The digital age has changed how consumers shop and research brands, from groceries and furniture to clothes and electronics. This also applies to screen printing businesses. It’s still important to have all the right equipment and supplies, as well as several examples of your work but odds are, without an online store, you are missing a large market opportunity.
Without an online store, not only will your t-shirt printing brand be less visible, but you will also fight an uphill battle against established online businesses. It doesn’t matter how high-quality your prints are or how much experience you have; people are becoming cautious about trusting brands who lack an online presence. Keep reading to learn how you can get started on setting up an online store!
Building Your Store
Your amazing prints and services can’t sell themselves; you’ve got to put them out there! Fortunately, it’s fairly simple to start an online store. Check out our steps and tips below on how to build your online store.
Pick an eCommerce Platform
- Your first step should be to set up an eCommerce store like Shopify, Squarespace, or WordPress sites. These platforms offer great flexibility, allowing you to customize your site to your liking and showcase your business; they also allow you to accept a wider range of credit cards from around the world by supporting diverse international payment gateways. If you already have a company website, these are also easily integrated.
- If this is not the route you want to go, another option would be to sell your prints on an online shop like Etsy. This platform and others like it make it easy for you to post listings for your merchandise. You also get the perk of having more traffic to your shop due to Etsy’s popularity. However, Etsy has over 2.5 million sellers, meaning that the website is saturated with other people offering the same services that you do, and brand name awareness is much more difficult to accomplish here.
Use Only High-Quality Images
- High-quality product imagery is essential to show off your prints and sell online. People won’t take your brand seriously if the photos are grainy, sloppily staged, or blurry. And while you should feel free to either hire someone or purchase a professional camera, you should be able to take a satisfactory photo with a smartphone. Pay close attention to image clarity when uploading photos; an image may look great on your phone or camera, but the quality can become distorted when stretched out. Having a separate portfolio page dedicated to custom jobs is genuinely beneficial. This will speak to the range of your capabilities and showcase your ability to fulfill the customer’s wishes with minimal direction.
- People are more likely to buy an item if they can visualize how they will use it. If your main services are t-shirts or apparel printing, then you should show people how and where they can wear your items. If the product is a t-shirt with a rock band logo printed on it, then gear the supplemental images to that particular type of clientele. You could show someone with an edgy style wearing the shirt or lay the entire outfit out on a flat surface.
Use Detailed Product Descriptions
- You know your products better than anyone. Don’t be afraid to share as much detail as possible in your product descriptions. It’s important to list everything from the type of screen printer and materials used to the time an item takes to create, as well as dimensions and size conversions. This will take out the guesswork for the buyer and make them feel more comfortable purchasing your product. The more information they have, the less likely they are to be dissatisfied when their order arrives.
Streamline the Checkout and Payment Process
- There is nothing more frustrating and deterring for a buyer than a non-user-friendly online shopping experience. Ideally, your eCommerce platform of choice will allow customers to seamlessly add your wares to their shopping cart and go through checkout with ease. Long story short, make buying easy or the customer will go elsewhere.
Allow Customers to Leave Reviews
- Potential buyers trust other buyers. Despite the fact that over 40% of purchases are now made online, many people are still wary about ordering certain things from the internet. Consequently, it’s important that you allow your customers to leave reviews on the prints that you’ve provided for them; in fact, you should encourage them to do so! This will give prospective buyers peace of mind knowing that others have been satisfied with your services.
Spread the Word
When it comes to sales, marketing is the best way to spread the word about your services to people who are likely to actually purchase them. There are all kinds of diverse ways you can market your business. The various platforms and methods each have their own strengths, so it’s important to put all your efforts towards what will work best for you.
Social Media
- If you aren’t on social media, you may as well not exist. The major platforms like Facebook and Instagram are great places to start, but you should also explore more niche platforms like Pinterest, Reddit, and YouTube. This will help put your business in front of people and allow you to foster a relationship with new customers and those that already enjoy your services. Pinterest is particularly good for print shops because the sole purpose of the website is to direct people to the source of the image they are looking at.
Marketing Strategies
- Other marketing strategies like email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and pay-per-click ads are more targeted methods for getting your brand noticed. Email marketing is great for outreach and keeping your brand at the forefront of a pre-existing customers’ mind. SEO works by using optimized keywords to help you rank higher on search engines so that people searching for the services you offer are more likely to see your website. Pay per click allows you to reach leads and prospects when they are researching and looking to buy, so it’s another effective way to get interested visitors to your online shop.
About EXILE Technologies
At EXILE Technologies, we know that your business matters to you. That is why we have made it our business to offer many computer-to-screen printing solutions each with the specific ability to increase productivity and generate savings in your production area. Our high-quality products include the Spyder III, V-Lux, and more! Now that you’re ready to start setting up an online store, contact us today to learn more about our products and how they can elevate your business.
