In this weeks blog we have put together our top five ways we help print & embrodiery businesses with their websites.

We provide garment decorators the most comprehensive website for their business providing them a proven sales tool for their business. In no particular order here are five ways we help print & embroidery businesses succeed online:


We take the stress out of your hands and actually build your website for you. You need to focus your energy and effort on running your print & embroidery business and do not need to be wasting time building one yourself. 

Where our competitors offer a drop and drag website you build yourself we do the hard work and build for you. Save a considerable amount of effort & time and leave it to the web design company to actually build your website for you, we aren't just an off the shelf solution.


If for some reason you ever need to get in touch with us we are simply a phonecall or email away. We love to help customers with any queries they have and ensure we provide them quality, quick and reliable UK based customer support. 

You won't find us using a ticketing system or using a North American or Australian call centres!


We have 100s of brands available for customers to sell on their websites. Simply pick & choose what you would like on-site. You don't have to be tied in to any particular wholesaler or supplier, you sell exactly what you want to sell on your website.


Our easy to use online ordering makes winning business easy. Whether its creating a public/private shop for a repeat customer or using the easy to use four step process both your new and existing customers will find ordering quicker and simpler than ever before.


We don't stop once the website is built. Our team help you maximise your websites potential with in-store and online training in a number of areas including but not limited to SEO, PPC, Email Campaigns, In-Store Marketing, Blogging, Social Media and much more...

For more information on how eTrader Websites can help your print & embroidery business you can reach us on
029 2074 1663 or email info@etraderwebsites.co.uk

The rise of influencing personalities on Social Media otherwise known as ‘Influencers’ has led to the rise of Influencer Marketing.

Influencer Marketing has grown rapidly and involves big brands working alongside prominent Social Media personalities (mainly on Instagram and Youtube) to help promote their products and/or services with some huge brands paying millions per post.

You might be asking yourself, what does this have to do with the garment decoration industry?

Influencer Marketing is slowly filtering down into the high street and may soon be cluttering up your Social Media feeds, so it may be something your business needs to consider in the near future.


To help get you started here are a few simple tips to consider if you are going to undertake Influencer Marketing:

Do your research and checks: Carry out your due diligence when researching influencers, research their personal brand, persona and personality and see if its value align alongside yours. Research fees do not bow to paying over the odds just because someone has a huge number of followers – there’s always knowingly or unknowingly fake followers inflating their crowd.

It is out of your hands: The second you get involved with an influencer; things are essentially being taken out of your control. Regardless of what you pay you have no control over what they think. Credible influencers want to provide their customers an authentic experience, work alongside them and deliver a quality product and customer experience.

Be patient: The results from using Influencer Marketing is very rarely instant. Trust must be built between both yourself and the influencer but also between that person and its audience. It is more so a brand awareness building campaign rather than a direct sales campaign.

Build relationships: You are more than likely to achieve success using this type of Marketing when a lasting relationship is created. Working alongside someone long term is likely to build a trusting working relationship and help you tap into an influencers influence. Manage the costs by starting with small personalities who may be of value and establish a manageable cost-effective working relationship.

Think outside sponsored: Influencer Marketing is not all about sponsored posts and plugging your business and its product. It gives you the chance to collaborate and curate some content and tailor it as they understand their audience better than anyone. It may be competitions, them designing their own promotional products or anything but it will help you establish a deeper more meaningful long-term relationship.

Twitter lists are one of the biggest hidden secrets in Social Media, an under-utilised tool to help gain followers and interact with potential new customers.

The challenge for businesses is the platform itself has over 330m users and over 500m tweets are sent per day through these accounts. Twitter lists allow you to cut through the cluttered news feeds and interact with accounts based on interests, keywords and topics (They also give you the chance to keep one eye on your competition!)

Simply click the three dots (…) next to an account name and click add or remove from list, this will give you the option to create a new list or add accounts to an existing one.

Ideal for garment decorators you can group up lists of potential customers by sector, existing customers, local schools and many other target customers. Engage with these lists on a regular basis instead of using a slapdash approach and using your general news feed.


To get started here are some tips for help with maximising your lists:
  • Create separate lists for your target audience – a list for existing clients, prospects, accounts of interest and so on
  • Create a list dedicated to your competition – keep a track on what your competitors are offering in their Social Media campaigns and keep a private list to see what is working and what is not similar businesses
  • Grow your followers – as well as creating your own list it may be likely your account itself will be added to one by someone else. You can see all lists you are a member of, this will also display all their followers who may also be a target audience for you
  • Find existing lists online – there are tools out there to find existing lists based on whatever your search might be, use this and identify existing lists to potentially replicate

If you use Social Media management tools like Hootsuite, Crowdfire etc you can also integrate your lists and create custom feeds to use and monitor on an hourly, daily or weekly basis.

