As an emerging or independent fashion brand, it is incredibly difficult to get your fashion website noticed in the endless ocean of fellow designers. Websites are popping up a bagillion and four a day (exact figure, you guys) and if you build yours, send out some tweets, create a Facebook page, and stop there – you’re done for. Just because you have a website, doesn’t mean you’re going to make sales.
I’m going to share 6 tips on how to optimize your ecommerce site for sales. These tips are sure to get your lookers to stick around longer and convert into buyers.
1. Google Analytics
Look at your Google Analytics: Where are people falling off your website? Are they making it past your homepage? Start to do some digging and see where you need to focus your attention. Google Analytics is free and worth it. There are simple tutorials online on how to use it. You can see how people are coming to your site, evaluate your digital marketing, and test changes you make to your site.
2. Create a Dynamic Home Page
A dynamic homepage will capture your audience, engage them and lead them to know more about your brand and products. What do I mean by dynamic? Use your hero image on the homepage to showcase recent press, social media pictures, lifestyle images, events and more. Keep the homepage fresh every month and test to see what drives further click thru’s.
[ctt tweet=”“A dynamic homepage will capture your audience, engage them & lead them to know more about your brand & products.” @Scalingretail @Makersrow” coverup=”PYcXI”]
3. Offer Free Shipping
You might think that offering free shipping is going to drive you out of business. Well, if you have a little wiggle room on the margin side to entice your customers with this then do it. Wouldn’t it be an amazing problem to have 1,000 orders come in and have to ship them all out? Don’t be afraid. If you aren’t turning out the sales you want, it’s time to try free shipping.
4. Add Your Social Feed
So many brands have amazing Instagram feeds, but don’t publicize it. Add “Social” or “Shop Social” to your navigation and pull in your Instagram feed. This is a great way to get customers into your lifestyle, brand and products. It’s easier to maintain than a blog since you are already working on Instagram every day.
5. Rename Your Photos
From an SEO standpoint, renaming your photos will make your images easier to find online. Additionally, when people pin and share your image it will link back to your brand. This entails renaming your product photo’s title and alt tags from “img_2015” to something more descriptive and relevant to your product.
[ctt tweet=”“From an #SEO standpoint, renaming your photos will make your images easier to find online.” @Scalingretail @Makersrow” coverup=”8242d”]
6. One-Step Checkout
Seems like a no brainer, but you need to include this. Sites like Shopify make this easy, but if you are using another platform, or even something custom, please make this update. Abandoned carts are a brand nightmare. Why? You know the customer likes your product because they added it to the checkout, but why didn’t they buy? Maybe it was price point or no shipping offer, but you don’t want it to be because it was too hard to pay.
[ctt tweet=”“Add a newsletter sign up on your checkout page. Your email list is a golden ticket to start email #marketing” @Makersrow” coverup=”b1lcc”]
Bonus tip: Add a newsletter sign up on your checkout page. Your first sign up for your email list is a golden ticket to start email marketing, so get sign ups wherever you can.
These tips are available in Syama’s new co-authored book “The Fashion Designers Guide: Creating Fashion Websites That Sell”
