This week saw us launch our newest update for all our customers. This update to your eTrader site focuses on both you & your customer’s user experience on an eTrader website.

Our List of Latest Updates Includes:

  • Manage Colours in Shops: Create a list of colours for your shops and add a variety of colours for individual products.
  • Updated Product Description Box: Brand new box allowing HTML descriptions and much more for each individual product.
  • Brand New View Orders Tab: This new feature gives you an accurate break-down of orders carried out on site featuring customer info, product info and much more.
  • Export Customer Data: Download your customer’s information in a CSV file with just a simple click. 

Schoolwear Show 2015!

This week, eTrader confirmed confirmation at this year’s Schoolwear Show. Taking part in Solihull between the 11th -13th October it will be our first time visiting the show but we cannot wait to get up there and meet lots of garment decorators who may be interested in what we can do for their business.

On top of meeting new customers, we would love to hear off you if you are visiting this year’s schoolwear show, and catch up over a coffee – so don’t hesitate to drop us an email!

For more on the show visit www.theschoolwearshow.co.uk

 

For more of the latest of what is going on at eTrader don’t forget to check your hints & tips email or get in touch on info@etraderwebsites.co.uk today!

 

The fight for business in the garment decoration is always well and truly on. Customers have more options than ever before when it comes to buying their personalised clothing and decorating their garments. Give your online business the edge, make retaining them a given with an amazing customer experience; and a reason to say ‘Why would I go elsewhere when I need some personalised clothing? ‘

We have put together our five favourite tips to make sure your potential and current customers keep coming back to your site for a long time to come.

1. Have an Eye-Catching Modern Homepage: So you have done all the hard SEO & Marketing work and the customer lands on your page. For print/embroidery businesses it goes 1 or 2 ways, either customers are faced with an old-fashioned eye sore of a website which they leave as quick as they arrived or they land on a modern attractive homepage (somewhere in the middle is few and far between). Customers facing a modern clean homepage are more likely to stay on site much longer and fish around to see what you offer giving you a chance of winning and importantly retaining their business. Our sites do just this, offering customer sleek professional looking websites – seeing your homepage why would they go elsewhere?

2. Make Shopping as Straight-Forward as Possible: The customer shopping experience should be as simple as possible – click, buy, checkout, deliver. But the nature of the personalised clothing industry makes things a little more complicated, there is always a variable, a personalised aspect to what your customers buying. Most every day punters get confused by the personalisation progress when purchasing from garment decorators. But make it as simple as possible using easy to use layout and design and design tools. We have seen a whole number of different ways garment decorators try conquer this, everyone has their own view, but stick to big picture – you want your customers to buy from you and not elsewhere. Make it simple – our sites use a simple four step ordering process for customer which makes it as simple as possible for the everyday customer to order their personalised garment.

3. Be Social: Customers love a brand they can resonate with. Social Media gives your business the chance to grow its own persona and personality. You do not have to take it too seriously; it is of course just another form of Marketing, but a very fun one of that. The benefits of growing an online personality are huge, not only do current customer’s fall in love with your business, they refer your business (sharing the love and growing the sales). Social Media is a chance to interact with everyone that can be a potential customer and everyone that is a customer from a phone/tablet or PC – and with a high quality product, amazing customer service and interesting business and brand the customers are sure to come flocking in.

4. Mirror How You Work In-Store Online: Give customers an opportunity to see how great your business really is; let your customers know who you are, what you do, why you do it and why you love the garment decoration industry by any means possible – FAQs, images, blogging and so on. Shopping online customers are looking for the go-to guys for their personalised clothing, give them a bit of insight into the wonderful world of print & embroidery and improve your chances against competitors. Show off you and your businesses personality and give your business a bigger chance of winning that all important order.

5. Give Them a Reason to Keep Coming Back: Winning new business is important to print & embroidery businesses but retaining it is vital. You want to combine all these previously discussed points, great service, personality, a high-quality product and make sure that if they need personalised clothing again they are not going to go elsewhere. Offer them a reason to come back – an online mini shop loaded with their products, something your competitors can not. Why would they go anywhere else when they can order their uniforms, kits or whatever they need in just a few moments?

Combining all these tips will put you well on your way to making your customers fall in love with your online business. Beat off the online competition, go one step further and take your online sales and customer retention to the next level.

For more info on how we help garment decorators online email info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or call 029 2075 5733 

Next week we will be joining our good friends Magic Touch GB Ltd on the Lincoln leg of their road trip. We will be joining up with them Thursday 2nd July showcasing eTrader to a number of customers in the print industry.

The trip promises to be an exciting one - we aim to just chat to lots of people, show off what we do, giving live demonstrations, offer online advice and most importantly spread the eTrader word!

So keep your eyes peeled for us with the team at Magic Touch and be sure to pop in and say hello if you are in or near the area. This may be the first of many road-shows we pop up at this summer, so keep your eyes peeled and watch this space…

It promises to be a good turnout and an eventful time, we hope to see you all there!

