10 Key Features to Launch Your Fashion eCommerce Store

10 Key Features to Launch Your Fashion eCommerce Store

Reading Time: 9 minutes

Fashion eCommerce store features is all about appearance, experience, and existence.

This is what I feel whenever somebody who is trying their luck online and asks me about what a fashion eCommerce brand should have.

And, I strongly believe that their success lies with all of these. As a brand owner, before launching your eCommerce store, ask below questions to yourself:

• How does your fashion eCommerce appear?
• Does your online store appeal to your potential customers?
• Is the user experience of your online fashion store as per current industry trends?

Fashion eCommerce businesses have too much competition. And, to stay up with the competition, you need to work on those things which the leading ones are already doing.

So, to begin with, you need to have an online store and those stores need to have some features or functionalities that will inspire customers to buy your products.

And, if you own one, you need to look at the MUST HAVE features for your digital fashion store.

Why?

• To sustain in the competition
• To ease the navigation within your online fashion store
• This gives your customers a feel of the already used store
• It improves the customer experience
• It boosts the sales

So, before wasting any moment further, let’s check out the most important features that you should never miss in your fashion eCommerce store:

Key Features to launch Fashion eCommerce Website:

1. Ensure your web & mobile store loads quickly

From a Neil Patel’s blog, I have got so many stats that talk about how slow page loading speed affects your business.

• 47% of mobile users expect a website’s page to load within 2 seconds
• 1 second of delay in page response brings down your conversion ratio by 7%
• An eCommerce website, making $100,000 per day, a 1-second delay in page loading results in a loss of $2.5 million sales every year approximately

I mean it is impossible for an eCommerce business owner to let go of this. In fact, when it comes to fashion eCommerce store, then definitely not. As we already saw the potential for growth and success in our last article.

Let’s consider two well-known online fashion brands-

1. Zalando
2. Jabong

Here is the mobile website’s page loading speed of Zalando:

Here is the mobile website’s page loading speed of Jabong:

Did you just see that? Jabong’s mobile website has 0.1 FCP less than Zalando and 0.7 DCP less than Zalando. This makes Jabong’s mobile website faster compared to the UK’s leading fashion eCommerce brand, Zalando.

Having your page loading time as less as possible should be considered while the development phase. Because the success path begins from day 1 of business planning.

What do you say?

2. Keep everything organized & categorized

Imagine that you’ve just landed on Myntra’s website and you find everything on the homepage- a mixed bag of products such as footwear, makeup, clothes, watches, jewelry, etc. There are no categories and not even organized the way it is.

Would you consider wasting a single second further on it?

I don’t think so.

Customers have too much on their mind going on. And, the fashion shopping is something that motivates them a little bit, freshen-up for a few minutes, and keep them in-line with their wardrobe needs.

So, make sure you always have appropriate product categorization. Also, you need to keep your entire website and your mobile app well-organized with appropriate products, their sizes, images, and everything else.

Let’s take the example of Nike, #1 sports fashion eCommerce brand.

Nike’s website has an average of 68.16 million visitors in a month.

Source

And, let’s see how Nike manages the organized and categorized look to improve the customer’s experience.

Nike eCommerce website goes deeper that talks about boys shoes, clothing, shop by sport and even by size.

3. Have High-Quality Graphics Strategically

How would you attract your customers to your fashion eCommerce store?

Obviously, the very first answer is- through attractive graphics.

Having high-quality and attractive photos on your fashion eCommerce store is obvious. But, how to use it in a way that helps your customers buy them?

Get down in the customers’ shoes to understand what they might be thinking while they are planning to buy fashion products. And, this can help you know your customers well. Now, it’s the time to apply those needs to your product images.

Following are the tips to have your graphics placed strategically:

• Your photos need to look real and hence, need to be captured by the professional photographers
• Those photos need to be edited professionally to remove any hidden blemishes or to make it look more polished
• Highlight each product with accuracy that allows your customers to understand, how would that look when actually wore in the real life
• Everything from choosing a background based on the product’s colors to keeping your products as they would look original needs to be taken care of

So, your graphics should look like they have been utilized in real life and looks simple yet classy.

Check out how images are professionally used with appropriate editing and polishing by Victoria Secret Sport- a leading fashion eCommerce store.

This kind of photos gives the real feel of your products and increases your conversion ratios. That is the reason it is listed in the key features of the fashion eCommerce website and app.

4. Keep all your offers/deals on all the pages

The most common practice for the fashion eCommerce stores is placing the offers and deals on the homepage. Even, there are landing pages on which you’ve planned some marketing campaigns.

But, do you know why are you offering discount or deals?

List them now-

• Attract new customers
• Increase the conversions
• Decrease the abandonment basket rate
• Improve customer services

Now, to get all the above benefits, you need to know that there is no fixed page on which a customer would land. Well, the scenario changes during specific marketing campaigns.

But, that does not mean you don’t want to target them to improve conversions. So, you need to make sure you highlight all of your banners on all of your product and their category pages.

Make your banners, dynamic and allow them to display it on each and every place of your fashion eCommerce store.

Let’s see how Caratlane is doing this-

They have a top bar talking about a discount deal going on their store. And, that top bar is consistent across all the store pages.

So, if you want to improve category-wise and even page-wise conversions, add this feature to your fashion eCommerce store now.

