eTrader will once again be exhibiting at this year’s Printwear & Promotion live starting Sunday 28^th February and be displaying our latest products until Tuesday 1^st March.

This year’s show promises to be very exciting for eTrader as we have a few surprises up our sleeves which we look forward to share with potential new customers.

The show gives us a chance to demonstrate how our websites can help your garment decoration business. We will be running a number of live demonstrations throughout the show and chatting to potential customers about how we can help their print & embroidery business.

But in the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for some more exciting updates and latest news from us in the build up to Printwear & Promotion live!

It’s Christmas time – there’s no need to be afraid….

Well there may be cause for concern if you are in the garment decoration industry.This time of year is full of festive spirit and cheer but traditionally it is a quiet time for small and medium sized print & embroidery businesses across the country – the schools orders have stopped, the workwear orders are at a minimum and production is just trickling along.

We can approach this in one of two ways to make sure that your business makes the most of the quiet period and gives itself the best chance of success:

Run a Tailored Campaign To Ensure Your Business Ticks Over…

It’s a simple one to do in the personalisation game running festive campaigns or seasonal flash sales. Of course there’s great reward but there’s also great risk, prices have to be just right and the quality ideas have to be there (after all you are competing against high street brands providing festive clothing, so the bar is set pretty high) and then conversely you compete against specialist gift stores both on the high street (or not!) or in-store.

So the value has to be there for customers, but to be successful you need more than great ideas you need a great campaign! This is where you need to be savvy and smart and not rely on an ad-hoc approach. Just ask yourself a few simple questions…

• When do I want my seasonal campaign to run? When will things get quiet?
• What do I want to sell to both my existing customers and potential new customers?
• How much I reach them? And how often?
• What mediums will I use – Email, Blogging, Social Media or Traditional Advertising?

Put together a plan of attack before a seasonal lull and watch your sales increase over the quiet period!

Alternatively, Use The Time To Grow Your Online Business…

If you don’t fancy running and online campaign and just accept seasonality on face value – then so be it, just ensure that in some way or another you add value to your business.

Throughout the year, we deal with a number of print & embroidery businesses often questioning their online efforts. The problem for garment decorators is a simple one – time constraints & prioritising. Whereas throughout the year a traditional print & embroidery company focus on prioritising, winning orders, getting the jobs in and out the ‘online stuff’ is left as a lesser priority and something that will be looked at when we are not busy or when we have the time…. so now is the time!

Prepare email campaigns, set up social media accounts, schedule posts, write blogs, create some optimised content, and create customer shops, promotional artwork and so on. Get all the things you would not ordinarily have time for in your day to day schedule done in time for 2016. Implementing just a few of these Online Marketing Techniques will go a long way in determining the future success of your online business, grow your online presence, increase your brand awareness, increase your traffic and most importantly online sales with all the hard yards you put in in the quiet period… Don’t just accept seasonality, make the most of it!

For more information on how to get more from your site & online marketing efforts don’t hesitate to get in touch via email on info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or give us a call on 029 2075 5733 today!

Last month we exhibited at The Schoolwear Show for the first time ever! The show was a busy one full of many of the Schoolwear, Print & Embroidery industries leading brands exhibiting to garment decorators from across the country.

A number of the people we met knew what they wanted to do but did not know how to go about doing it, which is a common thing for our customers the everyday garment decorator.

The eTrader stand was busy with many people facing the same problems:

‘I don’t know where to go next online…’

‘My site hasn’t been touched in years….’

‘I’m not really sure of how to make best use of our site….’

‘My site doesn’t offer everything I want it too’

Thankfully we were there at The Schoolwear Show to help… we chatted to a number of garment decorators across the country offering live demos, chatting through their current online business, how it is doing online and how we could possibly help them.

Our sites proved popular with the shows attendees (especially those seeing for the first time!), with many loving the industry specific nature of it, all the tools it offers and the simplicity of it all.

The show proved a huge success. We have signed a few new customers up who we are excited to be working with over the next few weeks.

It looks like we are going to be back next year… watch this space!

For more information on eTrader and what we do email info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or call 029 2075 5733

For the first time ever, we have decided to make an appearance at The Schoolwear Show. Taking place Sunday 11^th October till Tuesday 13^th October in Solihull it promises to be a busy show for not just us by a number of the garment decorating industries brands.

You can find us on stand 3 where we will be presenting and chatting to both new and existing potential customers through the day.

With a whole host of exciting new benefits & features to show off and a special show offer of 20% OFF (now just £1199) our sites feel free to pop by to find out more about how we help the online garment decoration industry and more importantly how we can help your business.

We will be offering live demos throughout the day and it promises to be a busy but exciting few days for eTrader and everyone else at the show. With just a few days to go, we cannot wait for the show to kick off - we look forward to seeing you all there!

For more information or to book yourself in for an exclusive demo email info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or give us a call on 029 2075 5733

To find out more about The Schoolwear Show visit www.theschoolwearshow.co.uk

We recently launched an update with several new features for our valued customers. Our focus was on giving them as many sales tools as possible that are simple to use but add value to their business.

One of our new updates allows our customers to download customer records into a CSV format, a simple data tool – and we have been asked why is this important? What does it do for our business?

Existing and previous customer data plays a huge role in retaining business and contact with the old customers, reminding them that you are still out there should they need personalised garments again there is only place they need to go….