It's been a crazy few weeks here at eTrader HQ with all sorts going on - launching several new sites, working away on new projects, working on our latest updates, support for current customers and our latest developments alongside appearing in several publications to top it all off. With all that's going on, we thought we would share our latest news with you.

The past few weeks have seen a large number of our new customers sites go live. Our new customers come from all across the UK and even as far as Jersey and all share our love of our websites and taking the garment decoration industry to the next level. Some of our recently launched sites include TPR Signs Magic Touch Jersey and Key Cross Media and many many more - we could only pick a few from our growing list!

But do not worry existing customers, we have not forgot about you!

We are continuing to work on new ways to work alongside all our existing customers and make sure that you get the most from your eTrader website. Happy customers makes for a happy eTrader, we continue to run with our Hints & Tips email programme offering you all the latest bits of advice to make sure you maximise your sites potential!

But we are going one step further....

One of current projects is bringing our customers more learning facilities than ever before. Due to be completed in the next few weeks we are working on video learning creating our very own series of videos using Our Youtube Channel. 

In the Media....

The past month or so has seen us feature in two of the garment decorations leading industry magazines. We feature one again in this month's Printwear & Promotion and our article offering our insight into Mobilegeddon and how it affects the garment decoration industry has been well received.

But a first for us, we featured in a quarterly trade magazine Director-e which is aimed largely at the workwear and corporate clothing sector. Our full page spread provided some insight into how businesses in the personalised clothing industry achieve online success.

Lastly, we have produced several blogs for Business Wales who offered us the chance to collaborate on providing Online Marketing & Tech advice for SMEs in Wales. All our blogs are geared towards our customers with the main focus being on small to medium size business in the garment decoration industry.

For the latest news & developments get in touch on: info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or call 029 2075 5733

Social Media, where would we be without it?

It has become a necessary Marketing tool for businesses to grow their online presence and more importantly online sales. But with a large number of garment decorators neglecting it, they can only wonder - are they missing out?

Social Media is considered by many business owners (especially in our industry) a bottom of the list priority, something for a Friday afternoon or a quiet day. But if done correctly and more importantly consistently the effects Social Media can have on small businesses lead generation and sales prove the difference between doing OK online and doing very well online.

Social Media does not have to be complicated, a bottom of the pile Friday afternoon job. We will hopefully give you an insight and convince you that it can work for you & your business.

There are lots of Social Media sites out there but stick to the main few to start Facebook, Twitter and maybe LinkedIn and as you become more competent and comfortable branch out experiment with the likes of Vine, Pinterest, Instagram or whatever tickles your fancy.

Pick the platform that best fit your businesses objectives. Ask yourself what do you want to achieve from going online – developing an online brand, growing an online presence, improving your sales or whatever it may be just pick the right platform to achieve social success.

Facebook: Ideal for B2C Facebook is commonly accepted as a tricky one for customers to get right. But with advertising tools Facebook gives your business the chance to not just grow a following/community but to generate new customers through advertising campaigns that target potential customers for a small cost.

Twitter: The popular tool of choice for small businesses - we come across far more garment decoration, print, embroidery businesses here than anywhere else. Twitter allows you to focus on both B2B and B2C customers. 140 Characters does not sound like enough to sell your business but with a good following and product your business can reap the rewards!

LinkedIn: B2B orientated platform for the business more focused on its trade customers. Connecting and referring on here gives your business the chance to meet customers you may never come across normally ‘Online Networking’. Arguably the most credible for garment decorators looking to obtain working relationships & contracts with large trade customers.

Other Ideas: The garment decoration industry relies heavily on visual content so you would thing Instagram and Pinterest are ideal for garment decorators. These two sites give businesses the chance to meet like-minded people who have a similar interest in clothing and act as more of a brand grower than a sales tool in itself but we would definitely recommend you give it a go!

Just to wrap things up in a nice little bow here are a few little tips to make Social Media success easy for the everyday small business:

  • Create a realistic action plan: Define what you want to achieve using Social Media
  • Grow Your Following: Grow a following of who you think may be interested in your business/what you do
  • Create engaging content: Nobody will read sales post after sales post, go for visuals, Blogs, and latest news – anything that catches your audience’s attention. The sales come afterwards!
  • Pick the right platform: As discussed pick what you think would work best for your business and its brand.
  • Creating Content: Realistically you won't have someone sat at a PC posting on your sites all day every day. Use planning tools such as Hootsuite to schedule a week’s worth of content in half hour.
  • Lastly, just be sociable and have fun with it. Don’t take it too seriously spamming sales posts all over Social Media. Being liked and social will sell more than you ever imagined.

We hope we have won you around garment decorators with our guide to making Social Media a success for your business. Remember, if done right ‘Social Sales’ are what separate you from the rest of the crowd and take your online business to the next level!

For more information on how we can help your online business get in touch simply drop us an email us on info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or call 029 2075 5733 today!

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