If any of you had a chance to visit your shop today, you might have noticed something different in the link which appears in your browser. The replacement of top-level domains (i.e. .de, .fr, .co.uk, etc.) as well as the change to the link went live today. Here’s a little breakdown for you:

Top-Level Domains:
You can select under which top-level domain your shop(s) should be accessible. Simply see under “Languages and Currency” and select the corresponding locations for each shop. If you would like to continue to have your shop accessible under .net, simply select “EU”.

Link Structure:
Changes in this area will enable an improved searchability of your shop, for example through Google searches, as well as a shortened general link structure (which looks much better!). To illustrate, let us look for example at the design page of your shop:
Old structure: shopname.spreadshirt.net/en/GB/Shop/Designs/index
New structure: shopname.spreadshirt.co.uk/shop/designs

Some important notes:

• Old links will still work! Basically all existing links will be redirected to the new URL structure (for the Nerds among us: with redirect 301).
• Please be aware that if you use tracking tools (i.e. Google Analytics) and have chosen to change your top-level domain, we also recommend that you also change the corresponding code. Simply check that you have changed the link to your shop from the original “.net/en/GB/Index/index”.
• The easiest way to create links to your standard shop is to simply copy the URL which now appears from the browser’s address field.

More information about these changes can be found in the Spreadshirt Forum.

We decided to focus this month’s Trend Report on the shopping days and times which our buyers in Europe and North America most love to click on that buy button. Many of differences between North Americans and Europeans are well known, but some of these findings perhaps support those differences (siestas?) or provide us with insights (buying at work?).

North Americans like to part from their money best in the afternoon, whereas Europeans tend to hold on to their hard-earned cash well into the evening. The one exception in Europe are the Italians, who strongly increase their buying from 3 to 4 p.m. – nothing like a nice shirt purchase after a siesta, I guess. The average European really gets into the buying mood between 8 and 9 p.m.

You’ll find a detailed look at the shopping times on the other side of the big pond after the click.
continue reading ‘Trend Report: T-Shirt Buyers’ Favourite Time to Shop’

Search engines and their users in Britain prefer co.uk, in Germany they like their .de and in France they love their .fr. For those who don’t know where they stand, a good old .com seems to do the trick.

Spreadshirt grew up under a .net and have therefore found themselves stranded in a strange land without, well, any.. land. This has got its positives, but also its negatives. The ease at which your shops and products are found within searches (for example using Google) is limited by your potential customer’s location. To try and shift the balance, we will be changing our top level domain and the link structure for the products from .net to .co.uk during the coming time. To make sure there are no casualties as we make this change, we’ve put together the following handy bits of information:

1. You can fix your country setting within your log in area. Your shop will then be reached via (for example) spreadshirt.co.uk and will be automatically optimised for the needs of search engines.

2. Old links will remain valid and visitors will be automatically forwarded to the new address.

Further information regarding this topic (e.g. why the whole change is worth it, and other mad ideas that we have planned) can be found in the Spreadshirt Forum.

As many of you saw, we had a big wooden box delivered a few weeks ago. We asked you to guess its contents and thought up some creative and amusing conspiracy theories about what (or who) was inside. So, we’ve unpacked it and you can read all about it in the forum or see it for yourself in this video with Simon.

Congrats, congrats!

A little over a week ago we asked you, our partners, to create new products with the new September apparel for your shops and the Marketplace. Many of you took us up on this request and therefore automatically entered yourselves into our MOO Minicard raffle.

We’ve pulled 10 winners out of a spare tea pot and each of them will receive 1 free pack of MOO Minicards from us.

The winners are:

Lucie - Milatchek Shop
Bernd - Warten Shop
Katharina - Katharina’s Shop
Yasmin - Wiesnengerl Shop
Rene - Vakantietshirt Shop
Stephan - Stephan’s Shop
Iris -Ticeforheroes Shop
Dagmar - Exklusiveshirtandmore Shop
Becky - Wonkywear Shop
Robert - Thecasualmusician Shop

In order to claim your coupons for MOO, please write a short e-mail to Kathrin at ktl at Spreadshirt dot net.

If you are wondering how best to use the Minicards, we will be posting some offline marketing tips in the blog soon!

So, don’t wait too long to claim your coupon as they are only valid until 31st October 2009. You can start creating your Minicards here.

