How Ecommerce Stores Can Promote Accessibility & Diversity

Video: How Ecommerce Stores Can Promote Accessibility & Diversity

Hi there. I’m Lauren, I’m a conversion specialist here at Command C and today we are talking about accessibility and diversity. How can you promote both these things on your eCommerce store?

In this video, you’re going to learn:

• Why it’s important to promote diversity and inclusion
• Ways you can do this
• And you’re going to see inspiration from other stores

Why Promote Diversity and Inclusion in an Ecommerce Store?

Among these reasons, there’s a lot of reasons that diversity and inclusion matter, but just two examples. It’s really important to consider different types of people. Different ages, genders, races, abilities, languages. We want to make sure that people feel included when they shop on your store.

A study showed that 71% of consumers say they’d prefer to shop from companies that reflect their values and people also want to feel included and represented with a brand. Accenture found that 62% of shoppers said they would switch from a retailer where they felt unwelcome.

Select a Model Size

Going through some examples from different stores, so here from Good American, there’s a really cool feature for sizing. On their collection pages, there is a sticky button where you can select a model size. They actually have their clothing photographed using different size models. You can select size zero, size eight, or size 16. That way customers can see the clothing represented in a way that better reflects their own body type.

A study had found that 67% of women in the US wear a size 14 plus. Often we’re seeing models that are very tall, very skinny, but this doesn’t reflect the majority of women in the US. You really want to consider people of different body types and representing them on your store.

Make Your Sizing More Inclusive

Sizing inclusivity is really important. Here on Revelry, they sell wedding outfits, so bridesmaid type of things, and they carry sizes zero to 32 petite and tall, that way everyone in the bridesmaid group feels included. So even if you’re not a larger size or a very small size, maybe you’re in the middle, it still feels like this store is including everybody. It’s not excluding someone just based off of size, so that can really make people feel better about the brand.

Using inclusive models is also important to include consumers of different races, different genders, different body types. It’s been found that many female models are typically very tall, so 5’9″, slim. But the average woman is 5’4″, so a lot of the typical fashion models are not representing the average woman so that’s something to consider when you’re taking photos, especially for things like clothing.

Using Male and Female Models

Another thing to think about is gender. A report by IRCE noted that model diversity and inclusivity can increase conversion rate by 29%. This makeup company, Jecca Blac., they include both male and female models, so that really makes the brand feel very inclusive for people of any gender.

Inclusivity in Copy

You also want to make sure your copy feels inclusive. Here a few examples. We’re committed to fit, especially with swim because curves are our core. They’re talking about different body types, not just slim. Also from Good American, representing body acceptance made by women, for women. All bodies, all sizes, no compromises.

Promote Diverse Causes

You also want to consider promoting diverse causes. This example from Bombas. They have their Black Hive Collection. This collection was actually developed by black team members that work with Bombas and they created this collection of different socks and all the sale go to Black led organizations that help the homeless community and Bombas is known for helping the homeless community, so this aligns with their brand and also helps promote diverse causes. They also do something similar for LGBT. They have their pride collection and purchases, part of the purchase, gets donated to organizations that help homelessness for LGBTQ people.

That’s something you can consider for your company, how can you promote different diverse causes, whether it’s locally in your own country or elsewhere throughout the world.

These were just a few examples of ways you can use diversity and inclusion to help make your brand more appealing to different audiences and to make people feel more welcome on your store and feel like they’re the right audience for your brand.

Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video. Thanks.