Selling Fashion Online

Tactics to deliver the fashion brand voice online

Fashion brand voice is a key to success for most fashion retailers. Through fashion brand voice, J.Crew brings to us preppy American and Victoria’s Secret brings us forever young, sophisticated and sexy. In the brick-and-mortar store, fashion brand voice is communicated through the mix of merchandise, window and store displays, the approach and personal style of sales associates, store ambiance and other, less tangible factors. In the online environment, many retailers are still finding it a challenge to communicate a cohesive fashion brand voice. This creates a gap between the channels: the brick-and-mortar store is perceived to be delivering a richer branded experience, while the online store is seen merely as a cash register.

Selling fashion online needn't be a dry, transactional experience. Successful multi-channel fashion retailers have been able to deliver a rich, branded, cohesive online experience that successfully conveys a fashion brand voice that engages the customers. Here are some of the tactics:

• Fashion and trend features 
• Collection callouts
• Branded style guide 
• Shop by look or by outfitting solution
• Up-sells and cross-sells
• Runway fashion show
• "As seen on" fashion media content
• Editor’s picks
• Other editorial contents

Now, let’s hear from you. What does your brand deliver the fashion brand voice online? How is it working for you? Let’s have your thoughts in the comment section below. Thanks!

 

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Editorial as a driver of conversion — the new emerging e-commerce paradigm

Attraction is where it all begins. Attraction ultimately leads to conversion and retention. Unfortunately, most retailers are still trying to figure out how to attract the customers online. Traditional offer and promotion tactics have been exhausted. Now, new technologies such as tablet computers, mobile technology and social media are changing how we live and how we shop. These technologies have made it even easier and cheaper for online fashion retailers to create editorial content as never before — and use that content to create attraction. 

Despite which, the majority of today’s fashion website remain dry, transactional, cash-register-like retail websites. This is because fashion websites were first created by cataloguers such as Lands’ End. JCrew and Victoria’s Secret. What do these retailers have in common? The need to create an electronic version of the mail order transaction to lower the cost of doing business.

But things are changing. A new breed of innovative fashion retailers are hiring fashion editors to create editorial, visual, audio, video contents to create attraction, making shopping for fashion online the way it should be — more fun and more social.

The results? Net-a-porter is making a splash with its Magazine, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton with Nowness, and Ralph Lauren with its Style Guide. And that’s to name just a few.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, media publishing companies are becoming retailers. Publishing companies are best at creating the attraction. They are now venturing into e-commerce to drive conversion and retention. Just recently, citing Fishbowlny, Editor-in-Chief of Esquire, told a crowd at the Publishing Business Conference and Expo that the magazine is readying an online retail site called Clad. 

What we are now witnessing is the hybridization of digital publishing media and e-tailing. Publishing company are becoming retailers and retailers are becoming media companies. For consumers, this will make shopping more fun and more social while acquainting them with a much more compelling and more authoritative fashion point-of-view. For the industry, this is how selling fashion online will be going forward.

For brands that are still positioned as online cash registers, it is time to blend editorial content in with your pure merchandising selling — whether merchandise content, fashion-related content or lifestyle content.

Now is the time to test and sort things out is now — because this is evolving at a rapid pace and you can’t afford to miss. Editorial content will soon be the king in selling fashion online.

To succeed, retailers will also need to look beyond the usual metrics of sales and profitability and include media-based metrics.

Now, let’s hear from you. Do you produce editorial content today? How is it working for you? Let’s have your thoughts in the comment section below. Thanks!

 

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