The fashion market in the UK is sizeable at 60 billion euros while that of the USA alone is 368 billion, six times that of the UK, constituting for two of the most highly contested markets in the world. It was projected for the global apparel and footwear market to expand by manifolds in the upcoming years but that growth has substantially been curbed due to the global pandemic.
This has invariably led to lockdowns and subsequent recessions in numerous parts of the world as retailers worldwide have shut their shops. However, this has prompted the rise of an new online retailing culture which is slowly pacing up to its potential.
When it comes to working within the industry of glamour, fame and showbiz – the fashion industry, nothing comes easy especially setting up and dwelling upon your own E-Commerce fashion website. The common mantra of success in the fashion world is “learn how to sell yourself/ your brand” and so if you want to sell yourself to the greater audience, your aesthetic needs to speak for yourself and your brand. Every little detail counts!
Nowadays, experts use a brief term called “omnichannel retail” to refer to the new standard. Omnichannel retail refers to a business model wherein all channels are completely integrated with one another to give a seamless shopping experience to the customers. Over the years, more and more established online fashion brands have started to resort to such a business model.
For your website to stand out in a crowd it has to be visually appealing and your products to be visually applicable. This is not as easy as it sounds though. For a user to navigate swiftly from one interface to another, the site has to concur with the current fashion themes and trends. This blog will not only help you start your very own E-Commerce website but also tell you what other established sites do to enhance their visibility.
Since the website is the sole platform of business, it needs to catch the eye. Designing the site as per the demand is key. From filtering user preference based content to ensuring a secure payment portal, the website should be ‘designed to meet the demand’.
Now, one hinderance that the customer might face online is the ability to not being able to judge the look and feel of the cloth. This can be tackled by proper representation of your inventory online through good quality product imagery and description. Transparency is one of the most important rules of commerce and to inculcate the same into the electronic medium of commerce is vital.
The next step is to procure and provide the right clothing for the right segment and to attain this, having a multiple high end-good quality formal and informal attires on display is must. Not only does it integrate the shopping experience of your customers but also enhances product differentiation of your brand. Finding basic to high quality clothing in one place has never been simpler!
Speaking of product differentiation, it is also critical to note that every customer has different size guidelines. It is highly recommended to include a size chart for every branded item of clothing available online, prominently displaying its description. This also reduce the amount of returns you will have to process thus, eliminating a significant amount of logistics and saving up on expenses.
Once you’re set with your online platform there’s only one thing left to do, indulge in customer reviews. Customer reviews is a great way to take constructive feedback from those customers who visit and purchase from your website on a regular basis. It not only helps increase a brand’s reputation but also attract traffic to your website. Consider customer reviews are content sourced to attract visitors which enhances your visibility and helps in search engine optimisation of your website. Believe it or not but the customer lifetime value and sales have shown exponential increase when an E-Commerce site has built upon its feedback.
Now, it is critically important to note that switching from offline retailing to an online D2C business model takes monumental business restructuring. The inventory needs to be shuffled with wide range of clothing arriving each month to acquire a more segmented customer base. The fundamentals of operations and logistics have to undergo thorough reconstitution with limited shop floor access as well.
On a daily basis, we hear so many entrepreneurs talk about adopting regressive promotional techniques for their online brands via advertisements such as Facebook ads, Instagram ads, push ads, etc. With proper marketing both online and offline, your fashion brand can also climb the ladder of success. Digitisation is quite rapidly becoming the stimulus to how we perceive the future to be and the E Commerce is yet another catalyst of it, especially in such unprecedented times.
