Setting Up Shop Online And Not Screwing It Up:

Hi everyone, this time, we’re looking at something slightly different. Everyone who loves fashion and thinking about it has probably had the same idea at one point or another. How you would like to be in the business. Nowadays, what with the internet, it’s not that hard to set up a business of your own based on what you love. In particular, we’re looking at ecommerce. Here are just a few of the things I’ve learned from great (and not so great) fashion ecommerce sites:

Smarter Sites: Hyper smart site design isn’t something that a lot of people think about regularly – but it’s important. When you’re thinking about customers, you have to think about how well you’re retaining them. Even just a few ‘off’ features can put them off. So look at things like buying without the need to sign in. Consider how smart and well placed your search function is. Breadcrumb navigation is another smart choice, which makes sure the customer knows how far along they are in the purchase process.

Photography Rules: Photography and fashion go hand in hand. A high-quality picture is going to sell people much more than a low price tag or a few lines of hype. For your site, there are two kinds of photography you should consider. First, mannequin photography, so people can inspect the item from different sides and zoom in. Second, it’s a good idea to have a model and professional photographer show how it looks being worn. You can’t go amateur with this step. Unless you’re a practiced photographer, it will just end up looking off.

Don’t Be Hard To Buy From: A big part of running an online shop is how accessible it is. How many times have you been frustrated and given up on a site because it went all wonky on your mobile? How many times have you been turned away because a site can’t accept your method of payment? That site probably lost you as a customer. So if you’re starting one, avoid that mistake. Make the site responsive in its design. Then look into things like PayPal and payment processing so you’re able to take money in a whole range of ways.

Speaking of making payments, do you have a model for the prices of your products? Is it a one time purchase or a subscription based service? On the topic of subscriptions, have you considered your payment platform and how this works? Some work on a subscription basis so you pay a specific amount each month to handle all your sales. Others work on a flat markup model basis, a markup model is where your processor takes a small percentage of every sale, so this may be better when you’re getting started out. It does ultimately depend on what you’re dealing with however.

Don’t Be Broken: Don’t launch too early! Whenever you’re making changes to the site, test it and test it again. If you can, hire some QA guys to come browsing and have them try to actively break the site. Discover any broken links and functions and get them fixed before you’re online. The reliability of the site isn’t the only thing you can test as well. A lot of businesses also test how good their sites are at making customers. Customer rate optimization is something a lot of businesses need to think about and many use A/B testing to do just that.

If you want a successful site, it’s all about the look and the feel of it. You need to make sure it’s accessible and looks amazing. After that, it’s all about finding the right product.

Does anyone own an online business? Feel free to post the links in the comment section below! Much love. -Sarah

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