Women’s Clothing

You already know the value of your customers or members, but how are you communicating with them?

Email marketing is one of the most effective and affordable ways for a small business or organization to reach their customers and members. Here are some tips to help you market efficiently with Email Marketing:

1. Use your company or brand name in the “from” line, which tells recipients who sent the email.
2. Write a brief (six words or less is ideal) subject line that accurately represents the message’s major content. Longer subject lines are OK, just make sure each word is critical and the most important are in the first 50 characters – those that follow will get cut off in many email clients. Include the email’s title, if it has one (such as a newsletter title). If you can’t, then include your company, division or brand name in the “from” line. List it first here.
3. Keep HTML-format messages as simple as possible. The more gizmos you pack into an HTML message — superfluous images, graphics, sound or video — the more likely something won’t work on your recipients’ computers. Store rich-media content on the Web; limit image size and use colors that reflect your logo.
4. In HTML messages, use alt tags and support text around images so that readers whose email clients block images by default will still get the gist of your message. Many email clients will also block alt tags, so good use of text is key.
5. If you offer a text version (read why here), make sure the content includes links to all of your core functions and tasks. Don’t force readers to click to the Web version of your newsletter to receive its benefits or manage their subscriptions.
6. Load up on relevant links. If your goal is to funnel readers to your Web site, give them many access points, such as two or three order buttons sprinkled around a promo message instead of just one, or links to related information on your site. You’ve probably got a wealth of info at your site; make it easy for your readers to find it.
7. Lose the generic action button. Instead of “click here,” use descriptive terms such as “Order now!” or “subscribe me!” or “Get white paper here.” Be explicit about the actions you want users to take.
8. Test each email message before you send it, in different browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc.), email clients (Outlook, Lotus Notes, Gmail, Yahoo!) and platforms (Macintosh and PC). Click each link; watch out for oddities and inconsistencies in the way images load (or don’t load) and in text fonts and widths.
9. Adhere to your users’ preferences for frequency, format and content. If you keep sending promo offers to people who signed up just for the newsletter, you’ll lose them.
10. However, you can promote your other publications in your messages, as long as those promos don’t get in the way of the main content. For example, add a brief product offer at the end or side of a newsletter or announcement message, or list headlines from relevant news stories in a promotional-offer message. This way, you can promote other products and services without committing readers to extra emails.

    Source: email labs

Looking for some great summer dress stock, but don’t know all the jargon? Cuts, shapes, and color names can be so confusing. Well, here’s a handy guide to help you make sense of the words designers use to describe their products. Here are a few of the more common terms used when talking about dresses.

A-line Dress – A-line dresses are generally waistless. They start out with a narrow top, and flare out with straight sides to form an ‘A’ shape. A-line skirts follow the same pattern. This cut is great for people who want to hide a little something around the waist.

Bubble hem Dress - The bubble shape is one of the hottest new trends, and shows no signs of going away. The bubble shape features a gathered hem that is fixed to a shorter lining beneath. The effect is a round hemline with no visible edge. This shape is perfect for anyone who wants to hide their thighs without sacrificing their legs.

Crystal Pleat – This is a very fine, permanent pleat in fabric. Generally in sheer fabrics, but with its growing popularity, the style has expanded to include satins and polyesters.

Geometric Print – A geometric print is any print that features either angular, or abstract shapes in its design.

Mod Dress – A mod dress is any dress that is reminiscent of styles worn by the fashion icons of the 60’s. Mod dresses are generally, but not always A-line shapes, and often feature trapeze necks.

Trapeze Neck – This means something in between straps, and a halter neck. The back of the neck is usually high, while the front swings down. It’s a popular shape for people who want to show off their arms and shoulders, because it’s a bit classier than most sleeveless cuts.

Viscose – Viscose is a new fabric made of a form of Rayon. It’s benefits are that is it lightweight, silky, and it breathes much like a cotton weave. Many of our finer Cable and Gauge tops are made of Viscose.

There are a lot of reasons to drag your feet on the online issue as you build the brand and identity of your physical store. “ But all my customers are local…”, or “They’re just not online shopper types.” Not to mention the money involved in startup, and the hassle of inventory control and shopping carts. You might be surprised how much an online presence can really help your sales and community identity. These days,  women’s wholesale clothing stores are everywhere.

Online stores are open 24 hours. Your customers may like to come in, try on the goods, and speak to you personally, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get a sneak peek at the new clothing trends. Put your website on your business card, and let them know they can look at items any time. They’ll come in as soon as they see new things, rather than stopping in randomly and being upset when you’re sold out of their size.

Online stores can track your customer demographics. Using analytics, you can see what your customers are looking at, what items they like, and you can even do surveys in exchange for clothing discounts to get more information to better help you stock your store.

Some online store systems let you sell items that you don’t physically have in stock. Some online clothing websites are affiliates of bigger companies who will hold the inventory for you, so you never have to store it in house.