Lists require a bit more effort than conventional Social Media techniques, but the results can lead to an increase in your Social Media following, increased coverage and engagement which can only be a good thing for driving traffic to your businesses website.

Your businesses website is no different to your store appearance is everything. Customers will walk past a tired, messy and cluttered store with minimal or next to no interest. 

The same goes for your website!

Customers will click and shop around looking for the simplest user experience possible. They do not want to be confused, overloaded with information or be faced with a difficult to use website. In Lehman terms they want to go online, order their printed t-shirts for an event, work or whatever the occasion may be and checkout. They are not as excited as most garment decorators by set up costs, stitch counts and number of colours within a print.

Strive for simplicity and provide your customer base an easy to use experience, shopping basket and make sure they do not need to search around when it comes to buying branded clothing.

With that in mind, here are five tips to help declutter your businesses website:

  • Streamline Your Home/Navigation Bar: This is the spine of your site and holds it all together in terms of accessibility. Make the bar a simple to use, informative tool and do not overload it with options and information. Organise it and make it concise for your customer.
  • Less is More: Content is a main fundamental element of SEO, but sometimes less is more. Customers are after quality not quantity, do not bombard them huge chunks of content and information. Be clear, keep the readers attention and focus on what information is crucial to them when purchasing or enquiring through your website.
  • Continuously Remove Out of Date Items: Often one that is overlooked. Simply take a few moments to remove any out of date seasonal content and campaigns. Keep on top of your website and ensure that your site looks like it is both managed & professional.
  • Manage Loading Times: Customers are an impatient bunch and often happy to shop around over the littlest error. Ensure your website does not take forever to load, work with your developer or provider to make sure customers can navigate your website quickly.
  • Clear Call to Acton (CTA)/Contact Details: Ensure all action buttons and contact details are visually easy for customers to find. Even if they are struggling a tiny bit to navigate your website or are stuck for choice on what to order these will improve your chances of winning the order and not frustrating a potential customer.
We do all this for our customers, we make owning a website simple. With clear to use prompts, up to date product information and a clear precise shopping experience an eTrader Website is the only solution for print & embroidery businesses.

To find out more view the rest of our website or alternatively book an online demo by getting in touch on 029 2074 1663 or email info@etraderwebsites.co.uk.


In March Instagram introduced a brand-new checkout to their app. Consumers can now buy their favourite products without ever leaving the app, but what does this mean for the Social Media platform? And how could it possibly affect garment decorators?

But there is a catch, for now anyway…

Instragram checkout is only available for several leading global brands such as H&M, Mac, Nike and a few others. But this is seen as the next step in the Instagram strategy, turning influencers and social engagement into sales.

It works by simply attaching a checkout button to posts where customers click and simply fill in their details once and they will be saved for future purchases. This will likely be a popular tool with customers as its an all in one checkout, where your customer information remains secure and purchases can be completed without going to an external site. 


Of course, there are limitations. This feature requires heavy investment and is only currently available to some of the worlds leading brands at a substantial cost.

The biggest drawback however is the customers effectively become Instagram’s as consumers are using their checkout and not the brands checkout. Problematic for businesses looking to manage their sales funnel and manage their conversions the brands currently using the checkout will not be able to identify users, their behaviours or any complex information, they will only receive the basic order details.

While this is only at very early development stages working with big brands, who is to say it won’t be introduced to businesses using Instagram for their Marketing & Advertising?

The garment decoration industry is a highly visual one, companies using Social Media to sell their print and embroidery rely on imagery of previous work and case studies to push their business and their quality. The checkout itself if introduced for small businesses would be an ideal fit for the industry.

With UK businesses already spending millions of pounds on engaging with influencers and Sponsored Online Advertising on Instagram there will be some that will see this as a step in the right direction where you can measure Return On Investment (ROI) can be measured in a more quantifiable way. 

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2018 was a big year for Digital Marketing in many ways including Social Media platforms offering businesses more functionality than ever before, the continuous rise of Video Marketing, the introducing of Mobile First Indexing by Google and of course the introduction of the dreaded four words we all love to hate General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

For Digital Marketing, we can expect Social Media interaction with customers to continue to grow and develop. Video Marketing will continue to dominate and grow rapidly with user generated content through Instagram, Youtube, Facebook Live etc. Businesses are striving to create ‘Positive Social Proof’ as someone customers can deal with and have a great experience with.