5. Keep less but interactive and influencing content on the homepage

In 2016, CX Score from the UK came up with a survey where they revealed that the stronger content of the fashion eCommerce websites has 21% lower bounce rates compared to the ones with weaker content.

It was 2016 and now we are nearing the end of 2018. More and more focus is given to stronger content especially when it comes to eCommerce businesses.

But, most of them have failed because they misunderstood the stronger content with the amount of content.

The era is not about quantity anymore. Quality has more value.

So, the focus should be kept less content, but high-quality content should be your priority.

Content can be anything from text to video. Appealing video content can drastically boost your sales.

But, it is equally important to place the right content in the right place.

You can check out how Nike has used a video on the homepage where a shoe is so durable that a lot of stuff falls on it and still nothing happens to it.

In fact, here is what Yala Designs have on their banners-

Keeping it less, but concise is what your fashion eCommerce content strategy to make it a success.

6. Have an easy site navigation

While reading through the report by CX Score, you will also come to know that customers are more inclined to simple and easy navigation.

They have reported that ASOS and H&M who have highly scored on CX Score in the year 2016, keep simplicity in their main area when it comes to design navigation.

Also, you know that online fashion shopping has increased to a great extent these days.

As per the report by Statista, the retail eCommerce sales across the globe are expected to reach 4.88 trillion US dollars by the year 2021.

The customer experience has to do a lot with the success of your eCommerce fashion store. Hence, the success of your fashion eCommerce store lies even under how simple and easy navigation your store offers.

I hope you have added this in your must-have fashion eCommerce features list. If not, do it now.

7. Highlight customer reviews

Do you know how much customer reviews are important?

Let’s see that in some stats:

• Almost 67% of customers look at up to 6 reviews before taking a decision of whether they should trust business for making a purchase or not (Source)
• 79% of customers consider online reviews equally trustworthy as they are the personal recommendation from their friends or relatives

Understand the value customers have, for the product reviews available online. Hence, it becomes extremely important to highlight customer reviews on each of the product pages on your fashion eCommerce website.

And, customer reviews increase the direct chances of getting more conversions. See, how NYKAA is doing it perfectly-

From the product’s 1st page itself, you will see the customer reviews on each of the products. These help you catch the customer attention and build trust for your products.

8. Include Smart Site Search

Another MUST HAVE feature for your fashion eCommerce store is a site search functionality that is enough smarter to show up the right search results.

Well, for your information, a site search functionality is one of the leading eCommerce website features which directly influences the customer purchases.

So, the smarter your site search is, higher is the conversion ratio.

What do you need to keep in mind while planning a smart site search functionality?

• Keep your search bar visible appropriately and easily on your website as well as your mobile app
• Ensure to make it enough smart to filter it based on any filter criteria like size, color, etc.
• You should consider having an autocomplete feature just like the way almost all the leading fashion eCommerce stores have

Let’s take an example of the leading fashion eCommerce brand, Myntra-

9. Ensure you have a FAQs section for each product

When people buy products online, they tend to have confusions. About the product sizes, colors, and many more. And, those confusions need to be addressed in some or the other ways.

You might have everything covered in your product description. But, the customer’s mindset differs from person to person. So, there might be some questions that they would have which needs to be addressed.

And, if you try to cover everything in your product description, you might end up having too long a description that frustrates your customers. And, they lose interest in your products.

Oh! Then, it’s better to have an FAQ section in each of your product pages. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) help in addressing the most questions asked by the customers for that particular product.

How does that help in boosting fashion eCommerce sales?

• Customer queries are addressed instantly
• Queries resolved means instant purchase
• Instant purchase means increased conversion rates
• Increased conversion rates mean improved success

The FAQ seems quite easy when it comes under the MUST HAVE features for your fashion eCommerce store. But, you need to brainstorm on FAQ questions and their answers. Even, you need to strategically place FAQs on the product pages.

There are many paths that can lead to success and this is one among them.

Let’s see how Amazon is managing and maintaining FAQs on fashion product pages:

Also, FAQs inspire customers, other customers, to make purchases instantly. So, add it to your website as well as your mobile store.

10. Offer simple & easy, yet highly secure checkouts

The last but not the least MUST HAVE feature of your fashion eCommerce store is to have a single paged highly secure checkout process.

Did you know?

• 28% of U.S. online shoppers have not completed their checkout process because of the lengthy and complicated checkout process (source)
• This means that 1 out of 4 online customers have abandoned their carts due to a long and complicated checkout process

Looking at these statistics, you really need to make sure your checkout process is very simple and easy to finish.

Avoid having too many form fields for your customer to fill up before making a payment and ensure the amount is calculated and displayed appropriately during the checkout.

One of the amazing fashion eCommerce brands, Zappos has a very easy and simple checkout process. It allows their customers to directly pay the amount after they have reviewed their cart.

The Beginning

Fashion eCommerce stores need to first understand what all things they need to have on their website and even on the mobile app to keep their customers not just delightful, but long-lasting.

So, having all these MUST HAVE features in your fashion eCommerce store is the beginning to offer excellent customer experience and boost sales.

Do you have any other features that are highly essential for the fashion eCommerce stores?

Share with us on social media or [email protected] and we will feature it in our article if we found them really a MUST HAVE one.