Important notes about your TribalSketch proposal and steps for getting started:

Your proposal likely contains various workflow tools that expand the capabilities of your existing prepress production system. If you are comparing proposals for TribalSketch with other web2print providers then you will want to keep this point in mind. Few other systems bundle improvements to your prepress workflow - in fact most don't even have any type of integration with your production workflow. The workflow tools offered in your proposal are licensed in a permanent fashion, they are yours to keep and use as you like.

1. Zoomable proofing technology “I-Zoom” is a key component to insuring clients of the quality of their jobs. At best most other systems will only offer some type of low res proofing - or no proofing at all. High resolution zoomable proofing lets client see all the details in their jobs. I-Zoom proofing is a feature that can be used both with your TribalSketch ecommerce site and in various other configurations as well.

2. Ripping and Trapping. Your proposal may or may not contain these components. If included, these important tools will enable you to process incoming jobs and apply the important step of print trapping. The jobs will then be saved to a final production ready form as either 1 bit TIFF or PDF/x and in the I-Zoom proof format.

3. OnTimeProof is very much a stand alone solution. For your existing customers that just send you files and don't need ecommerce capabilities - it is a perfect solution. Clients can upload files and provide production information via the built in job ticketing. These files can then be manually or automatically sent to a workflow based on the job ticket and receive back the zoomable proof.

OnTimeProof uses a hot folder based workflow integration system. We apply naming rules to job files to automatically insert job numbers to the name and route them into folders and then we monitor for proofs coming back with the same job number. So if your production workflows have hot folder capabilities and can maintain job names based on the incoming file name - then there should be no problem to integrate it with OnTimeProof.

OnTimeProof (OTP) is its own website, so it is normally integrated to an existing website using a sub domain. For instance "jobs.mymainwebsite.com" then you can link to this from your main site if you wish. Here is an example configuration for a company that wants to have a main "company info” site, a local “client submission” site, and a vertical “ecommerce” site:

- www.myMainWebsite.com - points at your existing website which remains outside of this project and provides general company info.

- jobs.myMainWebsite.com - points at the OTP site and is linked back to your main web site if you wish. This is the site that your long time customers might use for simple job submission and online proofing.

- www.myVerticalMarket.com - some other domain where you want to build a web ecommerce site based on TribalSketch - which is also connected to the OTP site for file and proof management.

Existing clients to your company enter the OTP site directly for their jobs. Customers using the system in this fashion will be reserved a block of job numbers - for example starting at "2000". (In this configuration we recommend that you order a custom design pack for OTP - this is a small additional cost but it would make OTP match your existing website look and feel.)

New clients visiting www.myVerticalMarket.com would never see OTP - just the design of the vertical market ecommerce site. Their jobs would come into OTP with a different block of numbers - for instance starting at "8000". This will help to differentiate between clients.

This type of configuration brings many benefits in that it provides your existing client base with a familiar site to submit their jobs with job tickets and view their proofs, and it provides you with the opportunity to explore various vertical market segments to expand your online business with minimal impact on existing accounts.

Of course this option is also one you may choose:
- www.myMainWebsite.com - points at the new TribalSketch ecommerce site and is connected to the OTP site for file and proof management.

- jobs.mymainwebsite.com - points at the OnTimeProof site. This is now a direct site that your long time customers might use for simple job submission and online proofing.

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4. The TribalSketch ecommerce site is where you will want to focus your online marketing efforts.

To get started designing your ecommerce site consider these ideas.

First we'd like to get a good description of your thoughts about the market you want to target and the products you want to provide to that market. It is important that you spend some time thinking about this. We highly suggest that you avoid the shotgun approach and don’t try to be all things to all people. Your cost for building the ecommerce site is VERY low (think of how much you spent to build your physical location) so we recommend that if you have some ideas about a vertical market that you have a feeling might work - then go with that feeling and lets build a specialized site specific to this market.

This type of site is much more likely to achieve higher volumes of search results at a much lower advertising costs. Google and other search engines like to direct people to targeted sites. Once we have an idea of what this targeted market is then we can do work on our end and come up with the popular terms used to find these products - and we can come back with the competitive sites that are also working in this space.

Certainly if you already have some sites in mind this will help as well. But try and make sure that you are "thinking like your target customer and not like a printer". Remember if you try a highly vertical market and it fails - it really doesn't fail - because you will learn a great deal in the process and it has cost you very little. You learn far less putting out a broad ranging site because your mind is less focused on a single goal and its hard to determine “what went wrong”. Adjustments are easy to do and going after another vertical with new found knowledge is the proven zigzag path to success.

Once we have the information and competitive sites then we will want to collect any artwork that you may have. This would include logo’s, product shots, product examples, awards, affiliations, anything you think might be relevant to your potential clients. We welcome any drawings or design ideas – or even completed website designs you may have done.

We will then prepare design ideas that our team of designs think both match your goals and properly support the TribalSketch application integration. We will then submit these ideas as simple layout images for discussion. As these are approved we will expand to include the various content sections and begin the process of converting these images into actual site designs.

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We very much appreciate the opportunity to work with you. It is important to remember this is a team effort, your chances of success in online marketing will be greatly improved by your focus and continued attention to the details.