Online stores make an attractive placeholder for your contact information. If someone wants to know what your address is, or what your hours are, do you want them landing on a generic yellow pages page with little or no information? Of course not! Your online store should be as lovely as your real storefront, and it should prominently display important information on getting to the store. Even if your customers don’t want to shop online, they’ll see that you are a professional, established business.

A great plus to women’s clothing websites is - you can let someone else do all the work for you! Ask your Julie-Ann sales rep to tell you about our affiliate program, which will provide all web design, shopping cart, inventory control, and customer service for you.

Customer service is probably the second most important aspect of your retail women’s clothing business, after marketing. Customer service is what will give you an edge over your chain store competitors, and bring people back into local shopping. Great service will have them spending more, because they trust you as a retailer, and it is well worth the extra effort. There are some simple things you can do to better serve your customers, and yourself.

Love your products! If you don’t, how can anyone else? Always wear what you sell, and be a living model for your customers. Take the time to research the name brand items you sell. Know where everything is in your store, where it was made, what it’s made of, how it fits, etc. Try on everything in your size, so you can tell them if it fits big, small, or if it’s cut for wide hips or small busts. Be ready to suggest great items if they’re not sure what they’re looking for.

Answer your phone and e-mails! Some customers just like to check out what’s there before they head into the store. Always have a phone ready, and if you’re assisting a customer, have someone else there to help grab it. Check your email at least once a day, and answer every question, no matter how small. If you have a women’s clothing website (which we highly recommend), then make sure everything is updated and current at least once a week. It won’t take care of itself. As an extension of your brick and mortar business, your online clothing store should look as polished and professional as your storefront. Put out a little money on it if you can. If someone needs the address or phone number for your store, that’s likely where they’ll land, so you want it to look good.

Never run the store alone. You should never be the only person in the store. If you’re at the register, a customer who comes in isn’t being greeted, assisted, or smiled at. If you’re helping a customer, someone with money who wants to pay is being ignored. No matter how small your space, never work alone.

Get to know repeat customers. Anyone who walks in your store twice is a repeat customer. Know their names, what brands they like, how many children they have. Anything. It not only builds a rapport with the community, but it also helps you market properly to your demographic. Make sure they know you, too. Slip a business card in their bag as they leave, or offer a little discount to them in the form of a signed, handwritten coupon. If they think of you as a friend, as well as a business, they’re more likely to visit you, rather than the big chain with the blank faced cashier. Your store should be a place to hang out, shop, chat, meet friends – in other words, a destination, and not just a quick stop on the way home from work.

Work friendly hours. It’s important to make sure you’re not always closed when people want to shop. This doesn’t mean keeping the doors open past midnight, but if you’re open until seven, people have a chance to get home from work, walk the dog, eat a quick dinner, and get in before closing. You can open your doors at ten or later, as long as you can stay open after five on weekdays.

By utilizing search engines, spiders, and the unlimited number of article directories and internet marketing venues, you can increase your e-commerce search engine rankings. Even websites like Julie Ann Apparel utilize search engine traffic to spread word about our hot deals on wholesale women’s apparel to prospective customers. Just recently we created a Technorati Profile  and added our website to blog catalog to keep retailers informed of all of our hot new items, sales, discounts, and bargains on wholesale women’s apparel.

You can increase your search engine rankings! All it takes is persistence, patience and a commitment!

You are probably thinking how do I get listed?
Where do I begin?

It really sounds like a straight forward question but it gets very complicated.

Thats why Julie Ann Apparel has made the effort on helping you succeed online, where we give you tips on how to get things done effectively.

Submitting to Search Engine and Getting Listed
“Search engine submission” refers to the act of getting your web site listed with search engines.”

Getting listed does not mean that you will ranked well for certain terms, but it is a start to getting ranked in major search engines. Getting Listed will ensure that search engines know your business exist.

Search Engine Optimization and getting a competitive advantage on the net!

“Search engine optimization” refers to the act of altering your site so that it may rank well for particular terms, especially with crawler-based search engines

Search Engine Placement & Positioning
Your goal as a business is to get a top ten placement in the search engines. Meaning you want to be listed in google, yahoo, msn and aol (including all the other search engines) for certain keywords.

Next Time we will talk about Search Engine Submissions and How to Submit to Search Engines and Directories!

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• Customer specific URL and content relating to your store.
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Pj

 
7 Tips to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 hours

I was reading an article on the web by a man named Michael Jensen, he had some interesting and unique tips on how to get your new website to be indexed within 24 hours. He mentioned that most SEO’s will advise you to buy an existing site/domain (lots of age benefit), but there are times when you need to start from scratch with a fresh domain.

