With 2.1 million active users globally, Shopify has emerged as a leader in empowering businesses of all sizes to grow their online presence. There have been over 520,000 online stores in the fashion industry alone, making this industry the biggest user of this platform.
What makes Shopify a popular choice for many entrepreneurs and enterprises? How can your business stand out in such fierce competition?
Read on to discover and get useful advice to build, manage, and optimize your apparel business on Shopify.
Benefits of Shopify eCommerce for Your Fashion Store
Is Shopify good for clothing businesses? Let’s dive into some of the key benefits Shopify brings to the table.
1. Easy and User-Friendly Setup
If you’re not tech-savvy and have little to no coding skills, this platform is a go-to option. Its drag-and-drop interface makes it easier for any user to start their store in one go. Everything is labeled and categorized straightforwardly, from the look to the shipping settings, so you can just click your way through to set up your Shopify fashion shop.
2. Visually Appealing and Responsive Store Themes
Just like you don’t want to walk into an ugly brick-and-mortar store, your customers won’t want to stay in a boring-looking Shopify fashion online shop.
For beginners, Shopify comes with 12 default themes. If you want more options, you can always take advantage of 160+ premium themes. All of them are mobile responsive and available to customize to create a consistent experience on desktop, tablet, and other mobile devices. Some even offer features, such as lookbooks, discounts, and email captures, allowing for more sales.
3. Vast Collection of Add Ons
The Shopify ecosystem has more than 8,000 different applications to satisfy any shop owners. Let’s say you want an image optimizer or a landing page builder for your Shopify fashion site; just check the store. Many of these apps are even free with constant updates.
4. Secure Shopping
Online shopping fraud has been an issue in recent years, making security a major concern for both ends – the stores and the customers. Taking this into consideration, Shopify has been supporting HTTPS and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates with a visible badge of security, ensuring that your sensitive information is protected when customers visit your Shopify fashion store.
The platform is also certified Level 1 PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards) compliant.
5. Various Pricing Plans for Different Needs
Many owners choose Shopify for their fashion brands because the platform offers different plans with specific functionalities for varying needs. Opt for the Basic plan ($19/ month) or the Shopify plan ($49/ month) if you have just started your Shopify fashion store. These plans already come with unlimited products, multichannel selling capabilities, and other necessary features.
Once you get more familiar with the platform and your business is on a larger scale with complex needs, you can try the Advanced plan ($299/ month) and the Plus plan ($2,300/ month).
6. 24/7 Customer Support
The platform has enough talent to provide on-time support via email, phone, or live chat whenever your Shopify fashion needs it. Whether it is problems with the dropshipping supplier, configurations you set, or the platform’s technology, you can always contact the support team for an optimal solution.
If you sell on Shopify, on-time troubleshooting is crucial because your customers come from different time zones, and questions can come up at any hour.
7. Multi Payment Options
A Shopify fashion store thrives when offering diverse payment methods. Some of the most common options include debit or credit cards, mobile wallets, such as Apple Pay, buy now pay later through Klarna, and auto-pay through Shop Pay.
8. Strong Built-in SEO and Marketing Tools
You can use the blogging function to tell your brand story, introduce new products or discounts, distribute coupons, and generate organic traffic.
All the plans of Shopify offer 10,000 free emails for you to promote or inform your customers of any special sale you are having. This built-in function makes sure you don’t need to search for other email marketing tools; however, apps like Klaviyo, Omnisend, and MailChimp may better serve your needs.
9. Multi Marketing Channels With Analytics and Reports
For a Shopify apparel store owner, selling on social media platforms is inevitable. You can simply install relevant apps like Instagram or TikTok on the Shopify market and add your profile. If you want to sync your product catalog with marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and Etsy, there’s also a designated app to facilitate the management of sales.
Data is the key to a successful online business. With Shopify, you can easily access comprehensive analytics and reports of popular products, traffic, customer behavior, and other important metrics to make informed decisions and gain more sales for your Shopify fashion business.
