Online Artwork Approvals

One of the standards at Foote and Flame was that all personalised artwork must be approved by the customer before we make it.

Traditionally, you'd fire up an email, find and attach the artwork, spend some time writing in the email, and then send it through. Then you'd read the customer's reply, make the adjustments, resend, and discuss some more. While it's highly personal, when you're managing hundreds of orders at the same time, you need something that scales better, while keeping a personal touch.

Online approvals system

So for Foote and Flame, I built an online approvals system that integrated with our backend. It:

• Integrated with the order and artwork system, so you could upload artwork files from your computer instantly; no searching required.
• Sent the email to the customer, linking them back to the website for approval.
• They could approve or decline the artwork - if declining, they could say what they wanted changed, which fed back to the designer.
• If approved, the order is updated and marked to go into production.
• If declined, the order comes back onto the artwork queue, with a simple description of what has to be changed.
• If there was no response via email, after 48 hours, we could send an SMS (during business hours only!) to follow up - this handled spam filters catching emails.
• Multi-staff flow - our work-from-home staff could create artwork, it would be internally approved, and then sent to the customer for final approval. This allowed us to ensure high standards internally before the customer ever saw the artwork!

What was the benefit?

• Very easy for customers to use.
• Very easy to see the approvals trail as the artwork evolves.
• Instant access to the approved artwork for verification during manufacture - saving lots of time digging through emails to find the "final final v2 final" proof. Anyone who's done artwork approvals knows this pain.
• The business works during standard hours, and the customer replies in their own time.
• Significantly reduce the time to get approval or feedback.

Why wouldn't you want to do this? It's a little less personal. We made the page as friendly as possible, but ultimately it was a "form page" with limited notes from us to the customer. However, there was scope for us to take it to email if needed on a case-by-case basis. If we did go to email, we would finalise it with one final online approval, just to make sure everything was correct and signed off before production.

How did it go?

We had this live on Foote and Flame since the beginning - the full 9 years.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with customers loving the clarity and ease of use with approving or adjusting their artwork.

The dashboard clearly showed for us what artwork was approved and what was waiting approval allowing us to keep on top of the order queue, and ensure nothing got missed.