It can sometimes take a couple of weeks to get a new domain indexed by Google (even longer to start ranking!). In order to speed up the process of getting your site indexed quickly, even in 24 hours, follow the steps outlined below:

1) Create 5 pages of content

Skip the “under construction” page and write several pages of real content, at least a few paragraphs.

2) Create Internal Links to your Pages

Put the content in a template with a menu structure to make this step easier.

3) Tag on Social Bookmarking Sites

After just a few minutes to create an account with these sites you can submit a link to your site. This gives you an instant way for Google and other search engines to find your site because these social bookmarking sites get visited by the search engine bots (like the Googlebot) quite regularly. A few bookmarking sites to recommend: Del.icio.us, BlinkList, StumbleUpon.com, and Furl. Make sure you tag them with common words, like those you find on their tag clouds (BlinkList has a good one, just scroll down on the page to see it).

4) Comment on popular and recent blogs (with your link)

Find 5 blogs that are fairly popular, relevant to your site, and have a recent blog post (last day or two). Read the post and add a comment that contributes to the discussion, including a link to your site in the URL field.

5) Create, Submit, and Ping your XML Sitemap

You can create a free XML sitemap then upload the file to your site (just save it as sitemap.xml). Then ping Google with your sitemap by typing in the following URL in your browser, replacing the domain name with your own:

http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml

Next, create an account with Google Webmaster Central, add your site, and submit your XML sitemap.

6) Install Google Analytics

Add Google Analytics (free) to your site. Don’t forget to verify your site with them to get the data collection started.

7) Run some Google Ads

Create an account with Google Adwords and start running some ads, even if its just for the domain name, company name, or some long tail keywords. Google has to go to your site because of their quality score, which includes “your landing page quality”. Just spend a couple of bucks and it can help jumpstart the indexing.

With these steps, you should see your site indexed fairly quickly. I can’t guarantee the 24 hours, but it is possible. At the very least it will speed up the indexing significantly (from weeks to days). Look for the “googlebot” to visit in your site analytics. Then look for your site to show up with Google by doing a search with the site: operator (for example, site:julie-ann.com). Enjoy!

Source: Michael Jensen

When it comes to marketing to your consumer base, chances are good you want to reach the appropriate audience. If you sell wholesale plus size clothing, you will not probably want to get visitors to your website that are interested in PS3 games. That is the beauty of SEO! You get to choose who you target, and then you can lure those shoppers to your site.

Here are a few tips to keep you busy.

(1) Web Analytics. You should be sure to have web analytics in place from the start. You will be able to compare notes on what is working for you and what is hurting you. Getting web analytics started is super easy and well worth the time and effort.

(2) Make a great website. This seems an obvious step, but many people forget. Step back, and really look at your website. If you were a new visitor, would you be interested in staying? If yes, that’s great! If not, what would you want differently? While SEO is important, once you get the visitors you want to keep them.

(3) Write for your audience. While SEO is fine and dandy, do not write content, blogs, or anything else solely for search engines. You should be concerned for your SEO, but you will need to make sure your content is readable and interesting. Oh yes, content should be on topic too!

(4) Build a blog. Blogs are a great networking tool. You will be able to improve your ranking with the help of your favorite blog. But once you have your blog, get active with other blogs of like merchants.

SEO is easy, and once you start thinking about your target audience, you will discover your visitors are staying longer which means you will sell more merchandise.

When it comes to the SEO, search engine optimization, we use on our websites, some methods are easy and some methods are extremely difficult. As a retailer, if you have a website, there are a few easy steps you can take to insure you are improving your search engine “presence” without spending a fortune on an expert.

Get Bold

Keywords are extremely important, but you can also play with the keywords and get a positive result. Sometimes, knowing when to stop is important, and this tip should not be overused. You can get bold and increase your ranking with search engines. Use the “<b> </b>” tags around a few of your keywords on all the pages of your website.

These tags will make certain words bold. You will be able to do this easily, and you will reap the rewards. Remember, do not use these tags around every keyword, but maybe two to three times per page. Bold responsibility!

Everything is in the Title

If you are going to get a high ranking, the little things really do add up. One piece of sand is important because each piece will add to the whole.

When you are creating your page, you will find the title of your page can add a lot to your ranking. To start, the title should contain your main keyword or phrase. If you have a page selling “wholesale plus size clothing”, you should have a title such as “The Benefits of Wholesale Plus Size Clothing”.

Another great tip is to make sure the URL matches your keyword or key phrase. For instance, Julie Ann apparel has a “Shop by Size” category. The URL looks like this: http://www.julie-ann.com/store/c/27-Shop-by-Size-Range.html. As you can see, this will add another freebie for your ranking.

These are great ideas and easy to use. If you have additional tips, let us know!
When it comes to the SEO, search engine optimization, we use on our websites, some methods are easy and some methods are extremely difficult. As a retailer, if you have a website, there are a few easy steps you can take to insure you are improving your search engine “presence” without spending a fortune on an expert.