We have some exciting news!

You can see us at the Newtech shows starting Tuesday 21^st & Wednesday 22^nd June in Manchester. eTrader will  be demonstrating our product  and meeting a number of customers firstly at Manchester then at several other Newtech shows in Bristol, London & Leeds.

The Newtech Show will give us a chance to meet a number of print & embroidery companies and demonstrate how we can help transform their online business…

To book your FREE tickets for any Newtech Show click here!

We recently launched a number of updates & upgrades for our customers including:

• Improved iFrame: Credit now Available on Iframe 
• New Quantity Discount Band: (Upto 9) replacing 0-49
• Delivery: Delivery charge now available per shop
• Recommended products: Choose up to four products per page to be your 'best seller'
• Reworded bagging charge to additional charge per item
• Colour Filters: Your customer can now filter a search by colour on each category page

For more info on these updates don’t hesitate to get in touch for a demonstration!

Keep an eye out for us in both Printwear & Promotion Magazine and Images Magazine in the next few weeks.

We will be providing monthly online advice for garment decorators in a number of areas so keep an eye out for us!

You can read this month’s first article online by clicking here!

Following on from our P&P success the eTrader team has been both non-stop signing up existing customers, working around the clock. But we have not forgot about our existing eTraders, we are continuing to develop our sites and put both new & existing customers at the heart of the eTrader experience. 

Providing the garment decoration industry’s most comprehensive web solution we are continuously developing new ideas to provide garment decorators & site owners the best available tools to succeed online. Our collaborative approach to development means we listen to our customers, we listen to the garment decorators and understand what tools are required to add value and make their online business a success.

Our sites are continuing to evolve & develop in response to the latest web design & customer demands with the introduction of our new responsive designs, new modern brand and added functionality eTrader is continuing to go from strength to strength bringing garment decorators the most comprehensive online solution for their online business.

• New Responsive Design: Modern new styles for your site!
• iFrame Update: Embed your customers shops directly onto their website using just a snippet of code. 
• Quotes: Quotes generated through the site are now saved in the dashboard & now include convert button
• Marking up: Mark up by price instead of via brand
• View Orders: Track existing orders in dashboard
• Shop Colours: Set up products in a numerous colours!
• Updated Content Management System: More formatting tools available creating content
• New User-Friendly Dashboard Layout
• And much much more...

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!

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 

This weeks blog is brought to you by none other that eTraders Managing Director, John will be regularly sharing his thoughts and views on all things online for Garment decorators. 

Want to know what all this stuff means?

SEO, SEM, SERP, URL, HTML, SSL, PCI, CRM, CMS, AND, ON, AND, ON, AND, ON.................... 

Or more importantly, what's it got to do with your Embroidery and Printed Clothing business?

I genuinely went to a meeting a few years ago with a web development company and thought it was some sort of elaborate game of Scrabble and that at the end of the meeting I would be asked to make words out of all the letters they'd thrown at me and win a prize or something. Sadly not, what I had experienced was the language I like to call 'Gobbledeegeek'.

Then it was off for a meeting with an online marketing company and SEO specialist (luckily my first meeting prepared me well and I knew what that meant), basically the same confusing language would be spoken but.... dare I say with a little less substance.

B2B, B2C, D2C, CTP, CTR, CPA, CPM, BOUNCE RATE, NEGATIVE KEYWORDS, META DESCRIPTIONS, AND, ON, AND, ON...........

Then I realised of course, like accountants and solicitors before them, these guys had created a new language which roughly translates to - 'You don't understand, you pay!' 

Fair enough, like the bean counters and ambulance chasers, some of them are pretty good and worth the money, but watch out for the ones who use it to show you how clever they are or to make you think you can't do most of this stuff yourself. Don't bother learning it if you're not going to apply it, the good guys tell you this stuff in a way you can understand and you can make your own mind up if it's something you want to pay for then go for it.

Anyway, now that I'm a fully fledged member of the Tech and SEO fraternity, and proud of it, I still keep this type of thing up my sleeve just in case....

http://www.iabuk.net/resources/jargon-buster

OR

http://www.directom.com/resources/internetmarketingtermglossary 

Over the years here at eTrader we have become fully bilingual, we talk both techie and garments. So if you want to talk about EMB, DTG, DST with a bit of the above thrown in get in touch and keep an eye out for our regular hints, tips and features on Social Media.