The layout of your landing page is very important in order to keep your visitors there and encourage them to navigate deeper into your retail site and eventually make a purchase.

Individual landing pages should be created and designed with the aim of making the site as easy to use as possible for your users. The easier the site is to use the more likely they are to proceed with the site and get to the buying stage.

Making your retail site easy to use will involve including your sales messages in areas of the page where they are most visible to the user. Where you decide to put key links and sales messages is crucial to success with your website.

These heatmaps from eye tracking studies to see where users’ eyes are attracted to highlights how people always tend to focus on the main body of text and don’t really stray away from that.

This habit of internet users demonstrates how it is often difficult for banner advertising to be successful as they usually appear on the right hand side of the page or along the top – as highlighted in green in the heatmaps.

This problem also needs to be considered when creating landing pages for campaigns. If you put your sales messages in the areas of the page where they will be missed by users, you will be losing out on precious conversions.

It is essential that users cannot miss links to pages you want them to navigate to. Everything you want your visitors to see and all calls to action should be included in the main body of text - this will guide your visitors through your retail site and lead them to buying your products.

To find out how Motive can ensure you are optimising the conversion capability of your landing pages, talk to our E-commerce Experts.

It is important for online fashion retailers to protect their brand image online. More and more the Internet is being dominated by the user – social networking sites, blogs and forums allow consumers to project their own beliefs about your brand across the Web. This is fine if the opinion is good, however, it is inevitable that some people will have negative comments to make about the service they received with you.

There is no way of stopping your customers from discussing the experience they have had of your brand either in store or through your fashion website, however, there are ways of monitoring and reacting to these discussions in order to minimise the damage caused to your online reputation.

You need to ensure that you are leading the way when it comes to your brand’s online reputation. This can be achieved through basic SEO techniques, ensuring that your fashion website is appearing as high as possible in the search results and therefore higher than other references to your brand.

Another crucial part of your online strategy should be interacting with your customers and responding to what is being said. If a negative comment is posted about your brand online, the best way to limit the potential damage to your reputation is to react quickly and effectively.

If a user has talked about a negative experience with you, it is crucial that you can respond and show that customer care is high on your priority list, or if they are complaining about a particular garment, show that you are willing to make improvements in light of their comments.

To find out how Motive can ensure you are promoting the right image of your fashion brand online. Talk to the experts.

In order to be successful in the online word, fashion retailers need to make sure that every step has been taken to mamimise the potential of their website.

Fashion retailers need to optimise their product range for their online e-commerce store. Consumers must be provided with a wider choice along with various offers that make it advantageous for them to buy online rather than in stores.

The average fashion e-commerce site should achieve a minimum average item value of around £12-£15. Lower priced items than this should be avoided when selling online as it is harder to make them profitable than it is in stores. Lower priced items do, however, have potential to be profitable when offered in bundle packages. It is crucial that online fashion retailers maximise the potential of cross-selling and up-selling opportunities that a website offers.

Where possible, fashion e-commerce sites should avoid being out of stock. If a customer comes to your site to purchase an item and it is out of stock, they will leave the site with a negative image of your company. The big advantage the Internet offers consumers is the ease with which they can buy items, if this process is held up for them in any way they will be frustrated and probably not return to your site.

A key factor in the success of a fashion ecommerce site is that every possible effort is made to re-create the in store experience the customer has of buying clothes. In high street stores, consumers are able to pick up, feel and try on garments to decide whether to purchase or not. Online obviously this contact is lost and so to ensure that the customer feels confident enough to buy, they must be shown the product minute detail. This can be done through:

• Focus on key product detail (stitching etc)
• Zoom features to see the product in extreme close up
• Alternative Views (see the product from front, behind, side etc)
• Video – actually use real models wearing the clothes so customers can see what the garment actually looks like on a human being.
• 3D Spin
• Clear size guides – this maximises customer satisfaction and minimises returns

Highlighting to your customers that your website is safe is also very important. Consumers often have concerns over using their card online and so to reassure them that their payments will be secure the latest payment technologies should be used by the website.

To find out how Motive can develop a highly profitable e-commerce store for your company, please talk to our E-commerce Team.

A major factor in online success is testing. Your e-commerce website should be tested on a regular basis in order to ensure your clients are being given the best service and your brand is being represented in the most appropriate, professional manner.

Every aspect of your e-commerce website should be tested and re-tested. Obviously achieving the maximum number of conversions is the main objective for your website and unless it is tested regularly there are countless different ways you could be losing potential business.

The most obvious reason for testing is, of course, to make sure your e-commerce site actually works. Any issues or faults with your site will be easily picked up by the user, therefore regular testing prevents your potential clients from developing a negative image of your brand. If your website is disappointing or faulty it will give the user a negative image of your company as a whole.

The term testing can also relate to other aspects of managing your website, however. Testing out different styles and approaches with your website will allow you to work out which method works best with your targeted audience.

Cookie tracking and various web statistic packages enable you to track precisely what is happening in the site and react positively as a result.

Try rotating different images and headlines on pages within the site then tracking the number of hits and click-throughs achieved with the different styles. This will help to determine what is the most effective strategy for your site.

Calls to action are key when attempting to guide users through your site; you should try out different phrases and see how it affects your conversion rates.

Success with your website is trial and error. Your website shouldn’t be a static thing that once launched is left alone. You should be constantly updating, adding to and tweaking various parts of the site to meet the needs of your users and maximise the revenue you get from it.

To find out how Motive can help you maximise the potential of your website, please get in touch with our E-commerce team.