Kristina flew in from the States over the weekend and we didn’t waste any time getting her on camera to talk about apparel. After a quick introduction, she enlightens us about the decision process for selecting new products for our Apparel Assortment. As a special bonus, I had her introduce two new gift items which we are introducing for the holiday season. I’ve already said too much! See for yourselves:

As you might have read from Robert’s and my posts, we activated the new fonts at the beginning of the month. The addition of these new fonts has brought more quality, variety and design possibilities to both customers and Shop Partners – and the feedback so far has confirmed this. That’s the good news.

Now on to the bad news. As we mentioned when unveiling the new fonts, for various reasons we will be deactivating 32 of the old fonts tomorrow, September 1st. Here they are (take a deep breath): Signature, Gael A, Times, Verdana, Courier New, Compacta, Dom, City, Sherwood, Storybook, American Typewriter, Chinese Rocks, Letter Gothic, Lithograph, Sonic, Square, Swiss, Kabel, Bremen, Creamepuff, Miniskip, B790-Deco, Greasy Spoon, Trikot College, Trikot Nr.1, Trikot 3D, JP Mincho, JP Gothic, Desyrel, Aktuelle, Gregs Hand, Santas Sleigh Full.

I’ll remind you all once again – no reason to panic: “This doesn’t mean that any of your current designs we will be butchered by the arrival of a new font. Even the ability to edit your current products will still be possible with a font that is deactivated.”

This does mean, however, that today is your last chance to order products with these fonts from the T-Shirt Designer or to create products with them for your shop. Get ‘em while you can! I am personally going to miss Greg’s Hand …, did I just write that? But, really it was one of my favourites. Bello Script is really starting to grow on me and Freestyle Script LT does the trick, too.

P.S. Check out our Font Book for an overview of our font range.

Robert made his prophecy and today it has come true: we have updated our font selection and they are all available starting today!

This means that you now have more quality and variety when it comes to fonts. This also means, however, that some of the fonts will be discontinued on September 1st.

Relying on a trustworthy phrase: “Don’t panic!” As Robert assured: “This doesn’t mean that any of your current designs we will be butchered by the arrival of a new font. Even the ability to edit your current products will still be possible with a font that is deactivated.”

You can get a great overview of our font offering by perusing through our Font Book.

Give the new fonts a try in the T-Shirt Designer and watch your text’s metamorphosis. If you are looking for more information or inspiration about fonts, I would certainly recommend some of these blogs: continue reading ‘Word to Spreadshirt’s New Fonts - Released Today!’

“I shot the Serif, but I did not shoot the deputy.” I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head for the last few weeks, and for a good reason. We’ve taken the time to reflect a little on our fonts. I’ve since occupied myself with font characteristics like serifs, weight, slope, width, optical size, metrics and proportions, in addition to our internal statistics for our current font offerings. Which fonts are successful, which fonts are rarely used or seldom make it onto your shirts? Which fonts are used for which season (big surprise here, HoleHearted at the beginning of February, Halloween in October), as well as which fonts are ineffective regardless of season? The results: 52% of your ideas make it on shirts with only 6 of the 25 fonts we offer. Other fonts only make it onto your products 0.01% of the time.

Long story shirt short – spring summer cleaning for our font assortment:
Starting with about 200 fonts we filtered, discussed, deleted, replaced, plotted, weeded, reordered, re-discussed and finally put together a new set of fonts. Soon you will be able to get a fitting font for your favourite quote from the best Spaghetti Westerns of the last 50 years, just like you will have the right pixel font for your personal tribute to retro gaming. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, but be patient, wait and see – it won’t be much longer before you get your hands on these gems.
continue reading ‘I Shot the Serif - New Fonts at Spreadshirt’

It is hard to ignore how the situation in Iran has moved many. Politics, democracy, alleged rigged voting and a vast collection of opinions stand at the centre of it all, most loudly heard with the question “Where is my vote?” As we so often see in political movements, opinions make a very fast move to the t-shirt and here specifically green shirts.

Spreadshirt shop partners have also taken on this topic. The shops Iran’s Vote and Green Revolution give those who want to express their opinion the ability to wear their point of view across their chest in support of the movement in Iran.

Shirts have also made their way into the Spreadshirt Marketplace and we would like to support this movement and the spreading of opinions on shirts with a special discount. From now until July 6, we will donate £2 to Amnesty International for every order at Spreadshirt which contains at least one green product. Here’s how it works:

• Have at least one green product in your basket
• Enter the voucher code IRANSHIRT when going through checkout