eCommerce Fashion Industry Trends for Your Brand Growth
Fashion sets up its rules even in our way of living. We live in the era of flourishing an eCommerce fashion business when you can buy products online from any place and at any time. Now the most influential fashion brands aim to keep up with the times and provide not only offline but also an excellent digital experience.
Fashion shoppers expect to be seduced by the beauty of your website and collections. That’s why retailers stir emotions with stunning high-quality and high-resolution visuals. Design, usability, content, and customization all require significant attention for your store to deliver a rich, immersive, and intuitive online experience.
Fashion Industry Trends that Play Digitally
Fashion eCommerce has specific finer points to it. There are certain factors that online store owners have to put into perspective to ensure success.
Sustainability
With the recent attention given to the environment, sustainability is one of the new-age fashion industry trends. eCommerce fashion industry analysis shows that a customer develops more trust and loyalty for a brand that is making the extra effort in terms of sustainability.
Whether encouraging recycling or environmental-friendly disposal in the manufacturing process, sustainability is always a plus. For instance, fashion giants Adidas recently received many plaudits (and new shoppers too) for their efforts in making 100% recycled shoes.
Online Visibility
A quick look at eCommerce fashion industry trends shows that online visibility is a trend that is key to sales performance. According to Brandwatch, over the last quarter of 2019, brands like Nike, Hermes, and Gucci were the top performers in web visibility, search visibility, and follower growth.
These brands spend a lot of money on advertising and marketing. However, what sets them apart is their influencer marketing nous and picking the right influencer. For instance, Lebron James is a Nike influencer and ambassador. His 69 million followers on Instagram means when he collaborates with Nike on ads, the world listens!
Functionality
Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce are just a few of the tools that eCommerce fashion brands can use to take their business online. With the COVID situation, online apparel sales statistics show that more brands are doing that. Besides creating functional products and comfort-focused clothes and footwear, brands pay attention to the functionality of their online experience.
Store owners have to make sure their eCommerce platform offers maximum functionality. From separate, specific categories for different products to customizing the purchase experience, functionality is now the new order of the day.
eCommerce Fashion Industry Analysis
When each country had to limit physical interactions during a new time, online shopping is one of the essential options to buy and deliver most of the goods.
According to Statista, the number of digital buyers expected in 2021 will reach 2.14 billion. People buy more things from online stores as it is transmitted as a safer and pretty much possible option nowadays. Fashion products, such as clothes, footwear, or accessories, are also not an exception. Let’s see the numbers about the fashion industry in different countries.
The UK
We can see that the fashion industry in the UK takes the majority of eCommerce businesses.
eCommerce industry growth in the UK by Statista
Sweden
Another fast-growing and economically stable country, Sweden, is showing the constant growth of the eCommerce industry market and its revenue.
The same goes for other Scandinavian countries, such as Denmark, Finland, Norway, and the USA. The fashion market grows online and becomes one of the most promising eCommerce industries.
What eCommerce Fashion Trends Customers Set
The key to our clients’ heart is somewhere where their wishes are. When creating our offerings, we should start with what our customers want. People mostly buy products because they want them (and not because they need them). They choose emotionally – that’s a significant difference! We want to feel an emotional connection with a brand. We buy the experience. It’s not an easy task for brands to create such relationships with customers. However, let’s see some practical things that work in eCommerce and that address the customers’ wants.
So what online customers want?
Shop fast
We all lack the time. We want to spend time on our family, friends, self-development, career, sports, and it’s only the beginning of our wishlist! Numerous choices surround us every minute. That’s why we all want to choose quickly and save our energy for other tasks. If your website can provide a quick way of shopping, you’ll be ahead of your competitors.
Feel care
Most people respond to empathy. They want to know that the eCommerce fashion brands they are buying from care. In a nutshell, they want to feel like it’s not just about the money. To show care, brands can offer bonuses, guides for using products, and a smoother shopping experience. It may be a simple discount offering or gift cards. Gestures like this go a long way in building customer loyalty.
Build trust
In the eCommerce fashion industry, the relationship between different brands and their customers must be based on trust. Companies invest in building their brands, earning positive customer reviews, and aim to build trust. Are your payment gateways secure? Do you offer a money-back guarantee on returned goods? Furthermore, can shoppers rest assured in the quality of your products? With trust comes a willingness to patronize your business and even tell others about it.
All these wishes are quite usual, right? And in most cases, they are about all of us.
We should remember that not brands set trends, but their clients want the highest quality services and tend to have an emotional connection with brands. That’s why they (and we all) set new trends in eCommerce. Let’s look at the most important and practical of them.
Immediate Page Loading
According to Google, the page must load content not slower than for 2 seconds on desktop devices, and 1 sec – on mobile phones and tablets in your target locations where you sell the products. The faster the website is, the higher chances are that the visitor will prefer your brand to your competitors. It’s a proven fact that conversions directly depend on page loading speed.
Some useful tools can help you to check and grow the website speed:
Pingdom measures the website speed from various locations, shows page speed results in second, and gives you some useful recommendations.
Google Speed Insights shows you what Google thinks about your website and how it evaluates your speed score. You’ll see the results in points and some useful advice on how to improve it.
Fewer Texts More Visuals
Tones of information are bombing people continuously. We all are a bit tired of this. When creating your offerings, try to focus on the key message you want to express and show it! So, it’s better to show than tell. We all like to watch short videos and see creative examples rather than read a long text.
Visualize your products and create a feeling of natural interaction. This way, you’ll help the customer better understand your offering and decide whether this particular product fits their needs. You can do it with high-quality images and multiple product views, or ‘shop the look’ features (see more about useful features for the online fashion store).
