Starting an online clothing brand is more than purchasing a domain and displaying your products. Before you even start building your website, you need to have a detailed strategy that encompasses everything, from your business model to a sales plan.
Here are a few simple steps to take when starting an online clothing store.
Identify your Target Audiences
By narrowing down your target audiences, you will deliver personalized user experiences at every touchpoint. Focus on two types of customer data.
Start with their demographic information, such as their age, gender, location, family status, education, and income. Focus on their psychographic data, as well, such as their hobbies, interests, pain points, problems, etc.
Based on this data, create buyer personas that will guide your product development, sales, and marketing strategies.
Choose your Business Model
Once you identify your target audience, you need to determine your business model.
For example, if you want to start a business that does not require much work, and yet, lets you unleash creativity, a private label store may be perfect for you. You purchase blank clothing items and personalize them with your unique designs.
On the other hand, independent fashion designers can start a cut-and-sew business. In that case, you are the one sourcing your fabric, organizing inventory and orders, managing manufacturers, etc. Even though it requires a lot of upfront budget and strong managerial skills, this business model gives you more autonomy and authenticity in the industry.
Build an Online Store
For any online clothing brand, your ecommerce website is its storefront. Here is how to optimize it to boost sales and build trust with customers.
Choose a Reliable Website Builder
Choose a trustworthy ecommerce website builder, such as Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Wix Ecommerce. When choosing a website builder, consider its ease of use, domain hosting costs, SEO features, multi-language capabilities, customization, loading speeds, SSL certificates on your domain.
Select a Unique Domain Name
Choosing a domain name is also a vital part of building a website. Avoid using numbers, mixed up words, and complicated industry jargon that may confuse users. Choose a memorable, brandable, and authentic domain that aligns with your fashion store’s values.
Keep website design intuitive and user-centric
Make sure your store is easily navigable and user-friendly. It should look and perform well on both desktop and mobile devices. Categories in your menu bar should be logical. To help users find the right products faster, offer a search box and filtering options, as well.
Consistency is Crucial for Fashion Brands
No matter if a user lands on your site’s product page or Instagram account, they should immediately recognize your brand. That is why your visual brand elements should be strictly defined and implemented consistently across all digital channels you use. They include your brand’s colors, logo, typography, and fonts.
Pay special attention to product photography. Hire a professional that can adapt photo styles and filters to your brand’s values. Most importantly, they will inject consistency into your brand’s photography. For example, when creating an Instagram campaign targeting women in the United Arab Emirates, you could hire a photographer Dubai that will closely work with your marketing team and create photos that resonate with the sentiment and cultural background of your target buyers.
To maximize brand consistency, create a style guide for your creative team to follow.
Driving Traffic to your Online Store
Once your store is up and running, it is time to put it in front of your target audience. Here is how:
SEO
Start by hiring an SEO consultant to help you boost your rankings in the organic search. A solid SEO strategy includes a wide array of practices, such as keyword research, on-site SEO, technical SEO, and off-site SEO.
Social Media Marketing
Social networks humanize your clothing brand and boost user engagement. They also allow audiences to find your brand faster.
Sure, you do not need to build your presence on all social channels. Choose the ones that work for fashion brands.
Instagram is a highly visual platform, allowing you to create authentic and professional photos of your products. It is also perfect for showing user-generated photos, hosting giveaways, and influencer collaborations.
Email marketing
Start by growing your email newsletter list. Here are a few ways to do that:
- Capture data from contact and check out forms.
- Create lead magnets, such as valuable eBooks or guides.
- Users can download them for free in exchange for their contact data.
- Use a chatbot. To provide customers with personalized product offers, ask them to leave their contact information.
Host a contest. To participate, customers need to give you their email addresses.
Conclusions
With these actionable tips, you will be able to build a detailed ecommerce strategy and build a fashion business that converts. Sure, remember that there is no uniform approach that works for all online clothing brands. Be prepared to continuously test and tweak your online store’s presence to improve results.
