How to Optimize Your Fashion E-Commerce Inventory to Increase Sales
Do you want to make more money? If so, then optimizing your fashion e-commerce inventory is a must. There are plenty of ways to do it too, but it’s best to define business goals and concentrate on the basics and one optimization at a time. That way, you can do a few things superbly rather than doing a lot of things poorly. This guide outlines how to optimize your fashion e-commerce website and inventory to increase sales and earn a higher ROI for your business.
Fashion E-Commerce Management and Optimizing Your Website
An e-commerce business needs to build up traffic to get sales. The main way to do this is by optimizing how shoppers are experiencing your website. Here are some effective and actionable techniques for optimizing your fashion e-commerce website to get more conversions (sales).
Filter Out All the Distractions
Too many options make it a challenge for customers to make a decision, thereby increasing the rate of browsing abandonment. For a fashion e-commerce site to work the best, a shopper’s extra distractions need to be removed. The best way to achieve this is by using filters that offer multiple ways to sort product offerings and limit what can be viewed simultaneously. These robust filtering capabilities will then allow people to see only merchandise that is based on size, color and even the occasion they prefer.
Optimize Keywords & Content
Keywords are important to any website, but they’re especially vital for fashion and apparel e-commerce sites. They need to be optimized and crafted to the audience’s preferences to get the best search results possible. These factors are key because they will not only drive more traffic your way but also boost conversions.
One of the most effective ways to optimize fashion e-commerce keywords is to do so in the product titles, descriptions, and even URLs. Doing this helps increase your chances of ranking higher on Google’s first page which will ultimately lead to more traffic for your website too.
You can also hire a copywriter to write blog posts about fashion trends or style tips that would be useful to shoppers browsing your site. The more relevant and helpful content you have, the higher your chances of getting better rankings on Google too (which leads to more traffic). This will help bring in new customers while also making current shoppers happy because they’ll be able to find what they need faster than ever before.
So to keep shoppers interested and engaged, you should only offer a limited amount of items that will match their personal style.
Use Reliable Inventory Sourcing
Sourcing is extremely important when it comes to fashion e-commerce business operations because your inventory can make or break the business in the long run. It either makes more money for you if done right…or it can take away all your profits if done wrong.
So how do you make sure that the inventory does not hurt but instead benefits and helps your business thrive? It is very simple: find a reliable supplier who offers prices and high-quality products to boost sales. Keep in mind though, sourcing should not be limited to finding suppliers; the best way to scale your business is by also expanding how you source product offerings…but keep in mind that it should be done at the right pace.
Have Better Product Availability
To make more money from a fashion e-commerce store, it’s good to offer a wide variety in your inventory. This will lead to more products being sold and thus, increase the overall revenue for your business. You can then reinvest this money into improving or expanding your fashion e-commerce store even further with Facebook ads.
Just make sure to have more products available than not. A big mistake that fashion e-commerce sites often make is understocking and having too few items in their inventory because they think it will increase customer satisfaction when instead, it can lead to lost sales and negative reviews from unhappy customers who couldn’t find what they wanted with your company.
Use Smart Automations
When you run a fashion e-commerce store, your overarching goal is to map your shopper’s journey when they visit your site. Once you do, you can set up protocols for smart automation that prioritize your website’s conversion rate optimization (CRO). With it, you won’t need to manually follow up every time.
Helpful automation it provides include triggering emails that guide shoppers through potential sticking points. For instance, an email can go out to a shopper that offers a discount when they’ve looked at the same pair of shoes several times. And this action could make the difference between selling the shoes and abandoning your website altogether.
By the way, the Baymard Institute estimates that roughly 69% of shopping carts are abandoned, so it’s worth checking out Bright Pearl’s tips for fixing cart abandonment in the link below when you get to that step.
https://www.brightpearl.com/ecommerce-guides/fashion-inventory-optimization
Use Visualization Techniques
In a brick & mortar fashion store, you can try on an outfit and see how it feels. You can also look in the retail location’s three-way mirror to see how it fits. With a website, you don’t have that luxury. Therefore, a positive visual experience needs to make up for these shortcomings.
This is where the use of good product photography comes into play because it can help draw people into your inventory and make them want to buy something. For example, if you have a nice photo of someone wearing an outfit from one of your featured products, then that will increase your conversions too because more eyes are on that product.
In addition, think about how your shopper’s eyes travel over a web page. The motion typically goes from left to right and top to bottom, and that’s why many fashion eCommerce websites feature product images on the left and their description on the right. More importantly, this format really works to influence buying behavior.
You can also employ the use of simple, yet elegant visuals to help people find their way around your fashion e-commerce store. For instance, if you have a blog section with several articles in it, then include some nice graphics there so they don’t get lost when browsing through your site’s content. This will make your shopper’s journey feel less intimidating and more inviting.
Have a Limited Amount of Products
In a world of shrinking attention spans and endless selections, it is better to do a few things well in your business rather than offering up endless lackluster options. This is the same with fashion e-commerce. You need to keep an inventory that’s well organized and easy to manage and optimize.
In addition, having a limited amount of products on your site means you will be able to provide more information about each product, which leads to higher conversions. It also makes it easier for customers who are browsing because they will not have to sift through hundreds of products that don’t match their needs.
Inventory Management is the Key
It’s important for fashion e-commerce businesses to know what each product sells well or doesn’t because it impacts how you manage inventory and make decisions about future orders. If something has been selling considerably well, it means you need to order more of it.
If something is not selling well, what should be done with the unsold items? This depends on how many pieces are left and whether or not they can be re-worked into new products that are likely to sell better. If you have a large number of pieces left, then it might be time to offer discounts or clearance sales in order to get rid of the inventory that is sitting on your shelves for too long.
N41 ERP System: A Fashion E-Commerce Solution
Since e-commerce businesses need technology and software solutions to help with inventory management and order processing, they should consider using N41 E-Commerce Management System. N41 is premise-based ERP software that provides fashion e-commerce businesses with the ability to manage their products (and inventories), orders, customers, suppliers and more in one central location.
N41 automatically syncs data across all users’ devices, so business owners can access it anytime, anywhere. If you are a fashion e-commerce business owner and want to learn more about our N41 E-Commerce Management System, visit our website today to request a demo or call us direct at (213) 738‐1010.
