Earlier this week, recent competition winners Link-it became the latest eTrader to go live with their brand new eTrader website and becoming an ‘eTrader’. Link-it, based in Northampton is owned and run by Chris & Mark who collectively have over 25 + years’ experience in the garment decoration industry.

Link-it offers its customers a variety of print, embroidery and branding options aimed at the corporate image and branding. However, with their brand new up and running eTrader website, the skies the limit for the lads from Link-it!

Congratulations again to Link-it on their success in winning themselves their very own FREE eTrader website. We’re looking forward to working with Link-it and building a lasting working relationship developing and helping you take your online business to the next level!

Don’t forget to check out Link-it’s brand new eTrader website:  www.linkit-uk.co.uk

Here at eTrader, we understand the garment decoration industry. We simply just get it. 

Creating an online site for your business is often a complex process full of perils, stresses, with numerous advantages and disadvantages continuously being weighed up.

The costs are enormous, the time it takes to develop is astronomical and you often wonder where you will find the time to undertake such a huge project. The garment decorating/printing sector is more challenged than most. We rarely have time for lunch yet alone develop a fully functioning e-commerce system and visually pleasing website for our customers!

The key to success is doing it right, you don't need to throw valuable money at web designers and create over purposed sites which most of your customers won't resonate with, and the key is making your businesses webpage fit for purpose. eTrader understands you and your business, what you want to do and where you want to go. After all, the direction you are looking to take your business on its online journey is crucial for your printing/embroidery businesses future success.

We have met many business owners over the years, nonchalant and blasé  who often suggest they will just throw money at going online and the results will follow (needless to say it hasn't panned out this way). 

Then there is the polar opposite, the other end of the spectrum. The everyday garment decorator, printer and embroiderer. The small business with limited online resources and limited cash flow to develop their online site. The majority of businesses in the sector are like this in nature, small, diminutive but hard working & honest. These businesses often utilise free resources available to them. The vast majority often use free website providers, with WordPress with its e-commerce plugins proving hugely popular.

This isn't the worst ploy in the world, a cost effective measure in a tight economic climate. But there are drawbacks; there is no sense of ownership using free software. Limited controls, set parameters restricting what you can/cannot do with your website, all culminating in undermining your businesses online image and professionalism as your website looks 'home made' and slightly lesser in appearance than your nearest competitors. All in all not ideal or fit for purpose.

This widening gap between the business owners looking to spend huge amounts and the low end cost effective small businesses has led to the development and creation of the eTrader. The eTrader system ultimately fills the service gap, which is why our product is thriving within the UK.

We quickly realised that the complexity and diverse range of products in the garment decoration industry did not translate easily into the world of online shopping. This was largely due to the bespoke nature of printing or embroidering a garment/product and indeed the vast array of products available from 100’s of brands, styles, sizes, shapes, positions, stitch counts and colours. 

Our e-commerce platform is available to print and embroidery companies all over the UK. We continuously work with a specialist team of web designers & garment decorators to discover what is required for businesses in this sector to succeed. 

eTrader offers all of our valued customers ultimate flexibility and control at a very low price in comparison to other service providers offering similar packages. Our system develops a fully personalised website with a full e-commerce system in place. The website knows no bounds, the customer has full control of the administration side of things covering areas such as customising brands & categories, 'Marking Up' products and pricing structures. The customer also controls the creative aspect of the businesses page. Our web page layouts are fully customisable & SEO friendly, working alongside our fully customisable content creator and adjustable banners giving businesses an array of marketing tools for their homepage to stand out from the competition. 

Customers often say the biggest advantage of using our product is significantly saving time and importantly cost, the websites are live and running within weeks and the costs are significantly reduced compared to web developers. We fully understand the industry; and its customers. We listen to our customers, we know what they want and we provide it to them at a reasonable price. And as for the results, we often let them speak for themselves....

Content is an easy way to make your business stand apart from the rest. We understand that it isn't every garment decorator’s main priority, but it’s a vital tool in getting your decoration businesses website noticed.

Many independent decorators think this is a specialist job, way out of their comfort zone. Save you & your business valuable time and money & create your own content. You have the most knowledge of your business, your products & your market!

Creating content is something that can be done by anyone from anywhere. With simple guidance, any business - however large or small can create effective content for their business. There’s no need to call in the experts - nobody knows the industry better than garment decorators themselves.

