If you are interested in building your own fashion website but feel like it’s a bit daunting, don’t worry! You have come to the right place. In this post, we will guide you through a straightforward process to create a fashion website that looks as professional as it can be. With the invention of online fashion website builders, it is easier than ever to set up an online shop, without even learning how to code.
Online website builders are drag and drop tools that enable anyone to build an attractive and appealing eCommerce site. The process that we will discuss in this post is quite simple and intuitive. Even the least technical persons can now build a website on their own with the help of these tools. You can learn how to create a fashion website and literally thrive in it.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
We are here to take you through the step-by-step process to create a fashion website in a way that will help you get your online store up and running in almost no time. This guide is for you to learn how to make a fashion website to sell clothing online. The most exciting part is that this process is not going to empty your pockets at all.
We will cover everything from choosing among the top or fastest growing fashion website builders to customizing your storefront by adding tools for creating product pages and other relevant web pages. If you follow these steps, you will have your online clothing store up and running in a matter of hours.
10 Steps to Create a Fashion Website
Here are 10 steps for building a professional fashion website.
1. Select a Suitable Website Builder
The first step is to choose and decide which website building platform you want to use. Check out the prices and packages being offered by each. You need to know the primary purpose you want your website to serve, as that would help you determine what features your website would need. There are plenty of options available in the market these days. Most of the platforms offer a free plan or a free trial version so that you can get familiar with their tools without having to pay anything.
Among the fastest growing online store builders is Strikingly, which has an easy-to-understand user interface. We’ll go through the tools of this platform in this post to guide you on how to make a fashion website on Strikingly.
Image taken from Strikingly
When you build a fashion website on a platform like this, you have to spend just a fraction of the price you’d pay for a new T-shirt or a new pair of shoes. If you use Strikingly, we will also take care of any maintenance issues or technical stuff, so you have more time to focus on your marketing efforts and advertising strategies.
You can start selling clothing online in almost no time without worrying about hacking risks or security upgrades. We also provide a free SSL certificate to all our users’ websites. This will build confidence in your site visitors that any personal information they key in on your site will remain secure and won’t be accessible by a third party. This is particularly important if you plan to sell clothing directly from the site. Your customers might hesitate to enter their credit or debit card details if your site does not have an SSL.
2. Decide Which Plan to Use
Strikingly offers most of the tools and features needed to create a basic website in its free plan. But if you want to create a fashion website to sell clothing online, you might want to consider our other premium plans as well. For example, if you’re going to use a custom domain for your online store, offer membership to your customers, or install a live chat feature, you’d need to subscribe to our Pro Plan.
Image taken from Strikingly
Deciding which plan to use is easier if you are clear about your website’s objective. You can always register for a free account first and upgrade to a paid plan as you move forward.
Our Pro Plan is the most popular one. Besides the other extra features mentioned above, it also offers more data storage space. You can host more images, videos, and other media on your fashion website if you have more storage. This is good if you plan to rapidly expand your product range. Sometimes it is also helpful to add more photo shots for each of your products to show them to customers from different angles.
3. Choose Your Domain Name
It is necessary to think of and register a domain name before building a fashion website. In the Strikingly free plan, your domain will include our branding but will be given to you for free. If you want to remove the branding and register a custom domain or want to connect a custom domain that's already purchased with another registrar, you’d need to upgrade to the Pro Yearly Plan.
The shorter and simpler your domain name is, the more effective it becomes. This is because you need to make it easy to remember for your customers. In most cases, your domain name is the same as your brand name. It is best to check its availability with the top domain name extensions, such as ‘.com’ or ‘.org’.
4. Select Your Website Template
After signing up for your account on Strikingly, you will be taken to our template selection page. Here, you can either select an online store template or choose another template and add a simple store section to sell clothing from your fashion website. All our templates are easy to navigate and responsive, as they are built with ease of use for site visitors in mind.
Image taken from Strikingly
5. Customize Your Template
Once you select your template, it is time to add content to your fashion website. Think of the information you want to provide to your customers and site visitors. Be sure to write a brief background of your business, the kind of clothing you sell, your official contact details, and the kind of sales promotions you regularly come up with.
Building a contact form helps your prospects to get in touch with you with ease. Adding a subscription form would help you build an email list to send newsletters to your subscribers to update them about your clothing and inform them about any upcoming discount offers.
The Strikingly editor also allows you to edit the layout of your web pages as you create a fashion website. To make changes to any text you add, click on it and type in the new text. You wouldn’t be asked to write or change any code for making these revisions on your web pages.
If you have social media pages to promote your clothing, don’t forget to integrate them with your fashion website. Add social media icons to your landing page or on the site’s footer.
6. Upload Products to Your Online Store
This is the step where you actually turn your fashion website into an online store. Click ‘ Add New Section’ from the left panel on your Strikingly editor and select ‘Simple Store’. Then under ‘Store’ on the same panel, click ‘Products’. Start adding your products one by one by hitting the ‘Add New Product’ button.
Strikingly offers attractive and well-organized product page layouts. Write a catchy product description for each item, and upload its photos. When selling clothing, it is best to mention all the available sizes and colors available for each item. Set the price for each item.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
7. Select the Payment Gateways for Your Fashion Website
Now it is time to select suitable payment gateways so that you can accept payments from your customers. At Strikingly, we offer the most popular payment methods, including PayPal and Stripe, as well as the option for customers to directly pay via their debit or credit card.
Image taken from Strikingly
8. Preview and Publish Your Fashion Website
After reviewing all the content you have added, publish your website to make it go live. There you go! Your online clothing store is ready and live. You can update it from time to time, especially by adding new products whenever you come up with any.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
9. Work on Your Site’s SEO
It is essential to take the small steps needed to optimize your fashion website for search engines. Add a precise site description, and use the relevant keywords throughout your site’s content. Make sure all your product photos are of good quality. Add videos to your content as they are the most SEO-friendly form of content. Social media integration also helps in boosting traffic to your site.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
10. Promote Your Website
To drive more sales and make your business grow, you’d need to keep promoting your fashion website. Once you know how to make a fashion website and have it up and running, you can focus more clearly on your marketing strategies to enhance your customer base.
That’s how simple it is to create a fashion website in today’s day and age. If you are looking for more information before building your fashion website, you can refer to our Knowledge Base or contact us directly via our live chat support. We are available 24/7 to answer your queries. Our primary goal is the smooth running of all our users’ websites so that they get more time to work on the other operational tasks of their business.
Many of our users are successfully running an eCommerce website on our platform. Some of them are organizations, while others are individuals. It is never late to begin working on a business initiative, and when the starting is smooth and straightforward, you wouldn’t feel overwhelmed to make your business progress either.
