The e-commerce fashion market is expanding quickly. Fashion is the largest B2C e-commerce market segment, per a Statista analysis. The predicted annual growth rate for the fashion e-commerce market is 9.1%. By the end of 2025, the entire market size is anticipated to be US$1.164,7 billion, up from an estimated worldwide value of US$752.5 billion in 2020.

The ideal time to start selling clothes online was roughly 15 years ago, when the market was just starting to expand; nevertheless, the present is the second-best time. With so much potential ahead of us, getting started with e-commerce sites now can help you take advantage of trends rather than miss out on an opportunity.

However, you need a solid foundation that will point you in the proper direction from the outset before you start putting your goods for sale. You may best prepare for ecommerce success by following these seven steps.

Choose a fashion niche.

Instead of making it your mission to sell clothing for everyone across every demographic, hone in on something a little more specific that’s based on your personal interests and business goals.

When considering your options, keep these four points in mind:

• Be unique. Ecommerce stores are a dime a dozen, and if your clothing brand is the same as every other, you’re likely to get lost in the crowd.
• Choose a niche that you’re passionate about. Think about the kinds of clothes you buy, the items you’d love to see on the market and what types of products you’d be eager to share with friends or family.
• Ask yourself whether you can add value and position yourself as an authority. Examine where there are holes in the current market in which you can make a difference or add value. For example, if you have experience in sustainability or social work, consider a fair trade or nonprofit clothing line. 
• Make sure the niche has earning potential. Find a place to insert yourself — or a unique value proposition — that allows for quicker growth and the ability to earn money.

Determine your business plan.

A well-thought-out plan is a must for starting any big or small business — and a good business plan goes far beyond “sell items, make money.” Instead, it delves into the specifics of how your business will operate, including:

• A high-level executive summary that provides an overview of what your company hopes to accomplish.
• A company description, including product lines, customer demographics and plans to remain competitive.
• A market analysis that looks into the data and statistics of the marketplace, including average sales, the number of other sellers and projected growth rates.
• A competitive analysis that focuses explicitly on competitors in the same space.
• A marketing plan covering details of online and offline sales and marketing strategies.
• Financial projects both for the near future and from a long-term perspective.

Another big part of creating your online retail business plan involves choosing a business model. In the ecommerce clothing retail world, there are four common choices: Print-on-demand, custom cut and sew, private label clothing and dropshipping.

Select your ecommerce platform.

If you want to sell online, an ecommerce platform is a must-have. Luckily, the market is full of high-performing e-commerce platforms that can support your storefront, but instead of immediately choosing the easiest or cheapest option, ask yourself the following questions:

• How do I want to run my business? Do I need a lot of support, or will a straightforward and hands-off platform meet my needs?
• How much technical knowledge do I have? Am I prepared to do any kind of coding to bring my site to life?
• What kind of features do I want my platform to provide, like email marketing strategy, SEO, a custom domain name or SSL certifications?
• What can I afford to spend on an ecommerce platform? Do I have the budget to pay for additional add-ons, themes or plugins?

Some platforms are bare-bones, providing a blank canvas, so to speak, to customize a storefront — these are often referred to as open source. With open-source solutions, the user has full control over the source code, thus allowing for complete customization, all the way from product pages to themes to check-out experiences. However, with more customization often comes more complexity, so any technical changes are best handled by certified web developers. 

The other option, SaaS (software-as-a-service), is a subscription-based solution that is built and maintained by a third-party provider so that users can essentially “rent” the software, without the added complexity of building and developing the platform. Simply by paying a monthly or yearly subscription, SaaS users have access to an array of pre-designed themes, plugins, modules, templates and add-ons that allow users to quickly and easily customize their storefront. 

Want the best of both worlds? As a leading Open SaaS ecommerce platform, BigCommerce has all the benefits associated with multi-tenant SaaS — being hosted on behalf of businesses, lower total cost of ownership and faster go-to-market time — coupled with platform-wide APIs that enable businesses to customize their sites and integrate with external applications and services.

Choose your domain name.

Your domain name should align with your brand name as well as your ultimate business goals and available products. Be sure to choose a domain name that’s logical, easy to remember and easy to access. Short names are always better than long ones, and confusing names with multiple repeating letters or letter sequences can leave prospective buyers lost on the web.

When choosing your domain name, keep these tips in mind:

• Avoid hard-to-spell names. Stick with basic words or known phrases so that prospective customers can easily find your site.
• Choose a name that is scalable. The state of your business when you start it may not be the same as what it evolves to be down the road. As such, you want a business name that can accommodate potential growth in the future.
• Be unique. Make sure your domain name speaks to your brand identity and business without the risk of being confused with the competition. 

Choose your templates and customize your store.

