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E-commerce fashion stores are in for a big treat in the coming years. By 2025, worldwide fashion eCommerce sales are projected to reach over $1.2 trillion. However, despite the upwards trajectory of sales in fashion stores, only 22% of retailers are happy with their conversion rates.
Sealing a sale in this ever-competitive market doesn’t just happen by accident. There are some key elements fashion stores need to implement in order to reach success. In this article, we’ll reveal what it takes to create a high-converting Shopify fashion store.
#1 - Visually striking layout where products take center stage
An essential eCommerce element we’ve spotted across top Shopify fashion stores is the visual emphasis that is put on products. It’s clear from the moment you land at one of these stores. You’ll be met with full-size hero images, large collection tiles, and big images for the products.
You’ll also see a mixture of visuals, like the products from different angles and poses, fashion items being worn in a true-to-life context, and videos. All of this works to visually tell a story about the brand and how it fits into the target customers’ lives.
This mixture of visuals is also key on product pages. Large, high-quality images are often paired with product videos. Moreover, successful fashion stores make an effort to give shoppers a well-rounded view of what their products look like in real life with image zoom and differing angles. These are hugely important eCommerce elements for fashion stores as they help overcome the barrier of shoppers being unable to see, feel, and try on the products in real life.
To give your fashion store the same visual edge, you need to make use of a Shopify fashion theme that supports visual storytelling. Popular themes for this include Prestige, Impulse, Symmetry, and Ella.
#2 - Stellar search and filtering functions
Having an exceptional site search and filtering experience is a major avenue for higher conversions.
Site searchers on fashion stores are 2.5x more likely to convert on desktop and tablets. For mobile site searchers, this balloons to 3x more.
Even with these promising conversion prospects, only 28% of e-retailers are meeting consumer site search expectations. This means, if you invest in nailing site search for your fashion store, you’ll be giving your store a competitive edge that will help you hit or even exceed the aforementioned conversion rates.
Nine West uses Boost to give instant, visual results before the entire keyword is typed
Top fashion stores, like Nine West, optimize this ecommerce element by equipping their stores with smart search features. This means that the search function is able to recognize keywords when they’re misspelled, understand natural language, prioritize results based on past behavior, promote trending items, autocomplete a search, and make search suggestions. Besides that, great search experiences also give instant dropdown results with visuals.
The filtering process is also a key consideration as it aids in the browsing process and dictates how easily a shopper can find what they’re after. If you make it difficult for your customers to find their perfect product, they’ll abandon your site completely.
To optimize filtering on your fashion store make sure that:
- Items can be filtered by size, price, color, rating, and brand
- Category-specific filters like fit or shape are also included
- Color and image swatches are used for different shades, patterns, and shapes
- A price range can be selected with a slider
- Shoppers can select multiple filters at once
These smart search and filtering capabilities can be added to your Shopify fashion store with Boost Product Filter & Search.
#3 - Clear sizing
There’s nothing worse than ordering something that you thought would fit only for it to come up to big or too small. Such experiences will frustrate your shoppers and increase the likelihood of returns, adding a negative mark to your conversion rates. This is where size charts come in to save the day.
Sizing charts rank high in conversion-boosting eCommerce elements as they improve confidence in products, ultimately leading to increased sales. This is especially important for new visitors who will be in the dark about how your different sizes fit on them.
Size charts should be added to every product page with measurements for bust, waist, and hip in inches and centimeters. You could go the extra mile, like Columbia, by showing how and where to measure these parts of the body. It’s also a good idea to include additional information in your size charts that don’t require taking body measurements such as height and fit.
#4 - Personalized recommendations
Fashion is deeply personal, it’s an expression of yourself and your personal style. This means you can’t let your customers feel that they are being treated the same as everyone else. Instead, you need to show them that you understand their preferred styles by using personalized recommendations.
Personalized recommendations work wonders for conversions and revenue. In fact, a whopping 84% of consumers say personalization influences their purchasing. When personalization is done right, you can expect to generate up to 40% more revenue.
To ace this crucial fashion eCommerce element, you need to make use of an algorithm that can make recommendations inspired by a user’s browsing habits and past purchases. You can also use product affinities to recommend products. In simple terms, this is when you make recommendations based on what other users who purchased a particular product also bought or viewed. We can see that Gap does a mixture of both of these types of personalized recommendations.
Here at Boost we’re getting ready to launch Boost AI Search & Discovery. This next-gen app will give merchants the power to add AI-powered product recommendations. So keep your eyes peeled for that!
#5 - Innovative, fashion-forward product discovery
Your fashion store not only needs to show that it’s fashion savvy but also make it easy and enjoyable for shoppers to browse. If the perfect products that match your customers’ style are hard to find, you’ll weaken your chances of getting sales.
