Other than your products and marketing strategy, the look and feel of your online store can also have an impact on sales. The same thing goes with your apparel e-commerce website.
Regardless of what products you sell, though, it is important that you take user and customer experience into consideration. That’s because this can make or break your online business.
For instance, if a customer finds it difficult to look for a pair of pants that he wants, he is less likely to dig through your website. This can lead to the customer leaving your website, which can increase your website’s bounce rate.
Simply put, you are losing a customer and risking your website to get penalized.
So to help you prevent that from happening, we are listing down eight design elements that you should incorporate on your e-commerce website:
1. Clear Calls to Action
Call to action gives your site visitors the reason to click. Not to mention that it informs them of what to do next. Hence, at Sytian Productions and Web Design Philippines, we emphasize the importance of a clear call to action.
In relation to this, it is also important to consider where you should place your CTA. Ideally, you should put it above the fold, more so if you have a slider on your homepage. After all, this is the most coveted space in your online apparel store.
What you can do is use this space to promote your new collections, best-selling items, and promos; and then couple it with a relevant CTA. Doing so helps you fulfill two things:
- Encourage your customers to take action
- Informing them of the next step
Just remember to test your CTA buttons to know whether you are sending a clear and compelling message to your potential customers.
2. High Definition Product Images
Here’s the thing: Your customers cannot feel and fit the clothing items that you are selling. That’s why it is important to use high definition product images.
It is important for your product images to be high definition so that your customers can zoom in the photo without compromising the quality. In relation to this, you can present your clothing items in various ways.
For example, you can let your customers zoom in on one part of the product images that will give them a microscopic view of the fabric. Or you can allow them to choose different color swatches to see how a particular item looks like in, say, black, pink, or orange.
It is also important that you include lifestyle images or photos of people wearing your products. That’s because according to Brandt Reed, this can provide suggestions on how your products are used, as well as allow for an emotional connection with customers.
The only caveat of HD product images is it can hog your customer’s bandwidth. What you can do instead is resize the image without compromising its quality or use a Content Delivery Network.
3. Related Products
According to seasoned e-commerce and marketing professional Amando Raggio, the Related Products feature is a good addition to help improve your average order value.
That’s because you get to remind your customers of other things that they need. Say, someone is eyeing your best-selling blouse, an e-commerce app allows you to recommend a pair of denim or a skirt that can work well with it.
Doing so can nudge some of them, if not all of them, to take out their wallets and buy more from you. As a result, you get to boost your sales.
4. Customer Ratings and Reviews
Did you know that an average consumer reads 10 reviews before trusting a business?
For one, an online customer review could come in handy in providing more information about your product. For instance, someone is wondering whether your clothing item would fit her, and then a previous customer left a review saying “runs true to size.”
What happens is that potential customer becomes more and more confident with her decision to buy your product.
On the other hand, customer ratings and reviews can be a great place to showcase how you can handle customer support.
Did someone leave a negative review on your online apparel store? No need to lash it out because your customer support team can handle it with grace. And you can prove that your business goes above and beyond just to ensure customer satisfaction.
Who knows? This might be one good reason why people would opt to buy from you.
5. Frequently Asked Questions
Other than customer ratings and reviews, online buyers also head to your FAQ section to ease their doubts about your business.
For one, it allows you to answer commons questions, which helps lighten your customer support team’s load. Second, it lets you confirm to your customers that their data is safe with you. But, of course, you should be truthful about it and practices online security measures.
Doing so helps you establish your business’ reputation and credibility, as well as make your potential customer be more confident with their decision to buy from you.
So, how can you create an FAQ section on your online apparel store?
Simple! Compile the questions that many of your customers usually ask. This can include serviceable areas, payment options, return policy, and many more. From there, you can create an FAQ page where all of these common questions are answered accordingly.
6. Social Proof
What makes an online buyer purchase your products is more than just its price and quality. It also has something to do with their level of confidence in your business.
Hence, it is important for every e-commerce website to have social proof. That’s because this design element can make a site visitor trust your brand and make transactions with you.
Luckily, it is easier now more than ever to build social rapport and connect on an emotional level with your customers. Displaying customer reviews and having an FAQ page are just two of them.
Another way to incorporate social proof on your website is by displaying logos of publications (i.e. fashion magazines) that have featured your products. You can also have a gallery of social media influencers who wore some of your items and snapped a #OOTD on Instagram.
Even better, you can share photos of your previous customers who bought your products and posted a picture of them wearing it. This humanizes your brand, as doing so sends a message that different kinds of people can wear and look good with the help of your clothing items.
7. Intuitive Site Navigation
As mentioned earlier, making it difficult for your customers to find what they are looking for can be detrimental to your business. Luckily, you can avoid that by having intuitive site navigation.
For instance, you can create multiple categories that best describe your products. However, make sure that it will not exceed six categories. After all, Miller’s Law posits that an average human can only remember seven numbers of objects, plus or minus two.
And if you have way too many categories, we suggest that you turn some of them into a sub-category. For instance, your Women’s Apparel category can be divided into Tops, Bottoms, Dress, Skirts, Shoes, and Accessories.
After all, having too many categories can also lead to decision fatigue. Hence, another way to have an intuitive site is by adding a search box and an advanced filter. That way, the customer can simply type in what they want, and then use the filter options to slim down their results until they find a piece of clothing that suits their taste.
Still, the key here is organizing your products into categories and subcategories that make sense.
8. Guest Checkout
According to the Baymard Institute, 28% of online shoppers in the US revealed that they have abandoned an online cart because they do not want to create an account.
Imagine how many abandoned carts you can recover and how much revenue you are able to salvage if you can allow guest checkout on your online clothing shop. Your customers can simply add their desired product to cart, enter their delivery information and credit card details, check out, and they are all set!
Mind you, the check out process is one of the most important elements on your e-commerce site. That’s because the more sales you have, the more you can make online business afloat.
But other than that, there are other factors that contribute to what makes a great checkout process. This includes various payment options, progress indicators, easy-to-complete form, and an always present cart summary.
What these things do is that it allows your customers to do what they want to do, which is to purchase and make a transaction with your business, without getting bogged down by a lot of unnecessary things.
It’s About User Friendliness
At the end of the day, a successful e-commerce business is all about having a user-friendly website. As Holly Gary of Forthea Interactive Marketing puts it, the goal of any e-commerce web design is simplicity.
What you need to do is help your online buyers get what they want without making it complicated. Otherwise, it will prevent them from making a purchase while you run the risk of losing a sale.
