Assault Blog Design and Apparel Resource Tutorial Website

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Don’t just scan this if you want to benefit from it. Trust me the juice is below the headlines.

Awhile back I posted a blog about a few helpful tips that would help get your t-shirt company off the ground, and I briefly touched upon a subject that I decided would make for a great post–when every sale counts. I can’t quite remember where I was reading it, but I read something that astonished me about opening your first e-commerce store.

It will take on average 6 months to a year to get your first online sale

I still can’t believe that anyone could ever think this was true. I have news for you, it’s not.

Don’t send robot PR emails… be human

No matter what you’re selling, before you open your doors you should reach out to similar websites, and personalities associated with your target demographic. This doesn’t mean that you send out robotic press-release style spam emails, but rather personalized emails that show you give a shit about the people you are actually contacting.

We get PR emails at least a few times a week about various products and companies, and I can tell you there is no faster way to get your email deleted from my inbox. The products I do end up pimping on our site, are from people who sent personalized, friendly emails to me and actually proved to me that they’ve been to my site and know what Assault is about.

Keep a look out for forum posts in your stats

After your grand opening of your site, sales probably slowed down quite a bit, as well as traffic. We went through our slow periods right after our initial launch simply because our site hadn’t even been spidered by Google yet. To help during the lull periods, we feverishly tracked our statistics. We were only getting about 50 visits a day so we could see EVERY SINGLE person and how they got to our sites.

We visited the forums referring visitors to us and commented on the posts and subsequently got sales from these posts.

Friends with mutual benefits

While you can run around all the social networks and grab profiles and make a half assed effort to stay active in all of them–you’d be better off picking one or two and pouring all your weight into that.

Even better, when you’re making friends in these networks, make sure you make friends with people that have something to offer you in return. Channel the inner high school cheerleader in you and find friends that can make you look cooler, or more popular.

If you choose Myspace: make friends with people who run large groups. (aka heavy metal groups, Twilight Fan groups, People who live in Chicago groups, Barack Obama groups, etc.)

If you choose Twitter, find someone who’s active and steal their friends! Start @replying to questions they pose or things they say. (like I said, channel the inner high school cheerleader in all of you)

Friends page on your store website

We befriended other similar companies that our customers may like and added them to our friends page. It’s an easy way to email other stores that have similar demographics and ask them if they’d like to exchange links.

Mother**cking blog

Kendra wearing one of our shirts. Does it help with sales-Absolutely.

Blog Blog Blog. I hate using the word blog and I hate that it’s now become a thing that mainstream loves to throw out the word blog, but the truth is if you’re not blogging on a weekly basis, you’re going to fade into the background.

I’m a big advocate of never losing steam with our small business. If I’m not doing or thinking about what I should be doing to grow my company every day, I start to feel guilty. Doing a simple blog once a week takes a few hours, and gives you a medium to push visitors to your online store. On top of that, it’s a little subliminal way of keeping you organized and making sure you’re reaching your goals.

By having a blog you’re always adding content and increasing the chances that you’ll be able to push more people to your store.

My store’s biggest referral is my blog. Hands down. (it beats out even woot.com!)

Never underestimate good customer service

Every store is different, but we built our brand/store around the idea that we’d have a cult following so that the “merchants of cool” who found us would tell their friends, who would then tell their friends, who would then tell their friends. We’re online only as of now so we’re restricted ourselves to who can find us, but just think about the millions out there who never shop online–especially for things like clothing.

Make your customers happy and they will spread your seed–Even the assholes. I know you should even make the assholes happy because I’ve been that asshole. I’ve bought shoes online once, from Zappos. They screwed up my order by sending it to the wrong place, and I was pissed. (For some obscure reason) After dealing with some incredibly helpful customer support they’ve won me over as a self pimping customer for life. I can think of at least three people who have bought shoes from Zappos as a direct result of me telling them about how great they are.

You’ll benefit 100 times more from a blog post about how your customers service went above and beyond. It may cost you a dollar here and a dollar there, but the best thing a customer can do is send you a referral. A happy customer is going to do that.

Conclusion

The first year of running your own e-commerce can be grueling. You’re spread thin over a lot of different areas and you carry a lot of responsibility. I design, develop, and maintain all of our websites and blog all by myself. It’s a lot of work, and if you want it to pay off and grow you have to get sales any way you can.

Have I missed something or do you know of another great tip? Post it in the comments.