a box for a size of their own. A typed size is always rounded up to the next real size, so nothing odd is ever ordered.
What the printer does with your artwork. Four choices, and only the first one is free.
| What they do | |
|---|---|
| Print it exactly as sent | Nothing else. Your files go straight to the press. |
| Check it and tell you about problems | Somebody looks at the artwork and comes back to you if something is wrong. |
| Check it and fix minor problems | The same look, but they correct small things themselves rather than asking. |
| Design the artwork for you | They do the artwork. |
The last three are services the printer bills you for, and the price a shopper is quoted does not include them. The price request asks for the specification and nothing else, so an artwork service is a cost that lands on you afterwards. If you want one, put it in your markup first.
The printer will not quote a delivery date without knowing which of the four you want, so there is always one chosen.
Where the artwork comes from
Section titled “Where the artwork comes from”Maybe your product page collects a file from the shopper, through an AddOnBoss upload field or any upload plugin. StockBoss finds it on the order and attaches it as the print artwork. There is nothing to wire up. Any file the order carries that lives in your own uploads counts, and only files from your own site are ever sent. You can also swap the file for a corrected one on the Supplier orders screen before you send.
Which product is which
Section titled “Which product is which”On any product you sell, a Made by Tradeprint box lets you say which of the printer’s items it is. Once that is set, orders for it can be sent from the Supplier orders screen.
Each supplier you connect gets its own box, named after them. A shop with three suppliers connected sees three, so there is never a question about which one a setting belongs to.
Trim the choices on one product
Section titled “Trim the choices on one product”The printer offers everything they can make. Your product does not have to. On the same Made by Tradeprint box, each of the printer’s choices, paper, size, finish, has an Edit control:
- Untick the values you do not sell. The summary line keeps the score: “Offering 4 of 12”. Unticked values never appear on your page.
- Set a default, so the page opens on the paper you actually recommend instead of “Choose”. The line reads “default Matt”.
- Fix a choice to one value and hide it. A product that only comes laminated does not need a lamination question. The line reads “Fixed to Gloss, hidden from shoppers”, and every order carries that value.
- Choose which run sizes you offer. Type a list like “50, 100, 250-1000” and only those quantities appear in the table. A flyer product does not have to offer all fourteen of the printer’s run sizes.
Everything a shopper is not shown is still sent to the printer correctly. Trimming changes the questions, never the order.
Nothing is sent until you have checked it
Section titled “Nothing is sent until you have checked it”An order a shopper places does not go to the printer. It waits on the Supplier orders screen until you send it.
That is deliberate and it is not a limitation. A printed order cannot be undone once it is in a press, and the specification is coming from a shopper rather than from you. Before you send, you can see exactly what would go. The printer is asked to validate it first, which catches a bad order without creating one.
Order updates arrive on their own
Section titled “Order updates arrive on their own”Once an order is with the printer you do not chase it. When Tradeprint move a job on, dispatch included, the WooCommerce order is updated to match. The Supplier orders screen and the order agree without anybody pressing anything.
Coming from Tradeprint’s own plugin
Section titled “Coming from Tradeprint’s own plugin”If your shop already sells Tradeprint products through Tradeprint’s own WooCommerce plugin, the links you made by hand are read and offered back to you: which products are theirs, which speeds you allow, and the markup you charge. Nothing of theirs is changed or removed. Nothing of yours is overwritten unless you ask for it by name. A product that cannot be matched is listed for you rather than guessed at. So reading your existing setup costs you nothing and leaves it exactly as it was.
Do run one plugin at a time on a given product, though. Both plugins add their own choices and price to the same place on a product page, so a product set up in both would show two of everything. Switch a product over when you are ready for it, and leave the rest on what they are on.
What it costs you
Section titled “What it costs you”Every price on the table is one request to the printer, made when a shopper changes their specification. Changing quantity or speed after that costs nothing: the whole ladder arrives in a single answer and the table redraws without asking again.
Next: health, history and alerts covers what happens when the printer is slow or unreachable, and when it refuses covers the wording you will see if a specification cannot be priced.