If you operate a business that sells one woolly jumper a year, then make you own site using basic software.

If you want to make some profit then a poorly constructed web site will simply not do.

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In Eric Alterman’s article for the March 31 issue of The New Yorker entitled, “The News Business, Out of Print,” he cites newspaper companies losing advertisers, readers, and market value as a sign of their demise. He also cites the rise of the Internet, making the daily newspaper look slow and unresponsive, and the advent of Craiglist, which is surpassing classified advertising, as further indicators of printed newspapers’ obsolescence.

However, further research shows that print continues to play an important role in Internet marketing and it remains the most trusted and often preferred medium. An alliance of print industry leaders known as The Print Council, has asked the Rochester Institute of Technology and six other universities to collect and summarize the best or recent research on all types of media.

Direct mail is projected to grow by 4.5% this year and will account for the largest advertising spent in the United States. Research reveals that 80% of people read or skim their direct mail and 38% find it interesting. Among unsolicited email, internet banner ads, sales calls to the home and text message ads, 75% of consumers say that they are more likely to pay attention to and respond to direct mail. Furthermore, consumers who receive a printed catalog from a retailer are twice as likely to buy online from that retailer as consumers who did not get the catalog.

Metadata is defined as “data about data” and when it pertains to print workflows, it is the information embedded in a file that says something useful about it. An example of metadata is Job Definition Format or JDF, a file format that enables MIS, pre-press, press and post-press kit to talk to each other. Another one is Adobe’s XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform), used by all of the company’s software products, like Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. The goal of these formats is to streamline workflow. XMP deals with production as well as business issues like rights management through the embedding of copyright and licensing details.

The goal is to automate metadata and allow users access to already existing data. Current software puts more information into documents than most people realize with many fields created and filled automatically. The goal is to make the non-expert user have the ability to access, fill, and use them. Technology is already in place that allows for automation of tasks like routing incoming and outgoing emails and sorting and storing files based on predetermined properties.

Proofing is a crucial part of the production cycle, especially where the quality of print is involved because the proof must match the final sheet. Recently, customers have started to demand quicker and cheaper solutions. Printers can continue to deliver traditional hard proofs on cheaper digital machines so that customers can physically see how the printed job will look on paper, or they can go the soft proofing route so that customers can view their jobs online.

In recent years, the trend has been towards soft proofing with publishers using technology to save time and deliver files quickly. However, most customers want to see a hard copy proof but a competitive publisher should be able to provide soft and hard proofing. However, soft proofing is attractive to publishers because of the high output of pages that they produce.

BBC magazines is heading towards soft proofing and moved its pre-press in-house and assembled a team of experts and suppliers to insure an efficient soft proofing set-up. Food and beverage giant Nestle has also gone the soft proofing route with the installation of online production management software. Proof approval time has been cut drastically thanks to the ability to track progress of jobs online, view pieces of work, attach comments, and make approvals online.

The presence of a well-run, up-to-date digital asset management (or DAM) system can be an excellent benefit to a business. Storing everything, be it a marketing campaign or a flyer, in one place is convenient as is having images and pages on hand for short turnaround times. Images, pages, TV campaigns, radio ads, and spreadsheets can all be stored in a DAM system provided that they are digital. A DAM system allows you to manage digital assets and catalogue them. Even past print jobs can be stored on it and all the content can be easily recalled via a search engine.

A DAM system is a valuable asset for a printer as they can store the assets for a client. If you don’t want a printer to handle all of your assets then invest in a DAM system for yourself and therefore find your files easily and quickly. There are more than 1,000 products to choose from with a wide range of prices. With fast Internet connections allowing for fast retrieval of files, DAM systems store their assets online and some offer complete web publishing solution software. To succeed DAM systems should be updated on a regular basis and eliminating out-of-date artwork and branding should be done regularly.