LinkedIn is the largest online professional Social Media with a global audience of over 450m. A grown-up version of Social Media, professional, slick, modern and you should be part of it too! The ideal social sales tool for you and your business… if you are not on there; you and your business are missing out on the largest B2B networking and one of the largest sales opportunities to high-value customers.

Of course it is a bit different from your conventional day to day Social Media, your Facebook, Twitter and so on so you have to be a bit cuter on how you communicate on there. Its professional socialising, something you do day to day as a business owner but online. Just sell your business, your brand and personality and reap the rewards.

The potential for LinkedIn in the garment decoration is huge. Put simply, creating branded clothing you are always looking for the large value order or the next big contract. The large business clients more often than not account for a large chunk of most garment decorator’s turnover. So it is a bit of a no brainer - LinkedIn gives you a unique chance to create and win these larger orders and opportunities for your business.

Let’s of course not forget the existing customers, connect with these and ‘Network’, give yourself more of a chance of winning the repeat order. Existing customers also have the power to endorse you and refer you to their connections, another potential way of winning business with LinkedIn.

And as if it sounds too good to be true, it just keeps getting better…

In a nutshell, LinkedIn is used by both professionals individually (Managing Directors, Marketing Executives, Business Owners and so on) and businesses themselves. LinkedIn gives you two shots at selling on their site essentially, whether you register as an individual and interact with like-minded people who you think could be your next big potential customers or whether you set up a LinkedIn company page to interact directly with other businesses.

It could not be easier! Set up your profile, write about you, your business and how good you are at what you do and how your products are high-quality then start connecting. LinkedIn allows you to search for both businesses and their workers by location – so get chatting today! Introduce yourself, build up a professional online connection and hopefully when these businesses need branded clothing or similar they know where to go, your business will be the first port of call.

E-commerce is considered an online minefield for many small business owners, where do you begin when it comes to taking online payments.

It’s complicated, not quite as easy as installing a ‘plug-in’ or purchasing a piece of software – but with our simple tips we hope to make it as straight forward as possible to understand how to best understand use and implement e-commerce successfully online. 

We guide all our through the ecommerce journey making their application and integration as simple and straightforward as possible. Customers simply apply, we provide a test site and once this is approved by their provider they receive the details and the ability to accept payments online (Of course this is the simplified version!)

Here is our little guide and five top tips for making e-commerce successful for you and your business:

1. E-Commerce Takes Time

Having an e-commerce site takes time to develop. It is not just a case of developing your site, adding a plugin and watch the money come flowing in. An internet merchant account and payment processor are required, which can take anything from 2-4 weeks.

2. Pick Your Web Developer Very Carefully

Building an e-commerce shopping experience is required for your site to trade successfully online. Expertise is required when it comes to dealing with e-commerce, payment providers, creating an online shopping journey and most importantly making sure it is secure. The development team for eTrader are Sage accredited and work closely to ensure that we provide the easiest but most secure shopping experience.

3. Pick The Best Payment Processor For The Job

An issue that hugely affects many small businesses across the UK, many opt for the cheapest option not quite understanding what is on offer. But often end up having the hardest time when it comes to integrating on site, a hard time with their service and more often than not end up paying huge additional fees as they reach their transaction limit. We stick with the UK leaders Sagepay, who offer their customers high levels of support, service and advice in this grey area.

4. Play By The Rules

There is no shortcut - It is not as simple as signing up to take online payments and your business is good to go. Sites have to comply with UK E-commerce Law and be PCI compliant. Providers need to see that what your site offers is a full shopping experience, securing your checkout, undergoing a test transaction and meet all the requirements onsite regarding e-commerce law including things such as T&Cs, refund policies, cancellation policies, company registered address, company details, clear product and services description and much more. Only once all these have been checked out by a payment processor/bank will the process speed up. Only once secure on-site and secure for your customers will your online business get the green light to accept online transactions.

5. It's all about ROI...

The potential rewards for having an e-commerce website is vast but requires significantly mode capital, dealing with the bank and payment providers and much more. Look for the ROI for your business, measure will you make enough to justify the addition against the cost. 

