Why New Zealand fashion labels are getting clothing so right, but online so wrong.

While New Zealand fashion labels have been doing increasingly well in the international market as of late, our websites are unfortunately not following suit. New Zealand fashion labels seem to ignore the importance of a strong online presence, from both a sales and branding point of view. International retailers on the other hand, are capitalising on the fact that clothing is the 3rd biggest player in online sales, and are investing in websites that are getting online right. International brands are not only nailing the basics, such as site structure, design and usability, but are utilising powerful merchandising tools that are demonstrating their brand and product in an extremely compelling manner. While it may be easy to assume that the shopbop.com website is incomparable to your own, this is not the case. These online tools are easily accessible in New Zealand from online retail specialists and with the right partnership you can take your online presence to the next level, along with your brand.

The aforementioned www.shopbop.com is a good place to start when assessing how overseas online retailers are outstripping those in New Zealand. Regardless of whether you are a five chain boutique or a retail giant we can all learn a lot from the basic functionality used in such international webstores.  They start with a simple, tried and tested layout, making it completely clear to customers how to get around the site. The main areas of interest for their customers are clearly set up in the top navigation bar, allowing people to shop by product category, designer, sale stock or to view the lookbooks. Large image areas are used for branding, and help drive customers to specific areas of interest within the site. These areas are good to promote things such as new seasons stock, upcoming events, sales or new brands. Shopbop.com also uses good intuition when displaying product information. So many times I’ve skipped over an item of clothing online because I don’t like the colour of it that shows up in the page of products. Shopbop.com displays little colour thumbnails under each product image in the product list page, letting you know which other colours a specific item comes in. When clicking on this thumbnail, the image of the product swaps out to show the product in my chosen colour, without even having to click into the individual product page.

www.asos.com is another clever player when it comes to product information. When you’re telling your customers about your products online, more is more. You can never write enough about fabric composition, fit, feel or have enough high quality product shots. Asos.com took their product information to the next step by creating catwalk videos of each clothing item, giving customers hugely valuable insight into how garment fits, drapes, moves and looks on a person. They also make good use of online cross selling tools – with the right of each product display showing a range of items that “complete the look” for a particular garment. These cross selling tools are a good way to merchandise your products in absence of a sales assistant, and are an easy way to boost your average order value, particularly when combined with “spend over $250 and get free shipping!” type promos. ASOS also have a fun “Save for later” tool  which allows you to create a “wishlist” that is stored on the site for 30 days, excellent for people like me who spend hours looking at hundreds of different items online before making a decision (and often forgetting half of what I’ve looked at in the process).

Someone else we could all learn a lot from is www.victoriasecret.com, a ridiculously well built website. While you may pride yourself on being a boutique brand, it is big multinational websites such as these which teach us the sneaky methods of converting online browsers into online buyers and building your brand online. Their use of video on the homepage for example, provides such a rich branding experience and shows off the product phenomenally well – and before you write video off as being too commercial, just remember the hype surrounding Lover’s video for their winter collection The Harvest – there wasn’t a fashion blog that ignored it. 

These strategies, tools and practises are utilised by all of the successful fashion sites for a reason - because they are generally simple and cost effective to implement, and they work. No matter what the size of your label you can’t not afford to invest some of your resource into getting a decent website which will support and strengthen your branding, and generate new revenue streams. With all the exposure New Zealand fashion brands are getting overseas at the moment it is more important than ever that we deliver those brands online at an international level – there’s no point in having clothes that will sell in Soho if your website looks like you made it yourself.