How to Engage Users on Your T-Shirt Website

As a t-shirt business, you probably spend a lot of time working with customers, designing and printing shirts, and taking care of the “office” type of tasks, such as payroll (if you have a staff), sales taxes, etc.

However, being a small business, one of the biggest items you are tasked with, if not one of the most important, is marketing your t-shirt business. The problem is that this often times gets neglected due to lack of time.

Getting customers and keeping them is definitely integral for your apparel business to thrive and survive.

How do you go about marketing your t-shirt business? Do you use online channels? The term online marketing is thrown around a lot these days. That and the term social media, but what do they mean?

With ecommerce at an all-time high, how do you take advantage of this? This is a big topic, and thousands, if not millions, of web pages are out there dedicated to this.

In this article, we want to teach you how to effectively use your t-shirt business website. If you don’t already have a website for your t-shirt business, we covered this first step in a previous post:

This step-by-step guide will help you get a website up and running with no previous experience or coding skills necessary.

Once you have your website, now it’s time to learn how to use it to your advantage.

How well you leverage this tool, could be the difference of “continuing business as usual” or seeing a growth in sales.

Think of your website as your salesman that never sleeps. Your website should be a work-a-holic. It should never stop selling for you!

Here are a few ways to make sure your apparel business website helps you sell while you are literally sleeping.

[Related Content: 4 Things to Try for Your T-Shirt Business]

Simple, Clean Website Design
Have you ever gone to a site and you just didn’t know where to click because everything had a button, there were a million colors on the site, and it was telling you to click on just as many things?

This is overwhelming for a user. In fact, studies show that when a user has too many options, they will actually choose nothing.

Keep this in mind on any given page of your site. As a rule of thumb, make sure you only have one “Call-to-Action” (CTA) where a user is on that page. You may have multiple CTA’s on a page, but try to have only one visible at a time.

For example, you may have a CTA at the top of the page, and when you scroll down further, the top CTA is no longer visible, and another CTA is in that portion of the page where you currently are.

An exception would be if you have a “shopping” page with products listed. Even then, make sure it is clean, and not cluttered looking.

White space is your friend. Give your visitors’ eyes a rest once in a while.

Speaking of white space, let’s talk more about colors. Color can help a user on a site. For instance, make all your CTA’s one color. This lets your visitors know when they see it, that is something to click on.

There are many studies and arguments on the web about button color and which button color performs best. Generally, make your buttons/CTA’s a color that is complementary to the main color of your site.

This will draw attention to the CTA, but also give an aesthetically pleasing appearance to your page overall.

As for the rest of your site, try to stick to a color palette of only 2 or 3 main colors, one of these being for the CTA. This is not only limited to your site, but try this for all your marketing pieces.

That way, people will begin to recognize uniformity to your brand and know exactly when they are interacting with you, whether it’s your website, social media pages, emails, or printed brochures and signs.

[Related Content: A Quick Brand Guide for Lasting Results]

Take an Action
A simple and clean website design will help users navigate your site and to help them take an action. That is our main goal when someone visits our site – we want them to do something.

What is that something? This is where your goals come in to play. What do you want your customer to do?

Arguably, the most important thing a user can do on your site is to sign up and subscribe to your email list.

Your email list is gold.

“Wait a minute”, you make ask. “Isn’t the most important thing someone can do is buy something from me?” We’ll get to that in a minute. Stick with me here.

The reality is that most people will not make a purchase the first time on your website. Not only that, but you have less than 10 seconds to capture the attention of your visitors.

Because of this, once they leave your site and you didn’t get their contact info, you won’t be able to talk to them again unless they come back to your site on their own. The chances of this are slim.

With an email address, you can draw them back over and over again.

On average, a person will consume about 7 pieces of content from a company before they make a purchase. This is where great content and information play a role.

Your email list is a group of people who opted in and gave you permission to continue to talk with them. They invited you into the home of their email inbox.

This is a list of people who are interested in what you have to say. They have engaged with you. Don’t abandon them!

What you do with this list is where you can grow your business. Give them great information.

When you email them, the goal is to get them back on your website, where they can make a purchase.

Ah, that’s where sales come in!

Beware though, that just as fast as they subscribed to your list, they can unsubscribe.

You have been given a great responsibility here. You must provide them with value for them to want to keep in communication with you. It helps to know your customer so that you will know what they perceive as valuable.

Know Your Customer
Now that you are building an email list, how do you provide them with information that they want and will help them buy?

You need to know your customer. Ask yourself questions like this:

Who is my niche?
What about my brand resonates with them?
What language speaks to my audience?
What imagery or photography speaks to them?
What problems do they face?
How do my products/services offer solutions to their problems?

After you answer these types of questions, you will have a better understanding on who your customer is, and what to offer them.

Your offerings may be in the form of informational or educational content. It may be coupons or sales information. You may offer inspirational content within your niche.

If your products or services offer solutions to their problems, make sure you highlight these benefits in your content that you provide to them.

Valuable content will continue to draw visitors back to your site over and over again. With a combination of the right content, products, pricing, etc., they will make a purchase.

They key is to give your visitors value. Knowing your customer will help you know if what you are giving them is valuable to them.

Once you have content to give to them, you will want to add it somewhere on your site. Most sites use a blog to post to. Then, craft an email to send to your email list. In the email, give them the link to your content and entice them to click on your link. Let them know how they will benefit.

Feed Your Funnel
You may have heard of the term, sales funnel. Your sales funnel, as a simple explanation, is the process that you and your prospects interact from the first contact, to the first sale, and then ongoing afterward.

Simple sales funnel example

Your content and website should help feed your funnel. Like mentioned above, on average, people are interacting with about 7 pieces of your content before they decide to purchase.

Everyone in the funnel is at a different stage and has a different knowledge of your product/service. The content you provide on your site should help address people at every stage that they are in and the questions that they have.

As they trickle down the funnel through your content, the more likely they will to buy. This is why your email list is so important. Your sales funnel should not stop after a purchase is made.

Keeping a customer is cheaper than finding new ones. Get the most out of this customer that you can. This is known as the lifetime value of a customer. Your goal should be to increase this lifetime value.

Are you on social media? Social media is good for many reasons. It is a great place to promote your content, get leads, and create more awareness through people sharing your content to other people.

However, don’t run the risk of “building on rented land”. Your followers on Facebook will always just be on Facebook if you don’t get them to your site. Your site is where the money happens!

Get your Facebook fans to convert to your email list. Then that list is yours. Your Facebook fans belong to Facebook and Facebook can change the rules at anytime. You have less control over how you communicate with them.

This is part of feeding your funnel. Social media is a great place to drum up some new leads, but make sure you get them to your site and collect their email address.

Conclusion
Design your site for optimal conversions when visitors arrive on your t-shirt business website.

Collect and grow an email list. As you continue to grow and nurture your email list, every time you post new content and promote that content, it will bring visitors back to your site.

Provide great content that your customers and prospects in your niche will love to consume.

This is a great way to add growth to your t-shirt business. Use your website for more than just a “phone book page” which basically just lets customers know where you are. Use it to feed your sales funnel convert traffic.

That is how to effectively engage your customers with your website.

How to Engage Users on Your T-Shirt Website

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