Re: 5 Best Practice Tips for creating a successful T-Shirt Website?
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What's wrong with Flash intros?
Flash intros do not help the shopper. They don't add anything to the shopping experience. They hurt your search engine optimization efforts.
You don't want to make a person, that may want to give you money, wait around for your fancy flash intro. Every extra click they have to make to get into your site is another decision they have to make before they give you money.
If you give them what they are looking for sooner, you'll leave them less chance to decide to hit that back button and move on.
More practically, take a look at some successful ecommerce sites and see how many flash intros you see? Threadless, tshirthell, cafepress, amazon, ebay, t-shirts.com.
Re: 5 Best Practice Tips for creating a successful T-Shirt Website?
Threadless have started using some more obnoxious intro type stuff lately.
No one who visits their site regularly will ever forget the chilling "HOODIES HOODIES HOODIES HAHAHAHA!" sound bite week. I still shudder at the memory.
I guess my point is these are techniques established sites can indulge in if they really want to, but potential death to a new site.
Re: 5 Best Practice Tips for creating a successful T-Shirt Website?
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Originally Posted by hestonian
I like to know what shipping is up front. I don't want to have to go through several screens, inputting my name, address, etc., only to get to the final screen to find out what the shipping charge is.
It's only one tip, but, in addition to the great tips already posted, it's one I plan on using with my own site.
In my opionon.... I think the problem with flash intro is that not everybody has flash. They may not be able to see the intro.
So they may go to the site and it will just look unfinished and unprofessional.
Also it takes up time if you have an impulse buyer. The longer they wait to buy...the less likely they will buy.
Also if someone is browsing at work....the flash movie might start making noises and they will click the window off ...so they don't disturb a co-worker..or get caught slacking off...
Re: 5 Best Practice Tips for creating a successful T-Shirt Website?
It's probably pretty obvious, but it does happen and it bugs me to no end ...if your products have a certain look about them, and your website does not reflect the same kind of image, it would be quite irritating for the customer. example... don't have a death metal style website whilst attempting to sell hip-hop style clothing.
Re: 5 Best Practice Tips for creating a successful T-Shirt Website?
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Originally Posted by hanau
anyone able to sites that are laid out and meets most of the citeria that everyone is listing?
I really like the VintageVantage page because they've got a definite theme going on throughout their site and everything is easy to find. I also like the simplicity of the Dusty Brand site, although I think it could be executed better, and am taking some cues from them to develop my own site.
Re: 5 Best Practice Tips for creating a successful T-Shirt Website?
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Originally Posted by Rodney
1. people friendly (easy navigation/fast loading/useable in all browsers)
2. search engine friendly (basic seo work done)
3. as few clicks to the sale as possible (no flash intros, short checkout process)
4. accept all payment types
5. Have ALL potential questions answered by your website text since you can't be there to answer the customer's question. (how much, what brand, how much is shipping, where do you ship, what is the sizing like, 100% cotton?, what's the company history, phone number, return policy, mailing address, product photos, customer comments, how fast do you ship, printing method, etc, etc etc)
As I see, these are issues to improve existing T-shirts online store.
And what are the main issues for new site - just opened?
How do you spend $ 1000 for new site to improve it?
(For example, "search engine friendly" is wrong for this case, because Google will provide traffic in 1-2 months only)
Re: 5 Best Practice Tips for creating a successful T-Shirt Website?
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As I see, these are issues to improve existing T-shirts online store.
And what are the main issues for new site - just opened?
How do you spend $ 1000 for new site to improve it?
The same issues apply to the creation process, new sites, and existing sites.
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(For example, "search engine friendly" is wrong for this case, because Google will provide traffic in 1-2 months only)
Not exactly. Search engine friendly always applies. From the creation process, to the new site, to the existing site. You can help Google (and other search engines) get the traffic to your site by making sure your pages can be easily crawled by their spider. One way to do this is to use clean or static looking URLs (many shopping carts now offer a search engine friendly mod or upgrade or setting...but many t-shirt site owners don't turn this on for some reason).
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How do you spend $ 1000 for new site to improve it?
Depends on the site. Not all sites have the same needs for improvement.
It might not take $1000 to improve it. Could be that the $1000 could be better spent on advertising and marketing.
This is a discussion about 5 Best Practice Tips for creating a successful T-Shirt Website? that was posted in the Ecommerce Site Design section of the forums.
Re: 5 Best Practice Tips for creating a successful T-Shirt Website? 
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