Are you in the fashion or retail clothing industry? If you are a budding designer, established retailer, or niche manufacturer who wants to market merchandise online, you’ll need one thing: your very own clothing website.
Is it difficult to make a clothing website? While the prospect of going online can be daunting for traditional brick-and-mortar sellers, the rapid advancement of technology has enabled this process to be easier and faster.
We are changing the way we do business. In fashion and clothing retail, not being online means missing out on a great number of potential markets and customers. Every single industry could benefit from being on the web and building a customer base, and fashion is not an exception. It is, therefore, better to learn how to make a clothing website and consider the advantages it gives your business.
Being online and marketing to multiple platforms has become the norm when it comes to clothing. As things become increasingly competitive, and as innovation and changes in marketing tech abound, it might be hard to keep up. One thing is for sure: it’s better to get on the train now than be left behind.
You could be selling niche designer clothing, reselling curated clothes or your own manufactured basic clothing line. There will always be a place for you on the internet as long as you are willing to do the work to make your brand stand out.
Creating quality clothing is one thing; getting the message across is another. Marketing to your target audience is crucial to survival in the highly competitive fashion industry. You need to learn how to reach your intended market using internet savvy, and to use the best clothing website builder in order to create a clothing website that is easy to navigate, attractive to customers, and has a high conversion rate.
Prepping for a Clothing Website
Before you set up your clothing website, it’s best to be mindful of these key steps first:
- Understand your market and your audience
Do preliminary market research and understand the demographic you’re targeting. You need to do a review of your business and identify which age demographic you’re likely to succeed in. Include income bracket, location, gender, and social preferences. Clothing design websites are most effective when they directly speak to the target market, using precision strategies and customized site design.
It helps to know who your competitors are. Knowledge of competitors who are gunning for the same demographics will allow you to create strategies to differentiate yourself from the pack.
Pricing is also an important part of market research. How much are people willing to pay for which items? Do not launch your own clothing website without having all this figured out. The last thing you want is to launch a store with no clear objectives and targets and has no in-depth knowledge of its market.
- Prepare to incur some costs
Sure, there are many great platforms that allow you to set up your clothing website for free. You do need to realize, however, that you’re bound to run into some costs sooner or later. You can start with a free clothing website builder, but know that the business entails many startup costs.
One of the initial cost centers that can easily rack up bills is marketing. You also need to figure out your overhead to sustain your startup for months to years without turning a profit, just in case.
Never go into battle unarmed. Figure out the costs of initial setup of a clothing website. You need to keep it as minimal as possible, use the clothing website builder that best addresses your needs, and prepare for unforeseen situations with an emergency fund.
- Figure out your price strategy for your clothing website
Based on your preliminary research you can project the prices you will charge for your items. It’s not just the production cost that comes into play; it’s what your ideal customer wants to pay for your items and the value they see in your goods.
A markup of about 30 to 50 percent is considered standard. Clothing design websites that have effective pricing strategies are able to set price points that their ideal customers immediately consider as fair for their niche.
- Figure out shipping and return policies
Another often ignored aspect of starting a clothing business online is shipping. Work this out early. Coordinate with logistics and shipping companies that favor starter businesses like yours.
What shipping policy works best for you? Do you charge the customer or make the shipping price built-in? These features can be customized on your new clothing website, too, if you find an excellent clothing website builder that can accommodate the dynamics of your clothing business.
Your return policy is one thing that needs to be clear from the get-go. What you allow and do not allow on your site depends on your customer service ethos and how far you are willing to go to please your customer without endangering your business costs.
- Build a strong brand
Branding is at the core of fashion. Beyond design, clothing construction, manufacturing, and everything else, the brand propels fashion products to greatness.
Be sure to curate your brand properly from the start. Your free clothing website builder should be able to accommodate the various images and files you need to create your ideal image online. Hire the best talent you can to do your photography. You need excellent images for your branding, design, and marketing, as well as a separate set of photos for your items online. This will probably cost you more initially, but a strong photography base will set you up for the long term.
Also, make sure that your logo and your brand guidelines are well thought out and clearly visible on your clothing website. Work with a graphic designer or boutique agency to make sure that your fashion brand will be something that customers can aspire to, desire, and patronize.
A lot of entrepreneurs look to expand online in order to increase their revenue. Make sure that you translate your brand properly when you transition to online channels.
- To sell on your clothing website: Choose a good platform for an online store
Should you decide that you are ready to sell, you need to carefully select the platform you’re going to be on. There are tons of platform providers trying to sell you on their features, but website builder Strikingly stands out for its simplicity, speed, and excellent range of scalable features.
If you decide to start with an information site that features your clothes and has a simple contact form to get in touch with you, you may do so with Strikingly’s simple format.
Make sure your interface is clean and easy to navigate. Strikingly builds clothing design websites for free.
If you want to proceed to ecommerce, Strikingly has options to create an expanded version of your store, with functions to upload and sell items, as well as payment options. Don’t forget to create a straightforward and engaging copy for your product descriptions.
- Create an integrated campaign
Your clothing website is only the beginning of something much larger--an online campaign to make your brand well-known and successful. Make sure that you have a social media strategy that goes hand in hand with your website launch. Also, create optimized content that makes the most of your online network.
While there is a lot of competition in the fashion industry, a well-integrated campaign can be a powerful force to get you in the lead. Use the best tools out there to stand out and be a leader in the clothing industry.
Building your New Clothing Website
Are you prepped and ready to go? Explore Strikingly’s numerous design templates to tailor your website to your brand and convey a feeling of prestige, aspiration, and exclusivity. As a free clothing website builder, it provides you with many choices even with a free account.
Choose a clean template for your clothing website.
Choose a template that is user-friendly and easy to convert into an expanded or full-scale store. You also want a template that is relatively simple and generic enough so you can continually change and refine your look as your brand evolves. Find a template that is uncluttered and has a lot of white space. The design should not interfere with your brand’s imagery.
Build your inventory.
Your clothing website builder should make it easy for you to upload and organize your clothing items into different categories. You can organize by price, gender, size, featured or popular items, or items on sale.
You need to make your store easy to navigate for customers. Hence, organizing items is a must. You also need to be able to set filters and allow your customers to search systematically.
Pro tip: you might want to check out how your competitors do it. The best clothing stores out there never cram a lot of items into a page. Your clothing website should look clean and easy on the eyes. They let every page breathe, ensuring that customers don’t get overwhelmed by choice.
A few key items per page should do the trick. You don’t want a cluttered site that forces the user to quit, ending up with no purchase. Remember, the best way to convert a visitor into a customer is to let them focus on the merchandise, a few items at a time.
As you progress with your business, your clothing website builder should be able to provide you with extra options so you can upgrade your clothing website whenever you choose.