2019 promises to be an interesting year with the introduction of new technologies being used as part of the Marketing Mix. 

Here are three key trends to keep an eye on in the upcoming year:

Chatbots: There are no such thing as opening hours online, customers have access to your business, its website and Social Media 24/7. Chatbots are becoming more and more important to deal with your customers queries on demand. 

Frequently used on Facebook to help customers communicate with your business Chatbot usage is expected to rapidly grow. 

Chatbots can be integrated in a website, app or on your business’s social media accounts, they can act quicker than humans in dealing with customer requests and can provide a more personalised service by gathering user information that can later be used to tailor your businesses Marketing campaigns.

VR/AR: Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality are seen by many as a Sci-Fi like future, but they are very much here and slowly creeping their way into businesses Marketing activity. This is still at very early stages and for the foreseeable future will begin to grow exponentially but it’s a great time for businesses to invest and explore the options. 

VR/AR gives your customers the chance to be both engaging with your products/services and actively participating in your Marketing activity in ‘another reality’ putting them at the heart of your business.

Voice Search: 2019 is widely expected to see a significant growth in voice searches & queries - almost 1/3 of the 3.5 billion searches performed in 2018 were carried out by voice assistant devices such as Apple Siri, Google Home & Amazon Alexa leading the way.

This is expected to grow to almost 50% of searches in 2019. Your online presence needs to consider optimising content specifically for Voice Searches, focusing on ‘Position Zero’, Local SEO and creating content around questions your customers may ask.

Online reviews can make or break how your business appears online. It gives your customers the chance to leave information on a public scale about you, your business, its products, services and their experience.

With customers having more information and knowledge of the internet than ever before they are prepared to shop around for a quality product and service. We have all used review sites in some capacity – Google Reviews, Trip Advisor, Yelp, Revoo and Trustpilot are a few of the most popular

Online consumers expect a quality, reliable service and over 70% of consumers search through review sites assessing their options before purchasing with an online business.


Of course, there will be apprehension using review sites as the power is in your customers hands, but the rewards are worth it. Here are three key reasons why reviews can work for your business:

  • Increased Sales: Using online reviews is a Marketing activity, it helps your customers in their decision making. With over 75% new customers happier to purchase online with recommendations and positive reviews from previous existing customers.
  • Gain Customer Insight: Online reviews will be able to give you an insight into what your business is or is not doing right. This will allow you to address any internal issues, create a more positive shopping experience for your customers and increase sales.
  • Improve SEO Rankings: The more quality content that is write about your website, the higher it ranks. It also shows Google your business is authentic, getting clicked on and actively engaging with customers.

Get it right online…

From a practical point of view, make sure you give your customers multiple opportunities to review your business. Whether it is a pop-up box, fixed bar or dedicated page on-site give them more than one opportunity to review.

Leading sites such as Trustpilot and Yelp offer several tools to embed on-site in a range of styles, just pick which suits your business more and make this available on your businesses site.

But it is all well and good having these on-site, but the next challenge is getting your customers to use them. Encourage your customers to leave reviews offering special offers, bonuses and discounts in return for their feedback.

One last thought, managing reviews…

Not all the reviews will be 100% positive, there will be the odd negative review and it is important how you deal with these.

There are 100s of online and in-store training courses specifically aimed at how to deal with online reviews. But the solution is simple - manage reviews like how you deal with customers in-store, be polite, professional, balanced and offer a solution for that customer, quality customer service goes a long way in-store and online.

In the last few years the UK has begun adopting a few online trends from the US, namely Cyber Monday and Black Friday.

Love it or loathe it they are the biggest online shopping days of the year and offers online consumers the chance to make huge savings in the build up to the festive period.

With more and more small businesses jumping on board and offering flash sales, bargains and discounts as part of their Marketing for these events ensure your business has the tool to run a flash sale smoothly.

To get the most from these promotions here are a few simple pointers to get you started:

Start planning now: Plan your promotions in advance, build up suspense with your customer base and let them know of any upcoming offers and savings in advance whether its in-store, on Social Media or via an Email Campaign.

Create specific page copy: Plan the products or services you are going to offer savings on. Ensure your website is optimised with product pages for these specific items. Point customers in the right direction and ensure your user experience is customer focused, they are not afraid to shop around when it comes to huge savings!

Create eye catching content: Whether it is for your businesses website, Social Media or to be distributed to your list of customer contacts creating eye catching content significantly increases click through rates.

Plan for an upsurge: Ensure your website can deal with increased volumes of traffic, too many page requests can slow the site down or crash the site itself. Test your website using tools like Loadimpact.com to ensure the server that your hosts your businesses website can take the strain.