10. Shipping and Fulfillment
Shopify provides an integration function with fulfillment and shipping services from third parties like Amazon, ShipBob, DHL, and FedEx to streamline major procedures like setting shipping options, generating labels, and automizing fulfillment.
11. Scalable Technique and POS Features
If your Shopify fashion store is in a growth phase and you need to update your plan, the cloud-based infrastructure will ensure reliability when handling high-traffic volumes. You can also receive advanced features and support for a smoother scaling process.
When discussing scalability, Shopify POS is a strong and efficient tool. Its ability to synchronize between multi-channels will help you focus on growth strategies without being limited by complex management.
However, Shopify POS can only integrate with Shopify Payments, which is mostly available in Europe (15 countries), North America (the US and Canada), Oceania (2 countries), and Asia (3 countries).
If your shop is located elsewhere, you can explore Magestore POS to integrate with multiple payment processors in 100+ countries. It supports most currencies worldwide and provides local payment solutions to your customers.
Challenges of an Online Clothing Brand
Running an e-commerce fashion store is not an easy task, and owners usually have to face many challenges, including:
1. High Return Rate
In the US, the fashion industry experiences the highest return rate of all at 25%. While there could be different reasons for it, the most remarkable one is due to the size inconsistency. A change of mind or incompatibility with the description (color, material, etc.) are some other common causes.
Solutions:
- Display clear product pictures from different angles on your Shopify fashion website.
- Provide brief and informative descriptions for customers to set the right expectations.
- Create an easy-to-read size chart to assist customers in choosing their right fit.
- Leverage size recommendation algorithms and technology that allows virtual try-ons.
- Encourage former buyers to leave reviews with photos.
- Ensure a seamless payment process with different payment options.
2. Constant Need for Free and Fast Shipping, Cart Abandonment
Have you ever experienced the feeling of buying something online, then when you get to the checkout, you leave your cart because the shipping is not free and takes time? Similarly, your customers also want their products to be delivered fast without fee, or else they will buy from your competitors.
Solutions:
- Include the shipping fee into the product price to create an illusion of “free shipping.”
- Offer free shipping when customers buy bundles or surpass a certain threshold.
- Encourage loyal program participation for free shipping.
- Opt for a courier company with the fastest possible service and a reasonable price.
- Leverage auto-fulfillment technology to expedite order processing.
- Send abandonment emails to offer free shipping or discounts to increase the chance of purchasing from customers.
3. Fierce Competition
The fashion industry has been saturated for so long, and sometimes, it’s hard to stand your Shopify fashion shop out from the crowd.
Solution: Optimize marketing campaigns by leveraging SEO, including keywords in your product listings, running ads on multi-platforms, sending emails to prospects, and collaborating with influencers.
4. Environment and Humanity Related Concerns
With the rising consumerism, particularly in the apparel industry, people are questioning the impacts of fashion brands on the environment and their employees. Buyers believe that these brands should be accountable for the excessive waste globally and the invasion of labor rights.
Solutions:
- Provide eco-friendly packaging, and remember to tell your customers that.
- Offer recycling and upcycling options on your Shopify fashion website.
- If you’re the manufacturer, use green materials from the get-go and ensure your workers have a reasonable amount of working time with adequate benefits.
If you are a Shopify clothing dropshipping business owner, research and ensure the products you sell come from trustworthy brands. You want to build reliability for your brand to obtain long-term growth.
5. Seasonability
It’s tricky to estimate the inventory for your Shopify fashion shop when it comes to fashion businesses because this industry is largely seasonal, which potentially leads to excess inventory, extra costs, and losses.
Solutions:
- Create a forecast based on well-conducted analysis for each season.
- Use an effective inventory management app.
6. Stockouts and Supply Chain Issues
Your customers won’t like it when they’ve spent a decent amount of time on your Shopify fashion website choosing their favorite just to realize it is out of stock. This can make them question the availability of other products and send them to other stores, causing sales losses.
