You’ll want to develop a distinct website that highlights your brand, your story, and your designs in a fully-functioning eCommerce website. Because the more places you put your products—especially places where you can control the message to your ideal buyer—the more likely it is that you’ll sell enough to make a real living.

1. Begin with a clean design

Think about the websites you visit most often. Are they so jam-packed with text that it’s tough to click through to what you really want to see? No, of course not. A clean design uses white space strategically to gently guide visitors to seek more, whether it’s advice via a blog, research in a FAQ, or a link to your Spreadshirt store.

Say you’ve been designing kids’ clothing, and you know from prior sales that parents of kids 6-13 are most likely to buy when doing school shopping. Designing your website to include an obvious and easy-to-get-to “back-to-school specials” tab should encourage clicks and sales.

2. Write high-quality content

Your website needn’t be copy-heavy, but the copy you do have should be top notch. Let’s return to the back-to-school example: that same tab may include a mix of links to your store while leading with a blog post about maximizing savings when shopping for the new school year. Engaging content develops an audience of readers who, over time, could very well become customers.

3. Use unique visuals

This won’t be hard for most of you, since so many who use Spreadshirt are artists and designers looking to share their ideas. Unique images are likely to be part of that effort. But how? What can you use to engage readers and get them trying and buying your products?

Returning to the back-to-school example: posting your best illustrations for back-to-school products and then writing a blog post about your process — from concept to finished drawing and print — could help endear you to fellow artists and give your customers a better sense of who it is they’re buying from.

4. Be yourself, always

Buyers actually want to know you. They want to know why you make what you make, what you’ll make next, what drives your creations, and what you care about. The greater the connection, the better the odds you’ll find customers who keep coming back for more. So, don’t hold back. Write like you speak, and use designs and images that reflect who you are and the personal aspirations you have for your business.

Big brands stand out online because they’re distinctive. Help your business stand out with a clean, well-thought out website design that naturally leads visitors to your products. Mix in engaging content, unique images, and an unmistakably genuine look and feel to reel in customers — because the more they explore, the more profit you’re likely to make.

Get started with your eCommerce website now

MEET THE AUTHOR
Adam Tanguay is responsible for SEO, Content and Organic Growth at Weebly, an intuitive and powerful website builder used by businesses and entrepreneurs around the world.

The post How to Set Your Products Apart Online appeared first on The Spreadshop Blog.

It’s long past due that we give each of our designers a face – a clear profile that presents the entire range of your work to customers in a personalized Showroom that you can proudly show and share. All of that said, we present to you today: the Designer Showroom.

Introducing the Designer Showroom

The Showroom is not a completely new invention, yet it does provide a great new opportunity for Marketplace Designers to present their work in an effective and flattering way. The Showroom has emerged from the ashes of what was once known as the “Artist Profile Page”- a page that was hardly noticed, let alone known about.

You can reach your Designer Showroom at https://www.spreadshirt./com/user/XXXX (just add your username for XXXX). The Showroom should help create a more personal connection between you, your designs, and your customers.

Customize Your Showroom

Your Designer Showroom is your gallery, your studio, your space to show the world your designs and what you’re all about. Use the following features to make it everything you want it to be:

1. Easy in-line editing: if you’re already logged into Spreadshirt, you can edit your Showroom page directly and in realtime, seeing the results of your edits immediately. You can reach your Showroom at https://www.spreadshirt.com/user/XXXX (just add your user name for XXXX). Alternatively, you can edit your Showroom from your user account. Click on the “Showroom” button to go directly to your Showroom page.
2. Add your own header image: you can upload your own header image with the dimensions 2400px x 600px for the personal painting and for the style of your design.
3. Add a profile picture: show your customers and fans the face behind your designs or add your own logo. Your profile image will be displayed in a circle and should be 130px x 130px.
4. Add a little personal information: tell your fans and customers a little bit about yourself. Let them know who you are, what’s so special about your designs, and what visitors can expect in your Showroom.
5. Add your social media links: help your fans, followers and customers find you on popular social media platforms by adding your social media links to your header
6. Sharing feature: customers can easily share the link to your Showroom with their friends and followers, helping you gain more exposure and more customers

Customize Your Showroom

Even More to Look Forward To

The Designer Showroom is part of a comprehensive strategy to help Marketplace Designers achieve greater visibility, a more personal profile, and better sales opportunities. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be making a big push to show some love for our Marketplace Designers. What’s to come:

• The Spreadshirt Select interview series, which presents the success stories of designers in a personal interview.
• Regular design contests.
• We are steadily expanding our reach through external marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, so that your designs can also be found outside of the Spreadshirt platform.
• Additional protection of your designs as intellectual property (e.g. by adding a watermark) will continue to be explored in the future.