Here at eTrader we take care of the development work and make it as easy as possible for our customers to have a full e-commerce website taking care of the shopping experience and meeting E-Commerce Law with our Sagepay accredited designers. Our team offers customers advice and guidance when it comes to setting up online payments making it as simple as possible.

For more information on e-commerce and online trading visit Sagepay's Guide To Online Payment.

If you are looking for an e-commerce website for your garment decoration business get in touch with our team on info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or call 029 2075 5733!

When it comes to going online, there are 1000s of tips out there for small businesses in our industry. We have decided to put together our favourite ten tips for online success. Here are our favourites:

1. Put Your Customers at the Heart of the Online Experience: The most important thing to consider, think why is your business going online? The answers simple – to retain current customers and gain new ones staying ahead of the competition. So put your businesses customers at the heart of your online operation, make ordering easier, give customers logins, private/public on-site shops.

2. Substance Over Style: The most common mistake online in our industry. Customers often come to us with visually amazing sites that don’t offer any functionality. Your businesses website needs to be most importantly user-friendly and secure. Create a website that offers the functionality your customer deserves and make the journey from landing on your homepage to transaction as straight-forward as possible.

3. Make the ‘Online Journey’ as Simple as Possible: Businesses often come to us with the same problem we lose our customer when it comes to ordering. When it comes to personalised clothing there are so many variables, ordering isn’t straight forward. The two main pitfalls – the design tool & checkout. Pick tools that suit your business, many clothing businesses go for the flashiest design tool which often drives the customer away. Keep ordering and checking out simple, customers aren’t afraid to go elsewhere if it’s too complicated – it’s important you get it right like we have for our customers!

4. Create an Online Branding Strategy: Displaying your brand online isn’t as easy as you would imagine, there are so many factors to consider – it isn’t a case of simply putting a few logos in the right places. Create an effective strategy to convey your brand and values online, develop your presence online and grow an ‘online persona’, a voice, personality and style befitting of your business.

5. Produce High Quality Content Online: Many call it time-consuming and call in specialists. But creating quality content isn’t difficult; nobody understands your business better than you. Make content interesting, readable and appropriate – give your customers a reason to scroll down!

6. Create a Continuous SEO Plan for Your Business: The biggest challenge an online business faces is the fight for ranking well organically. With many clothing businesses throwing £1000s at SEO, it’s a big deal online. But why pay someone who doesn’t understand fully what you do/or understand your customers? Simply creating quality content mixed in with some keyword research (Just stop and think what are my customers searching for to find me or what would I like to be found for) with a dash of interesting Social Media, the SEO results should follow.

7. Social Media is Your Businesses Best Friend: Creating and sharing content, news, updates and offers gives your online business another voice, don’t just be seen online – be heard! Whatever the platform, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, Pinterest – Social Media presents the best way to grow your online presence and brand.

8. Blog Away: Sometimes 140 characters or a post isn’t enough to display what you want. Blogging in the personalised clothing industry is a big one – it allows you to extend your businesses personality. Writing interesting content about your business keeps customers coming back for more. Display the latest news, latest stock, your work with current customers and showcase your businesses expertise. Blogging allows customers to see what you are doing is real and quality work.

9. Don’t Be Afraid To Try New Things: The online world is full of the weird and wonderful trends. The garment industry is a traditional one but don’t be afraid to try new things – online experiments aren’t always a success. But there are customers in places you don’t even know exist yet, it’s your job to find them!

10.Continuously Develop Online, Don’t Stand Still: A huge NO-NO from us is becoming stagnant. Many online businesses get to a point where they are content, with a good site and just go through the motions but the key to success is continuous development. The online world isn’t standing still so why should you? Standing still limits online success, move your online business with the latest trends and developments make sure you are one step ahead of the nearest competition and keep taking your online business to the next level.

We understand the importance of going online for businesses in our sector. For more information don't hesitate to get in touch at info@etraderwebsites.co.uk to see how we can help your business today!