Product discovery, when done right, is an eCommerce element that will help you hit both these birds with one stone. There are a number of product discovery techniques that work well in fashion stores.
Style guides and trend-themed collections are great ways to help shoppers quickly access the products that resonate with them. It also shows your brand has its eye on the fashion ball. Pinup Girl Clothing aces this, breaking down their products into trends that resonate with their target audience.
Dig into the latest trends by checking out what’s popular on catwalks, relevant fashion blogs, and social media pages of influencers in your niche. You can then take a look at your inventory to build collections based on those trends and styles. You could also create seasonally-based collections like Summer vacation with swimwear, light dresses, shorts, and hats, or Christmas with red and green items.
Helping customers “shop the look” is another fashion-forward route for seamless product discovery. Create looks based on current trends and display them on the product pages as ”Complete the look” suggestions.
Don’t forget about the inspirational power of social media! It’s the leading influencer on purchases for fashion consumers, so it’s a good idea to incorporate it in your Shopify fashion store with a Shop our feed section.
#6 - Captivating reviews and ratings
Reviews and ratings of your fashion items are an essential eCommerce element for increasing conversions by as much as 270%.
Reviews can act as the final clincher that convinces visitors to your store that an item is worth the purchase. This is because the words of real customers carry more weight and authenticity than that of a brand. Thus, you’ll be able to establish trust in your brand and the quality of its products.
Linjer places a huge emphasis on reviews
At the bare minimum, collect and display star ratings on your products. These ratings should be visible on every page you display your products on.
You should also encourage your customers to leave written reviews with visuals to give them a more captivating edge, and give some real-life context to your products. Incentivize leaving such reviews with gift cards, % off codes, or any other promotion your customers would find valuable. Loox Product Reviews & Photos and Stamped are great apps to help you collect and display visual reviews.
#7 - Top-notch speed and mobile-ready
The modern shopper is impatient and isn’t willing to wait around for your website or mobile page to load. If it takes longer than 3 seconds for your mobile site to load, you’ll be saying goodbye to a lot of them. It’s also been proven that slow websites take a 7% hit on conversions, so you need to make speed a priority.
Some quick tips to boost the speed of your Shopify fashion store are to use lazy loading on your webpages, delete any apps that you’re no longer using or aren’t useful, compress your images, and perform regular speed tests.
Your store should also be fully optimized for mobile devices, particularly as mobile purchases make up 52% of online fashion sales. It’s a good idea to make sure you’re using a responsive Shopify theme, or better yet, a mobile-first theme.
Make some adjustments to your mobile site such as increasing the size of the CTA button and changing the font size for greater visibility. You should also check how the banners are sized, how images are cropped, and how video or other rich media appears, and adjust if necessary.
You’ll also like: Tips to optimize SMB mCommerce performance
#8 - Live chat support
Being able to provide around-the-clock assistance to customers is an important feature. Customers are bound to have questions to ask, and if you can make your brand available whenever they need it, you’ll build up trust and reliability. Plus, a study by Shopify found that stores with live chat available are 70% more likely to turn a visit into a sale.
Enable your customers to chat with a live agent with apps like Tidio, Reamaze, Gorgias, or Shopify Inbox. When a live agent isn’t available, build chatbot flows that answer some FAQs. If you use Tidio or Remaze, you’ll be able to create chatbots that can recommend products and take customers to check out too.
#9 - Simple returns and free shipping
Last but not least, the final important elements for a high-converting fashion store are a simple returns process and free shipping options.
(Source: Guess AU)
Let’s start with returns. Although it may seem counterintuitive, making returns an easy process can actually boost your sales. This is because it makes shoppers feel a lot more comfortable and confident to give your products a try. To instill this confidence, clearly lay out your returns policy on a dedicated page. On product pages, add a clear link to it with a quick summary of the returns policy.
Concerns over shipping costs is one of the main reasons shoppers abandon their carts. Moreover, consumers turn to online stores expecting there to be free delivery. So to give conversions the best possible chance of occurring, fashion stores should at least have this as an option after customers have spent over a certain amount.
Figure out what price threshold you can set for free deliveries that will allow you to remain profitable. Be sure to make this offer clear with promotional banners, information on the product page, and cart page notifications. You could even make some personalized in-cart recommendations to help customers bump up their order value for free delivery. If you have a physical store, offer in-store pick-up, that way both you and your customers can save on delivery costs.
Wrapping Up
High-converting fashion stores don’t happen by accident. E-commerce elements such as search, recommendations, product discovery, reviews, and more work hand in hand to deliver exceptional shopping experiences. In this article, we highlighted the fashion eCommerce elements you simply can’t afford to skip out on. Think of this as your checklist, tick all the boxes and your conversion rates are guaranteed to soar.
