The global fashion industry has grown almost exponentially over the past decade and as usual, the USA has the largest share of the pie with its apparel market worth $292 billion U.S. dollars as of 2016.
In a recent KPMG survey, respondents’ number one reason for shopping online was flexibility: e-commerce allows them to browse and buy at any time of the day. Here, we offer a brief overview of how you can ready yourself for the ecommerce takeover and take your business online.
Familiarize yourself
There are numerous programs and applications you’ll need to familiarize yourself with if you want to run a successful clothing e-commerce operation. With the SaaS market booming, there’s a rafter of new tools in constant creation. You’ll have to keep pace with change in order to keep yourself in the game. Welcome to digital evolution: the survival of the fittest.
Setting up shop
You always have the option of hiring a professional to design you a website for selling, but this is a significant upfront cost that many moving into e-commerce simply can’t afford. There’s a whole host of user-friendly building tools that require nothing more than basic IT competency.
Specialized e-commerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce and Volusion will take a cut of your earnings, but it’s a price worth paying for some of their powerful features, integrated payment clients, and extensive customer support.
Managing your back catalogue
It’s impossible to over exaggerate the benefits of PIM software to any mid-sized and upward organization. One of the challenges of running any online business is that you need to display your product information in a range of different places. Consolidating your product information into one centralized database means you don’t have to manually update crucial stock details: quantity, price, availability etc.
Marketing
Style matters when it comes to clothes; more than what you sell, it’s how you sell it. The most important aspect for any label is to communicate a sense of brand. The internet opens up new possibilities in this area.
Social media
Releasing regular social media content is a great way of generating interest in your label: 95% of adults aged 18-24 follow a brand on social media. It’s all about brand storytelling. Instagram generally sees a higher level of product engagement than Twitter and Facebook, so it’s worth concentrating more energy on this as a fashion retailer.
Even so, every brand is different and the real trick is working out which platform is driving the most sales via analytics tools like Google Search Console. Learning to use scheduling apps such as Hootsuite will enable you to optimize user engagement by picking the time when your target audience is most active online.
Paid advertising
Pay per click advertising (PPC) is another way of drawing traffic to your young site. Affiliate marketing can also be a good strategy for brands looking to scale their online audience. Paying an influencer to promote your brand (usually as a percentage of each sale they help you make), or offering giveaways to more local influencers, is a good way of drumming up some interest early on. These kinds of marketing efforts are always more effective when paired with some sort of incentive, whether it’s a 10% discount or a free shipping code.
Selling online will help you open new doors as a business, and aid you in opening up your products to new audiences. Taking your first steps into e-commerce as a clothing retailer can be daunting, but if you can get to grips with the basics, you’ll soon start seeing returns.