At eTrader, we provide our customers the tools required to make creating content simple but effective, laying out your content in a SEO friendly way aimed at improving your sites online performance with minimal fuss.

We offer all our customers, simple but effective advice on creating content for their website. We get asked similar questions by our customers, so we have simply put together our Five Key Tips to Quality Content aimed at garment decorators. 

1. Be Clear & Concise: Focus on getting your businesses key points across
2. Identify Your Keywords: Identify your main products/services keywords and build content around them
3. Identify Your Audience: Tailor your content to your potential customers, put yourself in their shoes, and imagine what they would like to hear.
4. Be Unique & Creative: Think outside the box, make your website stand apart from your competitors (Nobody wants to read boring content!)
5. Finally, Thoroughly Proofread Your Work: Maintain a professional image; small simple mistakes can impact small businesses much more than if a larger business was to make a similar mistake.

Following these tips, taking a small chunk of time to create quality content is highly effective in developing your garment decorating businesses online.

It’s the simplest way to take your online business to the next level - setting it apart from your competition, generating more leads, increasing sales and enhancing your websites SEO performance.

What is Responsive Design?

Simply, when a website is responsive the website is adaptable across various platforms– based on the size of the screen viewing the website. A responsive website automatically changes to fit the device you’re viewing it on. Mobile Responsive Websites are aimed at all manner of sized displays – varying from small screen handheld devices to large widescreen monitors covering every other size in between.

Why Have Responsive Websites?

The need for garment decorators to deliver online is at an all-time high, the marketplace is intense and the competition is tough.

So garment decorators need to use any tool necessary to stay ahead of the fierce competition!

You want your customers to keep coming back; you want them to have the best experience possible through any means necessary. And this now includes your businesses website! Previously, businesses just create websites and the online platform will look after itself. However the continuous rise and development of tablet and mobile technology has meant viewing websites has become an ‘on the go’ experience – customers are not afraid to purchase using their phones and tablets anymore. The chances are your nearest competitor is not making use of responsive design, so why not make the most of this new development and stay ahead of the competition?!

What Does This Mean For Your Business?                             

We all understand Google & SEO are crucial for your businesses online performance. Google fully values responsive websites and the customer’s online experience. Google has recently not so subtly stated the desire for all websites to eventually go this way. It is much easier and much more efficient using responsive design from Google's SEO perspective - Google's bots find crawling websites, indexing and ranking pages much simpler using responsive design as it simple requires just one URL!

 The value for your decorating business is incredible – 24% of Google searches are now being performed on tablet and mobile devices and 26% of e-mails received are viewed on mobiles, with a further 11% on tablets. The development of handheld and compact technology has led to the fast tracking of mobile responsive design– it’s a new concept to web designers but customers from all sectors are already demanding it.

With the development of a responsive website, the sky is the limit! Decorators alike can rejoice – your business can now provide customers with quality online service wherever they are, whatever they’re doing 24/7, 365 days of the year.  The use of responsive sites can also generate greater leads; the multi-platform nature of the website furthers your reach to customers outside of your traditional audience!

Here are some of our favourite examples we have found from garment decorators around the UK. Try them out on different devices & see how they ‘Respond’ - giving you the best user experience possible!

Kustom Kits 

Kustom-Clothing

Axent Embroidery

 It’s a simple, but highly innovative concept. Mobile Responsive Design provides an all-round solution to your online services covering all your customers viewing devices. It’s beneficial for both your print business and your customers. Your customer gets the optimum online experience using your website and you simply provide them this using just one platform.

Using just one platform also allows you to reach wider audiences at a relatively low cost, but the greater benefits are in term of SEO – your campaign becomes much easier to manage.  Instead of managing each platform’s SEO, using responsive sites make managing a much simpler process – only one SEO campaign has to be managed instead of potentially having to manage several. Saving your business both valuable time & money!

 The customer experience is vital for any business but more so in the print & decorating business - retention is critical (See last week’s blog for more on that). Mobile Responsive Design on your site is a simple but effective way of providing your key customers what they want, when they want and wherever they want!

Online shopping is a pretty simple mundane task, a simple transaction process - nothing more, and nothing less. The transaction process is repeated online approximately 200,000 times per day for UK garment decorators. The worry for businesses is customers can afford to pick and choose who they deal with. The key for garment decorators is to set your online experience apart from your competitors, make your business stand out and offer your customers more.

