Sometimes you will see an online fashion store doing spectacularly better than others, even in the same niche. The reason is often that many store owners don’t think enough about growth strategies, a topic we addressed for e-merchants in general in a recent 4-part series.
When it comes to increasing the revenue of an online fashion store, most marketers will focus the largest share of their marketing budget on new customer acquisition.
Advertising to find new customers can be expensive, though. Before long you are simply driving up costs that eat up profits.
If you want to increase sales in your online fashion store, you need to think of ways that will simultaneously improve profit at the same time. Here are some strategies and tips for success.
1. Optimize your email receipts
It’s standard practice in the e-commerce business to send email receipts, but most just send a simple receipt, sometimes with tracking information.
But — that is a missed opportunity to increase sales and delight your customers.
An email receipt doesn’t have to be a mere record of a sale. It can also include other value propositions to keep the customer engaged and prompt another purchase.
Here are three ways to optimize your email receipts:
• Include relevant product recommendations in email receipts.
A Harris Poll survey showed 80% of consumers appreciate when retailers’ emails contain product recommendations based on previous purchases. Driving this form of engagement is also a strategy for upselling and cross-selling.
• Add discount codes to incentivize another purchase (especially for new customers).
On average, eCommerce spending by a new customer is $24.50, compared to $52.50 for a repeat customer (McKinsey). Add an incentive for the shopper to make a second purchase, and turn them into a repeat customer.
• Ask for feedback.
By asking customers how their shopping experience went, you can learn about any frictions these customers might have experienced during shopping.
2. Send ‘Wishlist on Sale’ emails.
If your online fashion store has a “Wishlist” section, remember that it’s a feature that can serve your interests as well as the customer’s. Most shoppers are price-sensitive and love discounts. This is why it’s in your interest to set up triggered emails that tell customers when their wish list items are going on sale, or are about to go out of stock.
3. Have your special deals stand out.
Make sure your online fashion storefront isn’t too crowded with unnecessary distractions, or shoppers will end up missing deals.
Instead, highlight your special deals so that shoppers can’t miss them.
Here are a few ways you can do that:
- Popups are perfect to advertise special deals.
- Add a bar for info to the top of your page. It’s another good way to promote your special deals on especially popular items and boost your conversions from these offers. You can display them to all your visitors or target specific visitors based on pre-defined behavior.
- Make the most of sidebars. You don’t always have to promote your special deals in headers. Instead, use sidebars to promote special offers.
It’ s also useful to A/B test where to position your offer on the page, and discover which one gets the most attention.
4. Nurture cart abandoners
Every online fashion store needs to have a strategy for abandoned carts. More than with other things people buy online, the personal nature of fashion purchases can cause buyers to be especially fickle. For the most part these are discretionary purchases, not necessities, and considerations like questions about fit, cut, material, or even budgetary remorse can often cause a buyer to abandon the cart before purchasing.
Ad retargeting is one way to go, and if you have the budget to run a modest retargeting campaign it’s a proven strategy.
But remarketing emails can also be highly effective. Most online fashion store marketers aren’t running a robust cart recovery program. Typically, they’ll send just one email to remind the abandoners about their incomplete purchase.
Not every cart can be recovered in the first attempt. Remarketing campaigns that send three emails have been shown to convert 26% higher than campaigns that send one email.
You will want to build a cart recovery email strategy to increase your conversions.
5. Take advantage of direct sales opportunities on social media platforms.
We don’t mean Facebook advertising, though it’s a popular marketing strategy with apparel sellers. We talked about all the best e-commerce marketing tools in an earlier blog.
In this instance, we’re talking about Instagram and Pinterest in particular. Both platforms are highly visual, and both have recently added features that let sellers make direct sales from posts in a user’s feed.
Instagram Shopping with its new Checkout feature lets users browse the prices and features of an item they spy, all within the Instagram app while the original post remains open. In some cases, they can even make a purchase without leaving Instagram. And Pinterest has added Buyable Pins plus a couple of other features to connect merchants directly with browsers.
6. Use a product feed service.
You’re probably selling through at least one marketplace already, or using several different channels for advertising. A product feed service can expand your reach enormously by serving your product listings out to multiple channels, with minimal effort on your part. Use one that can accurately list all the features of your online fashions with both accuracy and in a way that matches your preferences.
At Shoppingfeed, our new ProductGraph technology has over 1.7 million fluid product tags that will describe your online fashions with brilliant accuracy, in a way that ensures they will be found in a product search whether it’s typed on a keyboard, or through voice commands.
Remember, sometimes doing simple things the right way is all that’s needed to grow profits.
