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.

Clothing retailers selling luxury products have a tough time online both presenting the right image of their brand as well as being commercially successful.

The Internet is often presented as the place to get bargains with companies’ frequently offering discounts if you buy online – this is in sharp contrast to the image luxury retailers want to promote.

On the high street, luxury stores are exclusive and generally only consumers with the necessary funds tend to go in to browse around. The Internet, however, is open to all consumers and so this exclusivity is lost.

It is important therefore that luxury retailers re-create an opulent online experience for consumers that reflects the atmosphere of their high street stores.

Another stumbling block for luxury brands is how to convey the quality of their clothes online. The consumer isn’t able to actually see the item and try it on for real, it is therefore absolutely vital that every step is taken to ensure the user is shown each product in minute detail.

There are various ways to present products to the consumer so that all the characteristics of the item are fully displayed. Such as:

• 3D spin – allowing the user to look at the product from every angle and get a feel for how the item would look if it was in their hands
• Zoom – zoom features permit the consumer to look at each item in close detail e.g. stitching, quality of fabric etc
• Colour – the ability to see the same item in various colours

Along with these features, there are several Web 2.0 elements that could greatly assist a detailed representation of a product. For example:

Videos – having videos of a model wearing the items of clothing lets the user see how the product would actually look when it is worn. Often it is very hard for the consumer to make an assumption of how a garment would look without seeing it on a real person.
Podcasts – a retailer could feature podcasts with information and/or tips on how best to wear products, accessories etc.

For information on how Motive could help you create the right representation of your luxury brand online, get in touch with our E-commerce Team.

A highly effective strategy in e-commerce is multiple channel selling. This involves having several niche websites targeting different demographics, displaying specific product ranges. This allows you to create completely focused websites with a high sales conversion rate.

It is often helpful in the retail space to appear to your consumers under a different persona. This could be for various reasons – sometimes political but sometimes simply aesthetically. It is important that you project the right corporate image for the individual products you are selling. For example, you might have redundant stock that you want to get rid of; this technology would enable you to develop a bargain website where people can buy items at discount prices, without devaluing your parent brand.

This strategy is also effective when you need a microsite specific to a particular marketing campaign or particular product which still links in to your main corporate website. This allows you to have fully branded sites specific to one product brand without increasing the administration or management as the content can be driven by your main database.

Having these various websites means that you can target individual affiliate campaigns, pay per click campaigns and other online marketing strategies to drive traffic with a high potential of converting to the right website.

To find out more about Motive’s multi channel e-commerce platform, please get in touch with our e-commerce experts.

As the explosion of blogs on the internet continues to grow – 105 million blogs already in existence with 120,000 new blogs created daily – retailers must realise the importance of having their own corporate blog on the website. It is expected that by 2010 – 70% of all content on the web will be user generated so it is crucial that retailers do not get left behind.

The one to one contact that retailers are able to have with customers is lost in the faceless world of retail websites. Having a blog enables you to project a human voice to your customers and break the formality of the rest of the website. The blog is somewhere you can speak as a human being rather than a company and customers are able to respond and post their own opinions and comments. This helps to build a personal relationship with your customers and you are able to respond and react to their comments, suggestions etc.

Although the idea of customers posting up their own comments and views on products etc is an unsettling concept for some retailers, it is better that consumers have somewhere to do this on your own site rather than elsewhere where the conversation is out of your control and you are unable to respond quickly and effectively.

Another advantage to having a blog is that it will greatly help your SEO strategy. You will be able to write blogs filled with all important keyboards and if you are blogging regularly you will be ensuring your site is full of fresh new content – search engine spiders love websites that are regularly updated.

To find out more about how you can integrate blogging into your e-commerce solution, feel free to contact the experts.

Product bundling is a very effective e-commerce marketing strategy which allows you to sell a number of products together thus creating additional sales and maximising the potential of your cross selling and up selling opportunities.

Bundling allows the retailer to heavily affect the choices customers make whilst browsing their e-commerce website. Traditionally whilst shopping in stores customers effectively created their own bundles, making their own decisions of what products to buy. Bundles allow the retailer to make this decision for the consumer to ensure an end result that benefits both the customer and seller alike.

Bundles are a much more effective method of persuading customers to make further purchases by highlighting the benefits of buying one product with another. For example, if someone was buying a digital camera they may not think to also buy a case, memory card etc. Bundles quickly highlight that these products compliment each other which along with a discounted total price encourages the customer to make a group purchase

Bundles are easy to change and adapt to suit whatever requirements the retailers has at that time. Enabling vendors to promote different products at different times and maximise the revenue from their online sales.

A good example of our bundles feature in action can be seen on the website of one of our e-commerce clients, Jessops:

www.jessops.com