Suggestions Website, sales, marketing...etc

[Goatshaver]

Since I'm in a slow period right now I've been thinking about a website again. All of my business comes from a social media channel and word of mouth advertising. I feel like it's time to look into other avenues for helping keep sales a bit more steady. (no complaints as I've been very busy the last few years with no advertising.) I was thinking about doing a simple Shopify (or something similar) website to sell decals, stickers and also for customers to submit orders through.

If you have a website for customers to place orders who do you use? Did you hire a company to build one?

What kind of advertising do you do? (print, web....local only or state-wide, or national)

 

[Splash0321]

Most websites for this industry are either informative (for local business) or selling online. Advertising focused on the local level is best for informative sites.

If you are wanting to create an e-commerce website you need products to sell, the more the better, and a well put together website with strong SEO. Actual advertising may or may not benefit you much with e-commerce in my experience. I have a website, primarily vehicle graphics. I’ve tried advertising but most of what I’ve tried has been break even. There’s not been any better advertising for me than a great product that causes a customer to refer you business.

 

[Goatshaver]

Most websites for this industry are either informative (for local business) or selling online. Advertising focused on the local level is best for informative sites.

If you are wanting to create an e-commerce website you need products to sell, the more the better, and a well put together website with strong SEO. Actual advertising may or may not benefit you much with e-commerce in my experience. I have a website, primarily vehicle graphics. I’ve tried advertising but most of what I’ve tried has been break even. There’s not been any better advertising for me than a great product that causes a customer to refer you business.

This is why I never jumped right on getting one. I felt like the return may not be what I expect. Maybe just a simple site to streamline ordering and file submission for current customers is a better way to go about it.
Thanks for the input.

 

[Pauly]

We use OnPrintShop. Best move we've done.
We've used wordpress, tried 100x different plugins but with OPS, it has allowed us to grow faster.
It is a SaaS solution, and gets expensive. but it's designed for selling print.

But it really depends what your business sells.
If it's just print, then yeah an ecom site will be ok. depends on how deep you want to get.
if you do custom work, then you just need a landing page, an about us, portfolio etc and a contact form.

You still need good SEO. SEO is the best way to grow organically. but it is slower than advertising on search engines and social media.

 

[Stacey K]

I use WIX. I will send you my link in a PM. I do a lot of stuff for students such as this week the cross country team is going to state. The coach contacted me about doing fatheads. I have a link on my website for them to order from and he sent it out to the team. This way all orders are easily tracked and I know everything is paid for. Much easier than 25 moms emailing and texting and FB messaging. I also put local apparel sales items on there - same thing for smaller orders it's much easier for me to have them organized AND PAID FOR AHEAD in one spot.

I always wanted to switch my business more to an online thing to eliminate walk ins. I also like the "click here for an estimate" option and "send us your artwork" button on my site.

I also recently sold 60 t-shirts to kids at school and again...I'm not tracking who paid and who didn't so go online and pay ahead and i just print out the order. All the funds collected get deposited directly to my checking account so it's not a big deal for accounting.

 

[White Haus]

I use WIX. I will send you my link in a PM. I do a lot of stuff for students such as this week the cross country team is going to state. The coach contacted me about doing fatheads. I have a link on my website for them to order from and he sent it out to the team. This way all orders are easily tracked and I know everything is paid for. Much easier than 25 moms emailing and texting and FB messaging. I also put local apparel sales items on there - same thing for smaller orders it's much easier for me to have them organized AND PAID FOR AHEAD in one spot.

I always wanted to switch my business more to an online thing to eliminate walk ins. I also like the "click here for an estimate" option and "send us your artwork" button on my site.

I also recently sold 60 t-shirts to kids at school and again...I'm not tracking who paid and who didn't so go online and pay ahead and i just print out the order. All the funds collected get deposited directly to my checking account so it's not a big deal for accounting.

Do you mind sending me a link as well? We're using wix for our site too and would love to see how you have your site set up.

Have been considering adding these options to our site.

Thanks!