Here at eTrader, we have come up with something to address the problem!

Your business will rarely meet the majority of your customers, so the key to success is offering customers more online – a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to make your business stand out from your competitors and the rest of the crowd. Offer your customer the personal touch, the ‘experience’ and build up a connection through your website.

This is seen as essential online practice when dealing with larger customers. Whether your customer is a school, sports clubs, groups/organisations, regular contracts or repeat customers, you’ll want to do everything you can to make it as simple as possible for them to place orders and give them something your competitors can’t compete with!

Just Simply Remember - It may be your website but it’s their experience!

eTrader addresses the need of tailored online experiences by offering fully customisable shops that can be easily set up to meet each of your customer’s needs. For other businesses implementing this, the cost of using web developers to develop their existing or a new site is highly expensive and time consuming process. But with eTrader it could not be simpler, with easy to follow instructions letting you fully customise shops to meet each customer’s personal preference.

Creating shops streamlines business between you and your customers a much simpler process - cutting out the lengthy negotiations back and forth, the administration, processing etc. Setting up an online personal shop is the most effective way of personalising your larger customers shopping experience.

Customising your business is not difficult or time consuming but it is a key tool in ensuring you retain key customers and perform financially.

eTrader Tip: 

• Customise content within personalised shops to meet your major customer’s specific needs; retention is vital for garment decorators in the current economy!
• Provide your customer an online experience mirroring your in-store experience and service, this will ensure your customers will keep coming back!

Here at eTrader we deal with SMEs and their websites as our bread and butter. A website is the main resource required to succeed in virtually every industry and the garment decoration one is no different.

It is a difficult thing to get right – which is often what throws businesses off the straight and narrow and down two paths.

Firstly, a quick fix for their businesses, producing some sort of site online to merely get themselves operating online dealing with all the problems and glitches as they come. Secondly, the polar opposite over-complicating and over-working the wheel, a time consuming process which produces a flash modern website on the outside offering some sort of functionality but ultimately it is what it is.

A complex approach to building your website often leads to pitfalls (pretty much every step of the way) and forgets what the main purpose of the website actually is – TO SELL! 

The garment decoration industry struggles to find the fine balance between functionality versus design with customers often walking down either the first path or second path. Ideally, SMEs and business owners need to take a step back, remember the basics - I want my businesses website to sell, I want a functional website that actual sells my businesses goods.

It’s all about getting the basics right, making sure your business delivers online. Then the rest will come naturally whether it’s Responsive Design, Improving your User Experience (UX), revamping your website with new features, your site develops as your business develops. Our approach to it is to put your customers at the heart of the online experience, think what do they want from your business and how do we give them as simple an experience as possible.

Here’s a few of our top tips for Small Businesses looking to succeed online:

Make Ordering as Easy as Possible: A big gripe of ours we continue to preach!Sales are what keeps your business alive, make your customers shopping trip as straightforward as possible. Have them checked out in a few moments. See an example of one of our sites www.mygarmentfactorycardiff.co.uk to see how we focus on easy ordering.

Keep it Simple: Don’t over-complicate your website and burden your customers with features that bluntly delay your business selling online. Something the industry calls ‘Featurecreep’.

Personalise your Customer Experience: A huge point in the garment decoration industry, offering features to retain customers and keep them away from prying competitors. Offer potential large customers a personalised experience, private login, private shop and whatever it takes to secure the sale. Perfect for both B2B deals and B2C dealing with sports clubs, schools or any other club/organisation you can think of.

Going online doesn’t have to be Capital Intensive: Creating a website to do exactly what you want can be a very expensive process, especially in the garment decoration game (at least upwards of £10000). Product Data as far as the eye can see, an ordering process so complicated to produce effectively for your customers… but you don’t need to break the bank to make your businesses website work.

eTrader offers small businesses in our industry the simplest way to succeed online. For more information simply email info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or give us a call on 029 2075 5733.

eTrader Websites gives businesses the perfect opportunity to compete in the industry, marketing and sales tools aimed at generating new leads and potential new customers but most importantly tools to retain existing customers!

Why use Customer Shops?

