How to Grow Sales of an Online Fashion Brand into Multi-Million – Tweetstorm ‘Series’ by I Love Fashion Retail
There is a plethora of information available on the Internet about how to grow sales of an ecommerce business. Unfortunately, much of it is noise and the information that is useful is scattered all over the Internet. Furthermore, Fashion works differently from other categories in ecommerce. Fashion is aspirational and less transactional. If you’ve been in the fashion business for some time, you’d know what I mean.
So, I Love Fashion Retail is starting a tweetstorm to filter signals from the noise and give online fashion retailers ‘actionable’ tips which they can use to grow their business. Our objective is to create an actually useful checklist of action items for fashion retailers, in the form of short blog posts and tweets.
We know you’re busy. So we will keep the tips short and actionable. You can apply to these tips to grow your fashion business one small action at a time.
And this ‘series’ is not for everyone. You should have an ecommerce website and products to sell.
If you need any help with the implementation part of these tips, contact us and we will do it for you.
Already have a team? Tag them on Twitter using #ilovefashionretail and they will know what to do.
Let’s start with the first tweet!
1. Know Why Customers are buying (and not buying)
First thing first. To grow your sales, you must first grow your understanding of how customers are perceiving your brand, website, and products. Stop guessing and just ask them.
But before you worry about what to ask, when and where, it’s important for you to know ‘who’ to ask? You should understand the distinction between data collected from visitors and paying customers. If you only have visitors coming to your website, who are visiting and leaving, you ask them. You don’t have an option. But if you have ‘paying customers’, you must first ask them.
The feedback collected from paid customers is far more valuable than random visitors and window shoppers.
Action item> Right after a customer places an order, ask “What almost stopped you from placing your order?” or a similar version of it on one or all of the following touchpoints:
- Thank you page
- Order confirmation email
- A dedicated automatic follow-up email sent right after the order confirmation email
- A manual email sent from the Founder’s email
- A phone call in which you thank the customer and ask this question verbally
Document and process the answers given by your customers.
Take the CEO’s call. Ignore what doesn’t make sense to your unique business situation and apply what does make sense. Be ready to discover some real gems and information worth gold, such as website usability issues, payment methods not supported, pricing, shipping, etc.
Doing this exercise regularly will also foster a deeper human relationship between your brand and your customers.
To grow your ecommerce sales, you must first grow your understanding of how customers are perceiving your brand, website, and products. Stop guessing. Just ask.https://t.co/YwSo4Ah4oI#tweetstorm by #ilovefashionretail
— I Love Fashion Retail (@ilovefashionret) February 26, 2020
2. Tackle the basics, Lay a Solid Foundation
It’s surprising to see how so many businesses fail not because they don’t know the advanced ninja techniques but because they ignore the basics.
To build a million-dollar fashion brand, you need a solid foundation. You have to stay true to your business and promise never to skip the basic steps. But what happens is that often you get so busy running your business that you fail to prioritize your daily business activities. You get fixated on the advanced ‘sexy’ stuff and forget to take care of ‘the basics’.
So with this post in our tweetstorm series, we would like you to do a simple exercise. Make a list of all the small and unsexy items that you have been postponing and knowing overlooking.
Some Popular misses
We can’t give you an exhaustive list because we all have our own unique blindspots but we can give you some examples of the popular misses from the patterns we have noticed working with our clients.
- Make sure your website is ‘fast to use’ on mobile & desktop
(your google page load speed might be low but there shouldn’t be any lag when your customers use it) - Invest in getting a solid brand identity (logo, colors, typography)
This enables you to be consistent with your visual communication - Your website should easy to shop on ‘mobile’
- Help customers pick the right size on the product page (use size chart pop-ups & guides)
- Offer multiple payment options
- Offer them relevant filter & sorting options to browse through the inventory
- Your shipping & return policy page should be crisp and easy to understand
- The products should be easy to browse from the menu
- There should be a way for customers to live chat with you
- The product search results should be accurate
(which often means you have to ensure your product name & descriptions have relevant keywords in them) - The product pictures should be of high quality and edited professionally
- Write high-quality product descriptions
(we see some many retailers skipping this step, especially when they have larger inventory) - Make sure Google rich snippets & open graph tags are working
- Allow customers to get notified for out of stock products
We can go on and on with this list but we bet you already know these. All you have to do is stop postponing and tackle these items starting from today. And more importantly, stop expecting results & sales growth until you take care of these obvious basics.
Feeling overwhelmed and don’t know if you have your basics covered? Talk to us and we might be able to help you find your blind spots and strengthen the foundation of your business so that you can invest in your marketing activities and expect results.
You get so busy running your business that you fixate on the ‘sexy’ but forget the basics. To build a great fashion brand, you have to stay true to your business and promise never to skip the basics https://t.co/SpC1P7YUsu #tweetstorm #ilovefashionretail #ecommerce #fashiontech
— I Love Fashion Retail (@ilovefashionret) February 28, 2020
3. Don’t just Sell: Know the Larger Purpose of your Brand
As a fashion brand, you want your customers to relate to you. You want them to feel so proud of associating with your brand that they can’t stop liking and sharing your pictures on their social media. It’s not easy but there are plenty of modern, direct to consumer brands who have successfully managed to connect with their customers at a much deeper level. You have to go beyond just creating aspirational value and give your customers a bigger reason to associate with your brand. You tell them about the purpose of your brand – a purpose that is larger than your product and the brand itself. And the rewards are great, as modern consumers are more loyal to brands that claim a larger mission – a mission that goes beyond just selling products.
A good example of it is Billie – female-first shaving brand for women. Georgina Gooley, the Co-Founder of Billie wanted her brand to give its customers a fresh view of women’s body hair & beauty. Since inception, the brand challenged the social norm towards women’s body hair being seen as ugly. Before Billie, all the female razor brands including bigger ones were selling women’s razor by showing visuals of women post hair removal. These brands used to shy away from showing the hairy skin of women. Billie took the stand and challenged this norm. They encouraged women to see their body hair as beautiful.
The first body hair campaign was released in June 2018, featuring artful, high-contrast, pink-hued photographs and videos of women proudly modeling with visible body hair.
Billie’s ads showed hairy skin of women, instead of models grooming their already hairless legs.
Customers saw a new brand that sold the same razor to them but was inspiring them to love their body hair instead of being ashamed of them. News and lifestyle sites started covering the campaign, giving Billie free publicity and most importantly brand loyalty.
Likewise, you need to find your brand’s larger purpose which gives your customers a bigger reason to connect with your brand. Your marketing should inspire them to not only own your products but also give them a chance to be part of something bigger.
Don’t just sell, bring a change. If you want to grow, your brand needs a larger purpose.
You need to find your brand’s larger purpose and give your customers a bigger reason to connect. Your marketing should inspire them to not only own your products but also give them a chance to be part of something bigger. https://t.co/KZIiAqxMgl#tweetstorm #ilovefashionretail
— I Love Fashion Retail (@ilovefashionret) March 9, 2020