A number of businesses place too much emphasis on lead generation, winning the new orders and finding new customers. We are not saying this is not important (as it is!) but also do not forget about retention rates and how to go about increasing them and winning the repeat order.

This is where the pieces of the puzzle fit together nicely, so you have your customer data for the past X amount of months, the key is to use it wisely! Email campaigns are a great way to make the most of the data you have available. Often overlooked by everyday business as quite a specialist facet of Online Marketing and disregard it straight away. But it is an amazing way of communicating and increasing your customer retention rate and despite the number of articles out there that over-complicate the issue with A/B testing, click through rates and so on it is relatively straight forward.

eTrader has been carrying out email campaigns for a long time and through experience found out what works, what does not and how to make the most of the data you have available.

We have put together our top ten tips for beginners looking to improve their online efforts and carry out their first email campaign:

1. Use FREE Software: There is a whole host of email marketing programmes available, of course there will be PRO versions but with a programme like Mailchimp the options, tools and features you get for free are ideal for small businesses.
2. Email Only Offers: Create specific offers for email customers, exclusive codes, discounts only available to subscribers. An effective marketing ploy to measure effectiveness. You can scrutinize click rates, opens etc but the real measure of success is sales.
3. Don’t Over-Complicate it: Email campaigns are an odd one, of course they are sales and marketing tool and you want to make a return from them. But conversely, don’t make them boring – customers will just disregard them and delete instantly which leads us to point four.
4. It’s All about the Subject Line: This is the first thing a customer sees so you better make it eye catching. Offer a punchy line which will leave them left with only one option opening your email. Make it smart; salesy and quirky but avoid sounding like spam of course.
5. Quality Content in Your Email: Now that your interesting subject has got a potential customer to open it, the last thing they want to see is a pretty boring piece of content. Have some fun; use visuals, sales speak, be topical and put together a little bit of content that you think would be interesting. Put yourself in their shoes – would you read a boring email.
6. Call to Actions: An obvious one, but often a big mistake. Don’t forget to put call to actions in place whether it is typed or a button to automatically take care of it. Customers often make buying decisions within 30 seconds of reading your email; if there are CTA buttons in place you give yourself more of a chance of winning the order.
7. Personalise Emails: Even though you customers are essentially part of a mass marketing technique, give them a personalised touch to make them feel special, unique and give your business more of a chance of grabbing their attention. Programmes like mailchimp allow you to break up lists for campaigns for certain products, preferences and so on.
8. Time Your Campaign: Optimum timing is everything! You want your email to land in an inbox at the right time, schedule your campaign for a certain time ensuring it goes out exactly when you want. Customers are more likely to read emails at the start of the day, midday or just after lunch!
9. Get Cute with Automation: An advanced technique of email campaigns that comes across as difficult but in reality is straight forward. Simply plan a series of emails (4-5 per fortnight as an idea) which can be used once a customer has clicked a certain part of your email to send this customer an email X amount of hours after clicking a certain area
10. Lastly and Most Importantly, Trial Run Your Email: Before you send anything send a test version to your inbox, see how it looks, how the content comes across, does it do what you want it do? Trial your email before sending it to customers, save yourself the embarrassment of noticing a mistake after sending a campaign (we’ve all been there).  

Our beginners list is comprehensive but covers all the basics of email campaigns and how to make them successful for your business. Use these tips with the right software and a bit of planning and your business will reap the rewards – sales will only go one way!

For more information or any advice on how to get more from your eTrader site don’t hesitate to get in touch on info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or call 029 2075 5733

It's not!

One of the common misconceptions I come across from garment decorators is that they class a 'website' order as an order if the customer pays for it online. This is perceived as somehow different to somebody who finds you online and picks up the phone or emails, or visits your store to give you an enquiry or place an order.

It's all about choice for customers. 

If you've got an 'all singing, all dancing' website where customers are comfortable placing an order for their embroidered or printed clothing online, then great. Lots of them will and you should definitely make that option available to them. 

But if they give you an enquiry and you win the order by any other means then put that in your 'website orders' folder as well. 

A commercial website (brochure or e-commerce) is a sales tool first and foremost.

Collaboration tools are used by Marketing departments to manage both the businesses workload and its time. 

These tools allow you to share projects, ideas, news and communicate with other members of your team all within one common space.

Taking your garment decoration business online is now more important than ever before for your business. A large proportion of garment decorators are traditionalists in nature focusing purely on their love of print & embroidery, relying on word of mouth and repeat orders for success with little regard for their online success.

But now with the growth of online businesses, consumers have more options than ever before online and are not afraid to shop around. Customers are looking for alternatives, convenience and importantly the best prices! The million dollar question is where on earth do I begin?

There are a number of options out there to help take your business online, it is all about picking the right option for your business, your target customer base and lastly your budget - you don’t need to throw your hard earned cash at going online!  

You want your online business to be a reflection of you, your personality and become an extension of your in-store business. Starting out it sounds daunting but it is manageable if you simplify it.

Keeping it simple

Start off small, unless your tech savvy focus on the basics. Your garment decoration businesses site needs to look professional, smart, modern and not like something put together in a slap-dash manner. Give your customers a high quality user experience, a site that is easy to use, one that communicates your businesses key selling points and promotes your core products/services.

Importantly, your site should be something that you are comfortable using… you need to be able to understand, your site & what it offers. For example, you can offer online buying, but do you know how it works behind the scenes? E-Commerce is a whole different world in itself, so do your research, seek advice and familiarise yourself before dipping your toes into the online pool.