Solutions:
- Work with more than one supplier to avoid delays or quality issues and for different styles and designs.
- Optimize analysis with tightly managed data to know which products are normally sold out and replenish them promptly.
- During sales, make sure to pay close attention to a surge to maintain the required inventory levels.
How to Build a Successful Clothing Store With Shopify
The platform has already provided every tool you need to craft your Shopify fashion shop, but you need to run a successful business in the long term. How? We’ve compiled some most important tips you need when starting this exciting journey:
1. Identify Your Target Audience and Do Market Research
How to make a Shopify clothing store? First, you need to know who you’re selling to, their demographic, and their interests. This information will give valuable insights to start your business and define your Shopify clothing shop’s identity.
Make sure to spend time learning about your competitors to know their strengths and weaknesses. You can also act as their customer and go through all the purchase steps, study their website, how they display their products, how they set the price, evaluate their checkout process, learn their policies, FAQs, etc.
By doing this, you can consequently create your USP (unique selling proposition) to stand out in the competition and eventually draw in more customers for your Shopify fashion business.
2. Choose the Right Theme, Create a Brand Identity
After choosing a suitable plan, start thinking about the brand identity of your Shopify fashion store – what makes customers remember you. It consists of your logo, color scheme, and typography, and these need to be carefully crafted to complement the clothes you’re selling.
This is the reason why you need to understand thoroughly your customers when you first ask yourself how to start a Shopify clothing brand.
For young customers, they may prefer a more colorful and edgier style, or else they would want a classic and timeless design. A brand identity will help set your Shopify clothing business apart from the competition, earn more sales, and obtain long-term success.
3. Build Professional Pages, Optimize SEO
Some crucial pages for a Shopify fashion website are the homepage, product pages, checkout page, and FAQ page. You can easily craft these pages with the drag-and-drop function of Shopify.
There’s no need for expert-level knowledge of web design, but do pay attention to the quality of product photos on all pages and their descriptions on the product pages. Make sure to include keywords so your products can rank higher on the search engines.
Try a minimalist style that better emphasizes your products when designing your online business. A clear and simple layout will leave an even better impression than a fussy one.
4. Implement User-Friendly Navigation
You need to ensure your customers have a smooth shopping journey on your Shopify fashion website, or they will abandon you. Use dropdown menus, filters, and search functionality to help them easily find what they want. By providing a seamless experience, you can increase the likelihood of them converting into loyal customers and drawing more sales.
5. Enhance Functionalities With Extra Apps
You can find tons of apps to help grow your clothing business and make more profit. These apps can handle things like keeping track of inventory, managing your finances, automating marketing campaigns, and even connecting with social media to boost your reach.
6. Create Effective Marketing Plans and Loyalty Programs
You can operate an efficient marketing campaign by installing social media apps, and running paid ads on different platforms, but do make sure to take advantage of email marketing when starting a clothing business.
Emails are usually overlooked but each one is a chance to keep your brand on your customers’ minds. You can use it to share updates, helpful tips, or exciting news like new products, giveaways, discounts, or sales.
Regarding loyalty programs, normally, customers earn points for their purchases. Once they have enough points, they can trade them in for discounts on their next purchase or even for free products.
But if you want to create exclusive programs, you can offer unique perks or gifts that are only available to loyal members of your Shopify fashion business. This way, customers feel like they’re part of something special, and if they want those special rewards, they’ll need to join the program.
Having a pool of loyal customers will save you a significant amount of money compared to attracting new ones.
In summary, Shopify is a flexible and powerful platform that works well for businesses of all sizes. It’s easy to use, can grow with your business, connects with many tools, and includes innovative features to help you build a thriving online store.
If you’re planning to launch your Shopify fashion website, book a consultant section with us for tailored advice, or leave your info, and we’ll contact you.
