Following the end of London Fashion Week new research highlighted a surprising trend amongst the UK fashion consumers who are still relying on their desktops, instead of smartphones to buy clothes despite mobile eCommerce as a whole accounting for 51% of online purchases in the UK.

With these findings going against the grain of what marketers and retailers would expect, now is an ideal time for eCommerce merchants to examine their offerings to make sure they are catering to every customer. The following five tips will ensure online fashion retailers appeal to both mobile and desktop customers.

Become a publisher

Nearly a third (29%) of UK marketers’ budgets are going on content marketing in 2016. And for good reason. Such an approach enables your business to quickly build trust, brand awareness and bring customers to your site, without, most importantly, being overtly salesy. Fashion in particular works especially well with a content marketing strategy. Due to how quickly the industry is and how consumers’ tastes constantly evolve, a wide variety of impactful and influential content such as trend pieces, tip lists and interview pieces (with designers or fashion icons), can drive traffic to your site.

Customer reviews

Enabling customer reviews on your website has huge benefits. Shoppers will often feel more confident buying an item if they know it is peer approved, which is especially true of fashion consumers, given their focus on the latest trends. These reviews in many cases will include commentary on the ordering and delivery process too, boosting the trustworthiness of your store.

Personalised recommendations

Fashionistas love to match their outfits with the latest shoes or accessories and this puts fashion retailers in an excellent position to sell more items. However, in order to capitalise on this fashion consumer behaviour, they must enable highly personalised recommendations to highlight complimentary items relevant to that which they are buying. Retailers should consider implementing this on the shopping cart page with recommendations based on its content.

Fully optimised website

It goes beyond saying now… However a retailer's website in 2016 must be optimised for mobile, especially in light of Google's new mobile-friendly rules brought in last year. Another point which is critical for retailers, their mobile site must also be optimised for speed, fashion fans have less patience than other shoppers, so if a page is too slow to load they’ll go elsewhere.

Making payments simple

With the rise in different payment solutions, enabling a user to choose their preferred payment provider is now a critical component of the customer journey. If customers find it in any way difficult to pay for their fashion items, you’ve likely lost a sale that could be easily avoided. One key trend which online fashion retailers also now need to factor in is the rise in mobile payments. With mobile eCommerce as a whole accounting for 51% of online purchases in the UK, it is critical that retailers offer a simplified, streamlined payment process for smartphone users.

These top tips can and should be implemented on both the desktop and mobile customer experience and will make sure that online fashion retailers are fit when trying to knock their competitors off the catwalk.

 

By Matti Rönkkö, CEO of Nosto

 

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