Most of our customers deal with large customers from different backgrounds, organisations, businesses, schools, sports clubs and so on. These larger customers make up a large proportion of trade for SMEs in the industry and garment decorators are working hard than ever before to retain these customers as competitors put the squeeze on and undercut in an attempt to gain new business.

Our websites ‘Shop’ function allows your customers to have their very own bespoke shop on site. The shop function makes ordering as simple as possible and can have your customer checked out in just a few moments – Another satisfied customer!

Click here to view our How To: Create Customer Shops

A Two-Way Sales Tool

Both our website as a whole and our shop feature works in a two-fold way, with over 25 years’ experience in the industry we understand the demands of competing in the garment decoration industry. Your business should consider all its potential customers, how it can benefit new customers and how it can appease and retain existing ones and that’s what features like our shops do.

Your future business is safer than ever before using a private/public shop function. Simple to create, easy to use and a variety of options to make each customers experience bespoke we help take businesses online sales to the next level using our wide range of tools and online facilities.

Create personalised products to buy in just a few simple clicks….

eTrader makes ordering for your larger customers as simple as possible!

Retaining large customers couldn’t be easier, click here to view our simple video tutorial. You can have a shop set up in just a few moments!

For more information don’t hesitate to get in touch on 029 2075 5733 or email info@etraderwebsites.co.uk for more on how we can help your garment decoration business.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your businesses rankings on search engines for organic searches that your business wants to be found for.

How does it affect my Business? 

On average 69% of your websites traffic comes from organic searches online which accounts for a large percentage of most online businesses sales. Sites with good SEO & prominent rankings perform much better financially in the long term. 

How do I get my website to rank?

There is a combination of factors to consider when it comes to how your website ranks online. There is no set magic formula for SEO (as nobody will ever be able to pin down the exact algorithm) but here are some simple tips to get you on your way:

1. Set up your Businesses Google Accounts Properly: Set up Google Analytics, Google Places, Google Webmasters for your business to best track your online businesses traffic.
2. Keyword Research: Putting it simple think ‘What will I have to search for to find my business?’ Consider the level of competition for each term and pick out keywords to build your content around.
3. Content is King: Create relevant content for your website's pages built around your targeted keywords. Creating content is time-consuming so work on it gradually starting with main pages and working towards the less important pages. For more on Content check out our Blog dedicated to it.
4. Use Social Media: Not an obvious one, who’d have thought Social Media & SEO go together?! Businesses that use social media to good effect are much more likely to outrank businesses not using Social Media. For more on this click here.
5. Blogging for Business: Sites that create high-quality blogs also stand a higher chance of ranking well in search engines. It’s also an easy way to both promote your business and build in some keywords. To read more click here...

Mobile-Mad SEO

A growing percentage of your website's traffic is coming from portable devices (smartphones/tablets). The latest SEO update from Google ‘Mobilegeddon’ focuses on mobile-friendly websites and makes it a bigger ranking factor than ever before. Websites with responsive design are more likely to outrank websites that are not mobile friendly. We wrote a piece on this recently and it proved popular... click here to see it for yourself!

One Final Thought…

SEO is a tricky thing for small businesses, our top tip is to plan a natural approach that works for you - you don’t have to waste £1000s with ‘experts’. Create a realistic plan/strategy that works for you & your business!

This week saw Google roll out what many experts are calling one of its biggest algorithm update dubbing it ‘Mobilegeddon’ (it is as epic as it sounds). Following on from the ‘Panda’ & ‘Penguin’ updates the latest algorithm for online success with Google brings more focus than ever on Mobile-Friendly sites.

With more customers than ever before shopping online using tablets & smartphones, this was an inevitable change that was going to be rolled out by the Google developers. Online retail trends in the past five years in all sectors have shown a gradual increase in website traffic & online sales from portable devices. It’s no longer simply a case of having a website, an online presence and hoping it takes care of itself.

What does it mean for Garment Decorators?

Your site must have the ability to operate across different types of platforms and ‘respond’ to each different device it is displayed on. Whether it is a PC/Laptop, tablet, iPod or Mobile Phone your website has to perform and be user-friendly to your online customers wherever they come from.

For small businesses, the effects could be massive; mobile-friendly sites are an expensive solution. The next few months online are going to be ‘eat or get eaten’, sites will need to adapt to survive in the Google habitat.

The go-to option for businesses seems to be ‘Responsive Design’, we have previously discussed this (in far too much detail) so for more of that just click here.

