How To Sell Clothes Online - A Quick Guide For Emerging Brands For Successful Online Clothing Business

The grip on offline stores has been weakening: ecommerce now holds over 27% of the market, and that number is growing every year. The biggest advantage of selling online is, of course, the lower barriers to entry. Establishing an online store can take about a few days or weeks, while getting started with the traditional brick and mortar stores can take a lot longer with a much higher initial investment. 

Online selling now is the best way to ramp up your business. Estimates show that selling apparel online can be as profitable as $90 billion-a-year revenue. Obsession with fashion is global and universal, hence dealing in fashion business online is seemingly bound for success. Globally, the apparel industry has topped $2,560 trillion, and American households spend an average of $1,700 a year on clothes. It's a huge industry and brutal competition is inevitable. Therefore you need to learn advanced marketing techniques, to maximize your success.

Choose a Clothing Niche

You need to decide which clothing and apparel niche you want to sell in. Instead of trying to sell clothing for everyone across every demographic, you need to hone in on something more specific that is based on your personal interests and business goals. But make sure the niche has earning potential. Because you may be passionate about a dress that is already sold by dozens of online stores. Hence find a goal that is as unique as possible.

Do Extensive Research

You have to know about the industry you will take part in. Before launching your collection, you have to be aware of the customer’s choice, the previous endeavors, the success and failure records, etc. The research must also include the track record of the competitors which will help you define your own personal clothing line. You can also tune into several podcasts about opening online clothing stores for insights.

Determine Your Business Plan

This would mean you have a complete layout of your business ideas and motives. A business is not simply about selling products and making money, it goes much beyond that. A well thought out business plan helps to dig deeper and address the inevitable issues. A high-level executive summary, a company description, including products, customer demographics, and plans to remain competitive, a market analysis that looks into the data and statistics of the marketplace, a description of management and the organization of the company, etc generally form parts of the business plan.

Select Your Ecommerce Platform

For selling online, you have to select your ecommerce platform. A good ecommerce platform enables you to quickly and easily list items, upload photos, add product descriptions, and create a fast, easy checkout process. Of Course you can build your own website but why not reduce the time load by letting other professionals do it? The market is full of comprehensive and high-performing solutions that can support your own online store, but the choice should depend on a lot of different factors that you alone can weigh in and out. Some platforms are bare-bones, providing a blank canvas, so to speak, to customize a storefront. Others are more comprehensive, providing a wealth of tools that can do things like monitor sales trends, generate email marketing messages, host a blog, and organize customer accounts.

Use Social Media Intensively

Social media allows apparel brands to not only showcase their products in a visually appealing way, but interact with their customers as well. Customer feedback is a crucial thing in this industry where loyalty determines business longevity. Social networks like Facebook, Pinterest, Polyvore and Instagram help to integrate the hype and availability with the click of a button. Many major brands and blossoming businesses avail social media as a necessity to engage customers and promote products to a much larger audience.

Use a clear navigation structure

It is essential to keep your navigation structure user friendly. Clarity and precision decides the browsing. Make sure your category names are straightforward and to the point. The customers must not have to go through several clicks or hidden options before browsing for attires. You can apply some user-testing to make sure you are providing the best in usability for your customers.

Target Seasonal and Long-Tail Keywords with SEO

SEO is absolutely vital to finding long-term success in the online business platform. Keywords are important to increase the traffic and maintain the Search Engine Optimization. When you start your keyword research, begin with your homepage, moving into main category pages, sub-category pages and eventually down to products. Be sure that the keywords chosen are describing exactly what is on the page, ensuring your shoppers will be satisfied when they arrive. Capitalizing on seasonality, holidays or trends in your keywords is another great way to gain competitive traffic to your store.