We are very curious about your opinion of the Showroom and the new presentation options for Marketplace Designers. Please leave us a comment below!

The post The Showroom for Marketplace Designers appeared first on The Spreadshop Blog.

So, Jeremy, where did it all begin?

Back when I was in school, I would learn a new skill every summer. One year I tried my hand at silk screening t-shirts. It turned out I was pretty bad at it, but I liked designing my own shirts and wanted to make more. So I started looking into online printers and stumbled upon Spreadshirt.

What was your journey like from humble beginnings to one of our top-selling shop owners in the US?

At first I just made a batch of shirts for myself, but I clicked the little button to make my designs public. To my surprise, sales started trickling in. I figured that I might be on to something, so I went to the library and picked up some books on CSS & HTML. I taught myself enough over a long weekend to get a bare-bones site up and running.

It was basically a little hobby for the first two years, making a few hundred dollars a month. I kept adding new designs and new themed line-ups. Then in 2008, one of my lineups – Teach the Controversy – unexpectedly went viral. Suddenly and overnight, Amorphia Apparel went from being a hobby to becoming a real business. Quitting my day job shortly thereafter to do this full time was a great feeling!

What inspires your art?

Most of my new designs satisfy a costumer request. I set up a form on my site that lets people request new designs, and I receive new requests about three times faster than I fulfill them. There are lots of great suggestions in there, so I’m happy to try my best to make as many wishes happen as possible. Otherwise, I’m mostly inspired by whatever makes me chuckle.

What is your target market and, when you close your eyes, how would you envision your customers?

I guess my tees are a reflection of my tastes, so I imagine my customers to be a lot like me: nerdy slackers.
Some of my line-ups – like Hirsute History – have some fairly obscure stuff on them. I get a sense that a lot of customers like having a shirt that they know the average person won’t understand. If they meet someone who does get the reference, it acts like a shibboleth between like-minded strangers.

What 3 tips do you have for getting a successful Spreadshop started?

1) Try to do something different, either in style or substance. A lot of t-shirt sites offer a big blend of stuff, and you’d be well advised to find a way to stand out. I found that having a strong theme helps – more so than just throwing random stuff together.

2) Using a platform like Spreadshop means you can really experiment. Since there are virtually no overhead costs related to creating new designs, you are free to throw stuff out there. Try new things, put it all out there and see what sticks. When you stumble onto something that works, do more of it.

3) Success takes luck and patience. It can take a long time for things to really take off. If you want to be successful be prepared to stick with it and keep working, even if things don’t kick off with a bang.

Why Spreadshop?

I like Spreadshop’s printing options more than most alternatives. I’ve had some sample t-shirts made from other print-on-demand companies, but I wasn’t happy with the quality. I especially love the flex printing option, something most companies don’t even offer. The profit margins are better with Spreadshop, which is naturally pretty important if you want to make a living doing this. Finally, the tools Spreadshop gives us to customize and embed a shop into an existing site seem to outpace any competitor.

How do you get people in your Spreadshop and encourage purchases?

Social media does most of the work here. I post my new designs to Twitter, Facebook, my subreddit, and so forth. I also send out a weekly new design newsletter to subscribers and add the design to my Google product feed to make sure it shows up in my Google shopping ads. If it was a request, I make sure to email the person who requested it. And frequently they are excited enough to spread the word on my behalf, which is another advantage of fulfilling requests.

How do you decide which design categories to promote?

The two big qualities are how well they sell, and how much attention they draw. Sometimes a theme might not sell super well, but it gets people talking. This means it draws more people to my site, and those visitors poke around and mostly decide to buy something from another theme. It’s a good idea to keep front and center, even if it’s not a great seller directly. Others designs have comparatively great conversion rates, but don’t necessarily lead to as many shares and re-tweets. Trying to find a good balance of the two can make a big difference.

How much time do you spend on the business end of Amorphia?

It’s the closest thing I have to a full-time job. But I don’t put a full 40 hours into it a week, that’s for sure. Designing new t-shirts is the most fun part, but unfortunately the marketing and maintenance side of things uses more of my time.

What does the immediate future hold in store for you?

Right now, I’m in the early stages of brainstorming for a newly-themed Spreadshop, which I add annually each fall. I currently have no idea what I’ll end up deciding on, but I’ve got plenty of time before I begin to panic about it. Unrelated to t-shirts it’s Dicebot Megafun – my first board game. It will be published this June by WizKids games, which is super exciting!

As for my shop within the next three years? I’ve got two goals, which is a) become bigger than Amazon and Facebook combined, and then b) get on Instagram ?

We thank Jeremy for passing on this very insightful info! Do you have any comments, or do you feel like getting a Spreadshirt Select feature yourself? Let us know in the comments!

The post Shop of the Month: Amorphia Apparel appeared first on The Spreadshop Blog.