Test, test, test: Before any of your promotions, artwork and copy goes live test your processes and ensure your site is fully prepared, functioning and operating as you would expect with the new pages, copy etc. Get another set of eyes from a team member and gain feedback.

Some businesses go as far as offering loyal customers a first glance ‘Exclusive’ access to a flash sale. This is used to gain customer feedback, fine tune and tweak their offering to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible in time for the main event.

Whether you love it or hate it, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are here to stay for the foreseeable future. The chances are if you are not taking part, your competitors are. If you think it would be something that would add value to your business dip your toes in, start planning and prepare a campaign using these few simple pointers.

Facebook live is a live video streaming service like that of webinars. It is a way for you to interact with your customers, engage your audience and promote your business is come capacity.

For garment decorators this presents an exciting way to market your business, promote your products and services. Discuss your latest products, show off your latest work, review products, discuss your offerings/USP and even go as far as brand something live. These are fun ways of engaging with both existing customers (and hopefully potentially new customers!)


To run a successful Facebook Live video, it needs to be carefully planned, here are a few tips to consider:

Test your equipment: Prior to going live, before any trial run ensure that all your equipment is in full working order. Ensure your laptop/desktop/smart device is running at full capacity. Having a slow device or a device with a chance of break may affect how well your video is produced. You want to produce a quality professional video not one that may end at any given moment.

Have a trial run: Before going live have a run-through, it should be both scripted and un-scripted. You want to know what you are going to talk about, but you also want to mix this with more personable chat with viewers, this leads to higher levels of engagement. Test the equipment, have a few run throughs and once you are 100% confident flick the switch and go live.

Engage with customers: Quite a simple but important one, engage with people live. Use their names, interact, ask questions, thoughts and try get their feedback. A Facebook Live video and any webinar should be a two-way experience.

Invest in a microphone: Invest in a good-quality microphone to deliver your customers a crystal-clear message, you don’t want your video to be muffled, voice distorted or break up. Investing in decent quality recording equipment will improve your recording experience, the streams quality for both you and your viewers.

Schedule your broadcast: People working won’t have time for webinars. Ensure that your broadcast takes place outside of working hours, viewing figures are likelier to be higher outside of the hours of 9-5, an early evening slot gives you the chance to expand your audience and its potential reach compared to doing it during the day.

Don't forget to promote: Running a successful webinar is one thing but don’t forget to promote it for a few weeks, build up hype through Social Media, Email Campaigns, Blogging or whatever other advertising medium you use.

One last thing to consider, something very-obvious but after watching numerous webinars test out your internet connection. Test that the signal strength is all okay and ensure that there are no disruptions to your live video. 

Producing video content is a growing area for businesses and marketers alike with econsultancy reporting that over 5 billion videos are viewed every single daily.

For garment decorators what does this mean?

The industry is a visual one, it gives you the chance to review products, your latest work, discuss your processes and provide customers an insight into how you turn their ideas into a reality.


We have put together some tips and pointers to get you on your way to Youtube success:

  • Invest in equipment & software: A simple one to consider before you get started creating video content – equipment. You want your video and sound to be audible with professional quality. Invest in editing software and quality equipment, this does not have to be costly with sites selling pre-owned goods. Just do your research!
  • Create consistent content: Viewers like familiarity and routine. Create a format which works best for both you and your customers. Keep the branding and format of the video consistent, along with the duration, when it is posted and how often. This will help your viewers get to know you better, your offerings and your brand. Keep it simple, map out a plan and strategy in blocks.
  • Encourage action: Get your viewers to engage with your video, not just in terms of interacting and starting a conversation. Pre-programmed notifications can be created to drive your viewers to certain products, pages online. Tie these in relevantly with any video you create.
  • Build a following: Enhance your video and channel with your very own ‘community’. Grow a following, engage with them and encourage debate. Reach out to potential influencers, suppliers, offer product reviews and maximise your visibility and audience.
  • Optimise for search engines: Search engines will naturally pick up Youtube videos associated with your business as its quality, consistent content. To get it ranking highly each video needs optimising – include keywords in the title, create tags using your businesses keywords and provide a detailed description of your video and what it is offering.
  • Think mobile friendly: According to Google, 75% of adults watch Youtube at home on a mobile device. The number of users watching content on smart devices is growing year on year. With mobile users more likely to be watching content concentrating compared to watching on a Smart TV/PC adopt a mobile first strategy to deliver quality content to your viewers. 

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Website design & development by Designer Websites Ltd.