Customers trust you with their branding needs, so ensure yours is also on point from the moment the customer locks eyes at your building, enters your showroom and so on. Catching a customer’s attention visually is key, whether this is in-store with visuals, point of sales materials and Marketing collateral or outside branded with visuals, decorated windows or sandwich boards with your last offers, promotions and latest range of products.

Along with this consider things like promotional giveaways and merchandise giveaways branded with your info and details, branded samples and swatches. Anything that enhances your businesses brand that may also come useful for your customer.

You can also extend your offers to be store only. Offer showroom specific offers, discounts and incentives which can only be used by visiting your store, give people a reason to visit you.

Combining all these factors makes for an enticing store which hopefully both existing and prospective customers will visit. Offer a professional appearance, service and give customers a reason to go one step further than picking up the phone or searching for you on Google.

It allows them to visit you, see the quality product and proposition you offer, chat to you, get a feel for your business and brand. Despite the steady year on year growth of personalised clothing being sold online, there is still no replacement for seeing the quality of both a product and a service.

Do not just our word for it.

First and foremost - what is it we offer?

What are the other 'options'?

What about us?

Again do not just take our word for it...

To get your business thriving online in the post-COVID era we have put together some advice to help you achieve success with an ecommerce website.

Ensure the website layout is mobile & tablet friendly: An almost essential for a website which is still overlooked by many. Your website needs to look great on both a desktop PC/laptop and a mobile & tablet. Customers shopping from home are looking for a crisp, easy user experience to buy their goods online.

Mirror how you work in-store online: Make sure users know all about your knowledge & expertise. Customers previously would have potentially visited your store to find out about your products, service, and branding methods. With this being limited ensure this can be found online to put their minds at ease and help with any queries.

Communicate with your customers through the website: A simple point inexplicably overlooked, provide clear call to actions (CTAs) for customers. Make it easy for them to reach out to you, this can also be through the use of chat bots and live chat facilities.

Set up designated areas for your customers: There will be exiting customers – schools, clubs, businesses who will want to re-order. Provide them their very own shop facility to make their repeat orders simple.

Keep products & prices up to date: This is a mammoth task, but one that needs to be considered. Products are continuously dis-continued and added from suppliers with prices often changing. There are website solutions from wholesalers that manage this aspect but are extremely limited and tie you in to using their products offering no choices or flexibility. Create a website selling the products you want at the prices you want.

Keep your website safe & secure: Customer information needs to be safe & secure and since the introduction of GDPR this is under more scrutiny than ever before. Your website needs an SSL certificate to appear safe in your customers browsers. If it does not have one it will display an error and give your customers a poor user experience or cast doubt in their mind.

Taking payments online: Something not many consider when looking for an ecommerce website, you need a secure payment processor and checkout plus in most cases a merchant account. There is often a monthly cost to these services from banks & payment providers.

Lastly, consider the costs of building an ecommerce website. The garment decoration industry is unique and to build a solution from scratch with products and branding options is complex and expensive. An ecommerce solution may not tick every box a bespoke website does, but it will save you £1000s in development and increase your businesses sales post COVID.

For more information or to book an online demo to see how we could help your print & embroidery business with its website email info@etraderwebsites.co.uk or call 029 2074 1663

Similar with other Online Marketing tools, look at things like Sponsored Ads on Social Media, Google Adwords and identify if there is opportunity for your business. Plan a strategy, budget and build all the key words ready to go live to your audience once business is fully operational.

You might think all this sounds a bit costly. Where will the budget come from with cashflow being tight, it is a great opportunity for a bit of Marketing DIY. Grow your knowledge, skills and carry out the review and analysis. Plus there is also a chance to broaden your skillset and carry out these ideas yourself learning on the go, familiarising yourself with Social Media channels, or testing our different pieces of software for CRM, Email Campaigns, Social Media scheduling and so on.

It is an unprecedented time that presents many challenges but the optimistic business owner the freed up time is a great opportunity to look at your business, think of where it was, where it is now and think of where you want it to be in a year’s time. Use the time to develop your skills and your business, time wasted is time lost.

There are a few things to consider when using an automated approach:

• Define your goals & outcomes: What is your campaigns end goal? What data is relevant to be collected and collated? Knowing your aims & goals allows you to decipher what data is the most relevant and appropriate to use.
• Complete a data audit: Your business probably has an abundance of data readily available. Data from Analytics, Webmasters & Ads plus any CRM data or transactional data from previous orders and enquiries. Assess this data and work out what is relevant, what can be used and what would provide value to your business and its online efforts.
• Consider external data sources: Alongside having data about existing customers, creating an online profile for a new potential customer is essential. Use public data sources such as Google Trends, UK Data Service and other readily available datasets to identify any existing online retail trends.

Undertaking Machine Learning & utilising AI in Marketing is in its infancy for businesses with only large multi-nationals having the facilities and resources to build bespoke software to fully utilise it. But there are a growing number of software available for small businesses to utilise with the pick of the bunch being Phraseee, Optimove, Rapidminer and Automat.