Must-Haves for Fashion Ecommerce Stores

The fashion industry and its customers face unique challenges, especially in the ecommerce world. Customers looking for a new outfit have different needs than someone buying a new baking pan. What is it customers are looking for on fashion ecommerce stores?

In this video you’ll learn:

• How fashion differs from other ecommerce industries
• Challenges fashion customers face
• How ecommerce stores can resolve these challenges

Transcript: Must-Haves for Fashion Ecommerce Stores

Hi, I’m Lauren. I’m a conversion specialist here at Command C, and today we are talking about the must-haves for fashion e-commerce stores. What are you going to learn in this video?

• How fashion differs from other e-commerce categories
• The challenges for fashion customers
• And you’ll see some store inspiration

How Fashion is Different

Fashion really differs a lot in how customers are shopping for items and how that translates from the store to the online experience. The biggest issue is going to be sizing and fit. McKinsey found that about $428 billion of goods were returned in 2020 just from Americans. About 10.6%. That’s the return rate. And e-commerce accounted for about a quarter of those returns. You can assume that a large majority are likely going to be fashion items.

Fashion differs from other ecommerce categories due to the issues with figuring out sizing and fit, as well as needing to provide even more detail about product images and copies so then customers can feel more confident about how the item is going to fit on them.

Challenges for Fashion Customers

Some other big challenges for fashion customers is going to be their uncertainty about sizing and fit. And that leads to something called bracketing, which is where customers end up picking a few items in different sizes. They might want to get a sneaker. Usually they get an eight and a half, they’ll get eight, eight and a half, and a nine because they’re not totally sure. And maybe the site doesn’t provide very helpful information on the sizing.

There’s uncertainty about expectation and reality. You see these nice images on the site, but in reality, someone gets the item and it’s not as high quality as they thought it was going to be, or maybe it’s made of a different material than they thought because the site didn’t mention it. And then there’s also just a ton of competition. Stores really need to work on keeping customer on the site.

Tools to Reduce Returns

Here we can see some of the shopping tools that different companies use and how they can reduce returns. We can see things like in-store clientele tools, customer reviews that are specific to size. We can also see how a brand fit compares to other size guides, context, images, live chat, and other types of tools.

Using a Variety of Models

I’m going to go through a few of the must-haves for fashion e-commerce stores. One of those is going to be with the models. Definitely using different types of models to showcase how clothing is going to look on different body types. We can see two examples here. Also providing information about the models. Their height, what size they’re wearing really gives customers a better idea.

Invest in Lots of Quality Imagery

High quality imagery and a lot of imagery is very useful as well as things like videos. Here we can see a lot of images focusing on details, like even these little parts on the sleeve so customers can really get an idea of what the product is going to look and feel like.

Large Catalog? Have Useful Filters

Filtering is also going to be important for actually finding an item. If you have a large catalog, it’s important to have good filtering so customers can browse more easily.

Help Customers Feel More Confident in Their Purchase With Sizing Tools and Customer Reviews

Sizing tools are a must. There’s a lot of different sizing tools out there. We also have an article on the site going over different size tools. You can take a look at that. It’s actually a video and you can sign up and test out some of these different tools and see what works best for your site.

For customer sizing,  reviews are very helpful. Now a lot of fashion stores are incorporating customer reviews with their fit so then customers can kind of get an idea of how the products fit for most of the customers.

The More Detailed, the Better

Product details are very important. More detail is better. Talking about everything about the fit of the item. Front button up closure, slanted wide band pockets, measurements for all of the different sizes. Chest, waist, hips, shoulder width, fabric composition, how to care for it. These are all things customers might ask. It’s best to put it on the product page.

Gift Cards – A Safe Bet

And then also gift cards. Customers, especially if they want to buy for somebody else, gift cards are a great way to keep them as a customer without them leaving because they’re uncertain about sizing. They can still purchase something.

Fashion Stores Must Offer Returns

And then lastly, of course returns. Although a high amount of returns is something you definitely don’t want to have for your store because of the associated costs and the shipping and customer dissatisfaction, you do need to offer exchanges and returns because customers rely on that when shopping online versus in-store where they’re more confident about their purchase because they can try it on.

Those are a few examples of some of the must-haves that we recommend for fashion e-commerce stores. Definitely hope you got some ideas out of that for your store. Take some of the ideas, test them out, and I’ll see you in the next video. Thanks.