If you have just ventured into the fashion industry, it might feel like you are a small new fish fighting to survive in a vast ocean, trying to keep up with the big players.
You are right to find yourself gobsmacked with this billion-dollar industry and all its glam and big-league brands. But with a little effort and the right strategies, you can also make your own place in the industry.
While the fashion industry seemingly took a hit during this pandemic, the e-commerce clothing business portrays a different picture. With physical stores closed or mostly running with limited services, consumers are leaning more towards online purchases. With the way things are moving, physical shops might totally get taken over by the virtual ones. You can seize this unique opportunity to scale up your e-commerce apparel business. Let’s read on to find out how you can pull it off.
How to Scale Up Your E-Commerce Apparel Business
This pandemic has indeed seen a rise in the e-commerce business, unlike any other time. Thousands of small e-commerce sites mushroomed on the internet within a short period. This only means you can’t make your business stand apart from them with mediocre business strategies. Here are some strategies that you can follow to scale up your e-commerce apparel business.
Create a Strong Brand Presence
Branding is not just creating a logo and increasing visibility. It is also a great way to reach and connect with your customer. Share your brand story with the customer to get them interested. Besides, if you have a strong mission, your product will be more attractive to your customers. If the customers develop a kinship with your brand, they will come back to you more.
Increase On-Site Engagement
An interactive eCommerce clothing site can go a long way to boost your clothing business. Even a simple chat box can increase your website engagement. The cross-selling technique is an excellent way to keep viewers engaged in your site. Incorporate shopping options such as ‘best-selling items,’ ‘other customers also viewed’ or ‘related product recommendation.’
Use high-quality images of your apparel items and include all the necessary information and measurements for them. A platform for customers’ opinions with review content and comment options can also increase customer engagement in your site. You can keep track of your on-site engagement by using different SEO tools.
Cherry-Pick Your Collection and Limit Your Stock
One of the rookie mistakes of new e-commerce site owners is that they overwhelm customers with various items. Filling up your website with an average selection of clothing is no way better than selecting a few exclusive items.
The strategy here is to display a limited few exclusive item with limited stock to create urgency among customers. They will be more likely to buy in fear of stocks running out than if you keep shoving at them new items with unlimited stocks every day.
Prioritize User Experience
To provide an outstanding user experience, you need to design your website flexibly. Adding more features or content doesn’t necessarily make your website user friendly; it might overwhelm your visitors. A user-friendly website should be easy to navigate and direct your customer to just what they are looking for.
Shed all the excess from your site to make it user friendly. And don’t forget to optimize the site for both desktop and mobile, as more customers prefer to browse from their mobile than from a desktop.
Maximize Customer Reach
Social media platforms are the main feeding ground for e-commerce businesses. With the right content, you can pull visitors to your website from Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. If you don’t spread the word, chances are you will have no noticeable boost in your sale. You can run various advertisement campaigns, both paid or unpaid, in search engines and social media platforms.
With universal access to the internet, it is even easier to reach a global audience with your e-commerce site. Make sure you include a clothing size chart applicable for the different geographical regions.
Don’t Hesitate to Incorporate New Tools.
If your eCommerce apparel business is still in the startup phase, you might find it easy to handle daily customer demands and queries manually. But what happens when your site gets hit by hundreds of traffic daily? Will you be able to keep up with them all on your own? Think about what a cumbersome job it will be to pull off.
If you are a visionary individual, you must get prepared for the time when things hit big. Invest in tools like MailChimp or Aweber for a better marketing campaign. You can also boost your customer service by using tools such as HubSpot or Zendesk. In the beginning, it might seem vain with only a few customers, but over time, it will be worth the investment.
Assess Customer Satisfaction
Incorporating different marketing campaigns is not enough for your business growth; you need regular customer satisfaction assessments. There is no alternative to continuous assessment to understand your customers’ pain points and needs. If you fail to address customers’ needs, it will reflect badly on your brand, and your customers might turn away from your site.
To assess customer satisfaction, you can set up feedback mail where customers can express their opinion once they receive their clothing items. You can also conduct an online survey to gauge customer satisfaction. Whatever tools you use, it should be able to measure customer satisfaction objectively.
Automation Is the Answer
To reap the full advantage of the e-commerce business, you have to get familiar with automation. Investing in automation will make all your customer interaction a breeze, providing a one-stop solution to all their demands. Manual handling of orders and purchases can take up a large chunk of your time, leaving you no time for business up-grading. You can incorporate sales funnel to your business to smooth traffic and operate your business online.
On a final note, if you want fast output, you need to tread strategically. Ensure you have the right mindset to take up the challenge to reach a certain goal within a limited timeframe. And also, you have to be committed to making the necessary investment for that- the automation, marketing strategy, website, and shipping strategy all have to be in top-notch quality, so you don’t stumble along the way. You have to put the synchronized effort in every aspect of your e-commerce business to come out of it as successful.