Most ecommerce website builders have templates that can help you get started with customization options to meet your unique needs. Quality templates can make it easy to put together a store, offering ways to customize everything from navigation to product pages for a site that works well and speaks to your vision as a brand. 

Read Also: How do You Plan a Financial Budget?

With a BigCommerce store, merchants have access to a variety of free and paid themes and templates specifically designed for fashion brands. Plus, BigCommerce’s open template files allow you to bring custom design elements to your new store.

List your products.

Once you’ve established the framework of your site, you’re ready to list the products you have for sale. Remember that the display of products, the quality of your descriptions and even the navigation of your ecommerce page can directly influence your sales.

• Product descriptions.

Product descriptions may sound mundane, but quality content can make a huge difference. On ecommerce sites, product descriptions are a primary driver for SEO, and they also play an incredibly important part in telling customers what you have to offer and why they should buy from you. 

Use colorful, high-quality language that paints a picture for customers. Since buyers can’t physically handle your merchandise, product descriptions are effectively the next best thing. 

• Product display.

Product display should complement product descriptions completely, providing a way to show and tell shoppers what to expect. A single photo won’t cut it; provide images of clothing items from all angles, up close and at a distance, so that customers can make an informed decision.

Photographed clothing on models where possible, or a mannequin when not. Photos should be high quality and showcase fabrics, front, back and side details and even styling options when possible.

• Navigation.

Seventy-nine percent of web users say that a poor experience on one site will lead them to search for another to meet their needs — which goes to show that site navigation is an integral part of making sales. 

When a site visitor is completely overwhelmed with menus, dropdowns and navigation options, going through the effort to find the right products can be very overwhelming. Regardless of how many different products you sell or categories you have, keep navigation simple and easy to use. 

• Checkout.

The checkout process is a crucial part of making money; after all, if your shoppers don’t finish a transaction, you’re not going to make a sale. In fact, 21% of online shoppers in the United States have abandoned their shopping cart due to a long, complicated checkout process.

To make your checkout process as fast and painless as possible:

• Make guest checkout options easy to access.
• Accept auto-filled details when possible, like credit card info stored in Chrome.
• Accept a variety of payment processors, including gift cards, credit cards, debit cards, PayPal and buy now, pay later options such as Affirm or Sezzle.
• Opt for one-click checkout for a quick and easy checkout.

• Site search.

When customers want access to information quickly, a search is the easiest way to do so. To minimize the frustration felt by customers who just want to know more about you or your products, make sure your search function is effective and easy to use. 

Publish and market your clothing store.

Your store is up and running, your product descriptions and photos are stellar and your page is optimized for success — but where are your customers? In an ecommerce marketplace, the best way to get them to you is through top-notch digital marketing. These three basic tools are the catalyst you need to get your shop off the ground.

Email marketing tools.

Email marketing is one of the single best ways to target customers, providing significant value (email marketing has an average ROI of $42 for every dollar spent) in a low-cost way. Emails introduce your brand to new customers and, in time, keep your fan base coming back. Offering promotions such as discounts and exclusive offers are among the best ways to get recipients to open emails.

• Social media marketing. 

Social media is one of the most important strategies for launching a new business. Generally, marketing needs a launching point — you can’t send emails to a nonexistent address book, for example — but the promotional power of social media platforms can get your message to your target market to help you hit the ground running.

Sponsored and promoted posts can be very effective, particularly when special attention is paid to how these posts are used to target audiences. Around 72% of U.S. online consumers admit to finding new products and services through social media advertising, so using promo posts to grow your presence and find new buyers is a very viable strategy.

• Content marketing.

Everything you put on the web, from your product descriptions to your blog, should speak to your overall mission as a business. Strong content is a foundational element of SEO, too, so the more your writing touches on the right keywords and phrases, the better.

To help our merchants better focus on tailoring their frontend experience without jeopardizing the ecommerce functionality on the backend, your BigCommerce store can easily integrate with top content management systems such as WordPress, Bloomreach and Deity.

Final Words

It’s a fact, consumer habits have shifted to social media. Generation Z (born 1995-2012) are more or less born with a phone, or any other mobile device, in hand and have a completely different approach to social media and digitization in general, compared to previous generations.

• 60% of Generation Z in the US use Instagram to discover new brands, products and services.
• 48% of Americans aged 18-34 have purchased social media.

Social commerce growth

Social commerce is expected to account för 4.3% of all retail e-commerce sales in the US in 2021, according to Business Insider. Emarketer forecasts that social commerce will rise by $34.8% billion to $36.09 billion in 2021. Today, the category that remains the largest for social commerce is fashion categories including apparel and accessories.

In other words, social commerce is an e-commerce trend that is here to stay, and it will be very powerful in the future.