Selling Fashion Online

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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This Just In! Are your new arrivals pulling their weight?

Almost every fashion retail Website has a section to house all the new arrivals, often under a heading such as New Arrivals, What’s New, Just Arrived, Just In and many more variations.

New arrivals is one of the most important sections for a fashion retail brand and a fashion retail Website. For fashion merchants, it's important to properly communicate newness for positioning purposes and to drive full-margin sales — especially at the beginning of a season. As for shoppers — people not unlike you and me —we're attracted to and want to know about new fashion, new trends, new silhouettes, new design, new colors and so on. We want to get it fast and hope that merchants will facilitate the process for us.

Unfortunately, most merchants don’t spend the time and effort required to merchandise new arrivals. This is often due to the fact that conversion rates in the new arrivals section is often lower in comparison to sections for product category such as t-shirt, tops, dresses, and, of course, SALE. But merchants need to take a careful look at how they weigh the numbers when evaluating the relative importance and effectiveness of new arrivals.

There are two numbers merchants ought to pay special attention to when it comes to new arrivals. Number one is page views. This measures the interest level among your customers in the newness of your products. Number two is average order value for those who viewed the new arrival section compared to those who did not. Does a visit to new arrivals add to the average spend and overall spending across channel? Do customers visiting a category in new arrivals then make a purchase from the respective category among existing styles? And do customers visit the new arrivals section and then purchase offline?  

The answers to these questions should guide you in term of the effort level required to merchandise your new arrivals section effectively. 

Most merchants expend almost no effort merchandising their new arrivals section. Products are automatically added to and remove from this section based on a set of rules that usually involve a time frame — typically, a week or a month from the date an item is added to the catalogue. And most retailers are content to leave it at just that.

However, newness can be defined deeper to deliver added value and to guide the shopping behavior of your customers. Here are a few merchants who merchandise new arrivals rather effectively — and in ways that are "brand right." 

• Landsend.com – Explains the newness through a custom header in the new arrivals section.

• Apartstye.com – Creates custom content to highlight both new trends and new items.

• Netaporter.com – Clearly distinguishes what is new and back in stock.

• QVC.com – Help repeat shoppers or visitors by differentiating new today, new this week, new this month.

• Victoriassecret.com – Recently added a whole new section called "What’s New." Here, shoppers can find trends reports, video, new products and much more.

There are still retailers who do not merchandise new arrivals. REI, for example, does not. This is certainly an opportunity for the brand to communicate with their outdoor enthusiast customers about new products and new technologies in everything from mountain climbing to hiking and camping.

When you think about shoppers, include yourself. When we shop, we recognize what is new to the fashion world — ankle booties, for example. Clearly, new to the fashion category, new to the season and back in stock are distinctly different things. Merchants must, at the very least, distinguish among them.

The challenge remains for merchants is to properly evaluate the effectiveness of new arrivals and customer’s productivity — not just online but across channels with the entire brand. Until merchants can achieve this sophistication, it will continue to be difficult to justify the investment in deeper merchandising through new arrivals, as well as other merchandising contents and themes.  

 

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How to drive conversion using merchandising callouts?

As shoppers, our purchase decisions are often influenced by a good salesperson - especially one who tells us "This is the last pair" or "This is our best seller." In simple terms, the function this salesperson is performing is merchandising callout, a power we can also put to work in an online environment - and one that can make the difference in closing a sale.

In merchandisng online, however, at the category page, merchants too often rely on the product thumbnail image, product name and price to do the selling. Traditional merchandising callouts - especially the kind so effectively employed by our live salesperson in the example above - need to be better utilized online. Equipped with merchandising intelligence from the enterprise's merchandising, planning and inventory systems, merchants today are in better position to deliver merchandising callouts that are more effective and more customer-oriented.  

Often, partnering with your brick-and-mortar counterpart is the best way to come up with the most relevant and effective merchandising callouts. Some especially effective merchandising callouts include the following (in random order):

• New
• Online exclusive
• Our pick
• Saved X%
• % off
• Customer's favourite
• Only X left
• Sale
• New to sale
• Clearance
• Last one

 

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Should a fashion item be merchandised at the style or style-color level?

Imagine two brick-and-mortar stores. In presenting an item (let's say a cardigan), the merchant in our first store displays all the colors on the selling floor. In our second store, lacking space to display every color, sale associates must inform customers of the additional color options. In the store where all colors are displayed, the merchant is less likely to miss a sale and customers can help themselves to the entire color selection. This merchant can also play with the colors, distorting or de-emphasizing the hottest selling color, a new color, a liquidation color, a seasonal color, a promoted color and so on. However, when only a sample of colors is displayed, sales can be lost when customers are not attended to and the information about the additional colors is not communicated.