An example of responsive design. Mobile friendly (left) Webpage (right)

The latest update will have a huge effect and cause a stir on most online markets – the garment decoration one included. Being such a traditional industry, it is considered slightly behind when it comes to technology, so who knows how it’s going to play out over the next few months for print/embroidery businesses SEO.

Sites in our industry with mobile-friendly design are few and far between, so they will undoubtedly flourish. Whereas the majority of the businesses in our industry will be fighting with the rest competing for the remaining rankings available for their business, after all good SEO brings good rewards (financially, of course).

What if I don’t go Mobile-Friendly?

Mobile friendly plays a huge part in how Google ranks you online - the SEO performance of your site will struggle to keep up with the competition. With traffic & sales affected, businesses will all eventually switch over to ‘Responsive’ but the longer it takes the more difficult it becomes to climb back up to the top of the Google Mountain for all your businesses keywords. Click here to see if your businesses website is mobile-friendly.

Is your site fit to survive Mobilegeddon? Use Googles Mobile-Friendly Test

All is not lost just yet…

What we suggest it check Google Analytics – see what percentage of your websites visitors are on a mobile or tablet….

If it’s a low percentage (i.e. <10%): Keep an eye on it but there’s no need to hit the panic button yet!

If it’s a middle of the ground percentage (10-40%): Your business needs to adapt and get moving with a responsive site.

If it’s a high percentage (>40%): PANIC! You will need to get responsive ASAP or risk losing customers.

If you are not too sure about mobile traffic and Google analytics - Firstly, where have you been hiding?! Secondly, do not worry. Get in touch with us and we can help you and your online business!

With a brand new responsive option available for existing and new customer’s eTrader has prepared for Mobilegeddon.  Get in touch on info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or call 029 2075 5733 today to see how we can help you & your online business survive!

Following on from all things SEO the past few months, our latest blog gives small businesses and overview and insight into the crazy, weird and wonderful world of Digital Marketing. Our SEO, content advice and opinion blogs have helped point your business in the right direction in its online journey. But in our industry, we know it’s all about sales and online performance so we’ve put together a few little practical bits aimed at adding value.

Marketing Your Business Online Doesn’t Have To Be a Chore:

Many small business owners in the garment decorating sector are notorious for downplaying the importance of Marketing for their business, especially online. The industry is traditional, leap years behind other sectors; many businesses see it as simply setting up a site for their business and doing the occasional tweet or post on Facebook or Twitter. But what they don’t see is that everything online works together in a synchronized way. 

It’s all about collaborating… Online marketing brings together all aspects of your businesses online presence. Just put together your online content and keywords and mix that with your Blog & Social Media and the online/SEO world is at your feet. What we recommend for our customers is an integrated online strategy, covering all the bases.

eTrader Top Tips:

• Understand Your Customers/Audience: Treat your online customers like you would treat your in shop customers. Nobody knows your customers like you… Online it shouldn’t be any different. Using demographic tools, such as Hootsuite Analytics or Google Analytics makes identifying your online audience easy. 
• Research your Businesses Online Keywords: Know what your audience are looking for to find you, or what you want them to look for to find you. Plan your content strategy around your keywords and build your online presence from there. Use them in Blogs & Social Media and the rest is magic!
• Develop a Social Media Plan: This doesn’t have to be a strict structure. But Social Media plays a wide role in SEO and developing your online image. We recommend a mix of the planned an unplanned. See our Social Media Blog for more on this.
• Keep Up With The Times & Be Innovative: The internet doesn’t stand still. An amazing strategy one day may be wasted the next. Continuously work on new creative ideas to engage both current and new customers, try new things and keep up with current trends.

We know how difficult small businesses in our sector find operating online – It’s breaking tradition. The aim is to make it as simple as possible for your business to have all the tools required to help them succeed online, that’s where we’re happy to help.

We strive to offer our customers as much as physically possible (we want all our customers to get the best returns possible on their sites). This includes things such as auditing, ‘logmein’ sessions and optional Marketing Packs covering areas such as analytics analysis, social media analysis, content review & advice, keyword help and online marketing strategy advice.

We have all the bases covered when it comes to helping take our customers businesses forward.

For more information on improving your online business, all things Online Marketing, SEO & e-commerce in the garment decoration game don’t hesitate to get in touch!