The fashion industry is the largest segment of B2C e-commerce sales. In 2020, fashion generated more than 750 billion US dollars and is expected to grow to around 1.2 trillion US dollars by 2025. This means that there is strong competition yet still room to grow because of the increasing demand. So, how do you grow? There is no simple answer to this. Your success depends on so many factors but there are some key factors that you must do right in order to outperform your competitors.
The number of people shopping for fashion products online is increasing and so are their expectations for a better online shopping experience. One of the major factors that affect the customer’s buying decision is the outlook of the online store and the product itself. A confused customer ends up choosing a product with a better visual appeal and that’s where millions of dollars are being spent by companies: making their products look visually appealing online.
The Key Factor of Customer Engagement
Customer engagement is not that hard to accomplish in e-commerce. You just need to focus on your product and store’s visual appeal. Outstanding copywriting, great product description and reducing loading speeds, etc. come in later. If your product is not visually appealing, people will instantly lose interest because they know that good products look great on display and yours just don’t.
Ways to Improve Visual Customer Experience
Now, how do we improve the visual appeal of our e-commerce store and products? The answer is manipulating the emotions of the customer by showing them your brand identity and diversity through your display. The customer needs to feel connected to the products and get an impression that your brand is professional. Here is what you need to do to improve your visual appeal to increase customer engagement.
1. Product Images
There are two major advantages of using high-quality product images. They make your brand look professional and they can be a source of emotional appeal (if you know how to do it right). Most brands are able to produce adequately good pictures with good lighting (after spending thousands of dollars on models and photographers). They miss the part that a product image forms an emotional connection with the customer. If done right, product images are the biggest source of customer engagement.
So how exactly do you make your products appealing to the customer?
Diversity
Make your product images diverse. How? Use a variety of different backgrounds, models, ethnicities, skin tones, and poses to make your online store feel lively. The indirect emotional connection that you create by making the purpose of your brand (diversity and equality) clear with a large audience is what is going to drive your sales because inclusive product images bond better with diverse ethnic groups.
Picture quality
Make sure that your clothing images feel high quality and professional. Apart from resolution, focus on lighting and composition. How well your model and clothes are lit? Do the model’s pose and facial expression go with the clothing vibe? Is the model’s hair color making your product’s color look off? All these little details are otherwise missed, contributing to creating a high-quality product image.
A.I generated model images from ZMO.ai featuring multiple models, poses, and backgrounds
Here is a bonus tip for you. Instead of worrying too much about all the ways we’ve explained above, you can take a more accessible and more efficient path. Don’t spend thousands of dollars on hiring a stylist, models of different ethnicities, a photography crew, and equipment, just do it all in ZMO.ai at 90% less cost. This highly powerful A.I tool can automatically separate your product from your provided image and put it onto a wide directory of models. You can finally get the freedom to choose the hair color, skin tone, model’s face, and ethnicity to bring diversity to your pictures within minutes.
2. The Landing Page
A customer’s first impression of your brand is the design of the landing page. A lot of brands make the mistake of populating the whole landing page with tons of products. The purpose of your landing page is to reflect the brand identity and create a connection with the customer that will affect his purchase decision. You should be adding banners, text, logo, your brand purpose, how you are different, etc on your landing page instead of just products. Here are some tips to design a good landing page.
Make sure that there is a banner right below the navigation bar. Banners or slideshows serve as a welcome to users and say everything about your store in one image or graphic. In the case of clothing stores, you can use your best products and model images to put right next to the copywriting text. It will instantly show that you are an online clothing store with the following products (shown on the banner).
Want another bonus tip? ZMO.ai provides you with A.I generated model images with a clear background. Showcase the best products by using them in your banner.
3. Copywriting and Brand Identity
Copywriting helps you clearly communicate your brand message. Using small and crispy sentences to tell the customers more about your brand, products, their quality, your differentiating factor, and other important details are the key to better retention rates.
For example, if your brand targets a global audience, strategize your copywriting campaign to make it clear. Use models of different ethnicities to reinforce this brand identity. In simple words, images and copywriting should be used in conjunction to communicate a brand message.
Conclusion
E-commerce fashion is highly saturated but not everyone is succeeding. Most brands are not doing the right things to grab the customer’s attention. They are focused on trying to improve their SEO and marketing while they don’t realize their website and products don’t look good enough that people will buy them. That is where you can take the lead and still make way for yourself even if you think you are far too late. The truth is that companies keep dying because they don’t care about customer experience and who can replace them by offering a better experience.
Don’t wait while other brands continue to find ways to improve customer engagement. Follow these 3 steps, to begin with. For more insights on making your fashion e-commerce store successful, visit our blog.