Our first store is using active merchandising to drive conversion, a strategy that's equally effective for the online merchant as well.

Online, within a category or a collection page, many merchants are still selling at the style and not at the style-color level.

As fashion shoppers, we tend to shop at the style-color level and not at the style level.

If we were shopping for a cardigan, we would like to quickly browse the whole color selection. To enable this existing shopping preference is an online merchandising opportunity for many retailers, one that enhances the shopping experience while helping drive conversion rates.

There are about 5 different methods used in merchandising at the category and collection page level. Let's look into each of the method and consider their pros and cons. 

Method 1

Product is merchandised at the style level with a callout of more colors available. Retailers merchandising with this method include J Crew, BEBE, and Forever 21. The advantage of this merchandising method is a shorter and cleaner category or collection page that is easier to shop. However, there is one major downside to this method - it misses the opportunity to actively inform customers of additional colors available at the category and collection level, thereby, foregoing the chance to sell a product unless if the customer takes the additional step (and expends the additional effort) of drilling all the way down to the product page to see a full display of color choices.  

Method 2

The second method also merchandise at the style level. However, the difference is that the number of color options is called out. For example, available in 3 colors. With this method, a customer still doesn't know what the color options actually are. American Eagle Outfitters is an example of online merchant using this method.  

Method 3

By far the most common method today is to show color at the category or collection level. By clicking on a color swatch, the selling images will be updated with the selected color. The only downside to this approach is that it flattens out the relative importance of any given color, leaving merchants unable to distort or de-emphasize certain colors to drive online merchandising objectives, Retailers using this approach include Tommy Hilfiger, Chicos, Lands' End, Antropologie and Ann Taylor. 

Method 4

This method shows every single style-color available. Every color is photographed or color-swapped to be presented separately. This allows the merchant complete control in merchandising for each color. However, it is expensive shooting for every style-color and this expanded display could create a very long category or collection page, one that is potentially harder to shop. Top Shop and Banana Republic are among the retailers using this method.  

Method 5

Method 5 is a hybrid of the Method 3 and 4. With this approach, a product is merchandised at the style or style-color level as necessary. This gives the merchant complete control over the assortment within a category as well as allowing the ability to distort or emphasize key items and best-sellers by selling them at the style-color level. For example, the Cotton Cashmere Wrap Sweater comes in 10 colors. However, only the key colors are photographed and shown separately. Notice, too, this method also allows the merchant to sequence each color independently.

So - for your brand- which method has the greatest potential to drive conversion rates? The cataloguers just seem to be better at managing products at the style-color level. Other retailers, too often let the merchandising and e-commerce system dictate the execution. The real answer will depend on the set-up of your enterprise merchandising system and the e-commerce merchandising system, your creative requirements and your customer's preference. 

 

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Product information and description differentiate conversion and consideration

The goal of the product detail page is to persuade the shopper to add an item to their shopping cart. In selling fashion online, retailers relay on product photography, product attributes and description copy to present a product to its best advantage. Some retailers rely on all three elements to optimize product presentation. Others simply rely on photography and bare attributes such as fabrication and country of origin. Often, this is due to budget constraints in obtaining effective copywriting resources. Experience has shown that product attributes combined with effective description/selling copy will differentiate your product, earn customer consideration and promote conversion. They become even more important when product photography is limited.

In the first example below, the product photography is limited to just one front shot. Not ideal, as customers tend to see before they read. Hence, product attributes and copy description have a heavier role to play in selling the product.

In the second example below, the retailer does an amazing job presenting the product through photography. All critical views - front, side, inside, all points of interest and a sense of scale - are shown. In addition, the photography is supported with effective product attributes and copy description. Notice that the copy description is also brand-right in terms of voice.

In the third example below, the retailer provides not only a complete set of photography showing every single detail of the product, but robust and comprehensive product attributes and description copy as well. This retailer clearly makes a strong case for why you need to provide the customer with all the important product attributes including: material, use, drop, exterior, embellishment, bottom, closure, interior, dimensions and weight. On top of that, the customer can also access a glossary of terms to better understand and technical terms used, as well as read other customer's opinion about the product through customer ratings and reviews.

Having said all that, below is my list of best practices for using product attributes and description copy to make the difference between consideration and conversion:

• Define the key attribute requirements at the product category level
• Extract the key attributes from the enterprise merchandising systems
• Edit, add or remove attributes at the item level as necessary
• Sequence the attributes top-to-bottom from most important to least important
• Link attributes to similar products
• Provide a glossary to explain any technical terms used
• Layer in strong and branded description copy that creates a strong call-to-action
• Play with the customer's motivation by speaking to his and her needs, wants and desires
• Call out features and benefits to help the customer picture himself/herself using the product
• Leverage customer ratings and reviews to sell the product (if available)
• Review the entire product page with photography, attributes, and copy description to make sure that, with all the elements combined, you are ready to rock the sales

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Seeing is believing - how photography can drive conversion

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. That definitely holds true in selling fashion online. As customers, we tend to see first before we read. Which is the very reason product photo is the single most important element driving conversions.

Over the years, online fashion product photography evolved from a simple and small photo into larger, richer and more vivid photo experience. Technology ad broadband have enabled multiple views, color change, zoom and video. In the future, more and more product images such as 3-D images from enterprise product development an merchandising systems will be leveraged for selling purposes.

Today, some retailers posses competitive advantages in photography. Cataloguers such as Victoria's Secret have rich catalogue libraries to leverage; Internet pure plays such as Net-a-porter and ASOS have the opportunity to build a robust photography and video process and system from the scratch. More and more service providers are entering this business, providing photography services from shooting, to retouching and image library management.

For most retailers, when creating photography either in-house or externally, you want to consider the following principles to optimize the effectiveness of product page selling photography:

• Bigger is indeed better. And getting bigger and bigger over time. Maximize the product image size. And let the image to do the selling. 

• Let the customer look at each color. Allow customers to click on each color swatch and view each color. 

• Show the customer all the colors at once. For styles in multiple colorways, it can be a challenge for customers to compare and make a color selection. Browsing through color swatches one at a time does not allow for comparison. Provide a group shot image to assist the customer in the color selection process. If budget is a constraint, invest in the key styles at a minimum. 

• Show the size. Dimension and proportion is especially crucial for handbags and accessories. Photos are more effective than numbers to communicate size. This can be achieved through the use of graphic illustration, mannequins, or a live model. 

• Show all the points of interest. Many retailers implement a standard cookie-cutter approach and select the same views across al product categories - sometimes due to budget constraint but often due to the constraint of an overly rigid process. Photography requirements should be determined at the product category and for key items. Categories such as shoes may require more views than basics such as t-shirts. key item should always be supported with more images. 

• Show the details. Allow the customer to zoom, see and inspect every aspect of a garment, just as you would turn an item over to inspect it in a store. Provide a larger viewer for the zoom output. 

• Ease of use. The zoom or enlarge feature must be easy to use, allowing the customer to toggle back-and-forth among the different view and colors. The pop-up window should also fit onto the screen for ease of browsing. 

• Justify it with video. Especially for luxury fashion. Use fashion to best showcase the product in every view and every use. Broadband adoption is the enabler that will make video more and more relevant. 


• Emphasize the selling point. They key selling point of each product must be called out through photography. Only the merchant will know this. These requirements must be communicated to the photo studio. 

• Test. test and test. Conduct on-going version and multivariate testing to figure out what type of product photos work for your brand an customers.

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The art and sceience of product sequencing

In the brick-and-mortar store, merchants put a great deal of time, effort and energy into proper product sequencing within the store layout. In the equivalent online space, however, the default set-up is typically based on newness, sales performance or sometimes just alphabetical order. As in the brick-and-mortar store, sequencing online is an art and science. It requires merchants to look into numbers and data and, but at the same time infuse these cold numbers with a lively set of fashion eyes.

Below are the 10 important areas to consider in creating and presenting a compelling collection or category online:

• Featured item
• Inventory position
• Key items
• Sales performance
• Newness
• Fashion and merchandising themes
• Price point
• Brick-and-mortar store window display and catalogue cover
• Seasonality
• Overall look-and-feel

How to approach the different sizes, fits, colors & prints in selling fashion online?

Unlike selling electronics, books and CDs online, selling fashion items online is just plain more complicated. Fashion items typically come in a range of sizes, fits, colors, prints and designs. Depending on the specific fashion category, it is critical that the right decisions be made regarding product categorization, as well as the presentation of search results. In the example shown, the Pleated Shoulder-Accent Sweater comes in 3 colors. However, only one color is shown and additional colors available are not called out in the search results. In this case, the merchant could show all the swatches/colors on the search result page or display the search results at the color level as well as the style level.