Voice Search Right on the Go
First on the list of eCommerce website fashion trends is voice search. Simply put, voice search is more effective compared to typing. Mathematically, the average person can type at a speed of 35 words per minute. With voice search, it is possible to input up to 100 words in a minute.
Having voice search available means customers can quickly find products with minimum stress. They don’t even have to sit at a keyboard before shopping. They can shop while cooking, doing the dishes, or driving. This level of accessibility can boost sales performance and, consequently, revenue.
An example of this is liquor giants Johnny Walker’s voice search features. Via discussions held with Amazon Alexa, the brand can suggest products and help make shopping decisions.
Johnny Walker’s voice search feature
Helpful ChatBots for a Quick Talk
Another notable eCommerce fashion website trend is chatbots. 73% of people will buy more in response to top-notch customer support. In the world of online customer service, there’s nothing faster than a live chat session.
Chatbots are helpful tools to personalize the shopping experience. Their ability to collect personal data means they are also a handy marketing automation tool. Finally, they help provide customers with quick support and save them time.
H&M’s chatbot
Here’s how clothing giants H&M does it. They created a chatbot that quizzes customers on their style options. Furthermore, it can provide photo styles for customers to choose from. This chatbot designs a unique fashion profile that it uses to help each customer make a purchase.
Mobile Purchase from Anywhere
Payment is a challenge for many people trying to patronize eCommerce fashion brands. As a result, the latest trend is to make the process easier for shoppers to make payments from anywhere with their phones. A great way to do this is by offering the ability to save their credit card information securely.
Offering mobile-accessible payment options is another route. They can include PayPal, MasterCard, MasterPass, or Google Wallet. According to Practical eCommerce, offering alternative payment options for mobile users can increase conversion rates by up to 101%. What is fashion eCommerce, if not the ability of customers to purchase fashion products and make payments easily?
Personalized User Experience
Personalizing the shopping experience for each customer includes providing custom offers and recommendations based on previous user activity, demographics, and personal data. Also, you can add features that allow customers to create unique and customizable products. With personalization, more is always best.
A quick look at most customers’ shopping behavior shows that they value brands that make the experience as personalized as possible. A good example is the ASOS site personalization feature. Whenever customers visit the website, it immediately redirects to a gender-specific product section based on previous visits.
ASOS personalization
AR to Try On Your Products
The excellent way to showcase your brand offerings is to demonstrate your products with interactive 3D models or even augmented reality. Many famous brands, such as IKEA, Lacoste, Converse, and more, use this technology and create a life-like experience for their online customers.
IKEA’s augmented reality app
This way, the customers can genuinely tell the difference and understand how your products look and work in action.
The cost of shipping tends to discourage most shoppers. For one, customers prefer a uniform pricing model. Due to this, free shipping is fast becoming an eCommerce fashion website trend. Furthermore, when used strategically, it can be an advantage over the competition.
Ensuring that the price stays constant from product to checkout is a plus for online store owners. A great way to do this is to factor shipping costs into the pricing of each product.
To take advantage of free shipping as a bonus, make it prominent on every page. More importantly, highlight it on every product page.
Various Payment Options
To gain the extra edge over competitors, eCommerce fashion brands offer multiple payment options. This is key to ensuring that the customer doesn’t abandon their cart at the checkout page. Paymill’s statistics show that up to 50% of prospective customers stop shopping if their regular payment option isn’t available. Therefore, it’s essential to provide customers with payment channels that they are comfortable with.
For context, if a customer is used to paying for services with Amazon Pay, they will be more likely to shop with brands that offer this payment option. eCommerce fashion trends show that most brands offer payment options that include but are not limited to the following:
Bank transfers
Ewallets
Direct Deposit
Mobile Payments
PayPal
Credit Cards
Omnichannel Experience
In terms of customer accessibility, the omnichannel experience involves providing shoppers with a smooth shopping experience regardless of the website platform. Whether via mobile or desktop, customers should be able to pick up and continue shopping from where they left.
The omnichannel experience involves connecting offline and online shopping experiences. For illustration, a buyer should find it easy to research products online and make purchases offline. Experts also refer to this trend as Research Online, Purchase Offline (ROPO). It allows the customers to get great info before deciding to buy.
Another example of the omnichannel experience is the click-and-collect feature. In this case, the customer orders products online and picks them up at a physical outlet.
The omnichannel experience also extends to customer support. For instance, with access to customers’ details, a support representative online should be able to proffer solutions and make spot-on recommendations just as easy as a support staff communicating via phone call. This eCommerce fashion trend makes the purchase process seem uniform regardless of how it’s accessed.
Excellent Customer Service
Fashion industry trends show a strong focus on providing excellent customer service. This includes assisting customers at every stage of the buying process, from helping with product decisions to resolving technical and payment issues, customer support cuts across the board.
This trend contributes to user experience. It can influence the level of loyalty and trust that a customer has in a brand. 95% of buyers say that excellent customer support determines how loyal they are to a brand. Self-service options, quick response times, and personalized support are some of the tenets of excellent customer support.
Genuine Client Reviews
Customers take reviews very seriously in the world of fashion eCommerce. Up to 50% of prospective buyers check out reviews and ratings before looking at products.
Therefore, it is crucial for eCommerce fashion brands to prioritize genuine client reviews on their websites or trustworthy platforms, such as Trustpilot, Google, or Facebook. Most brands include genuine reviews and ratings on their homepages and collect the reviews on Trustpilot. Look at ASOS, For example. They have over 40,000 positive reviews!
You can also go the Yours Clothing route and set aside a particular page for reviews and testimonials.
Yours Clothing customer reviews
Trustworthy Brand Purpose
Fashion brands need to be more than just a company that sells fashion essentials in today’s digital world. Part of building an authentic brand purpose is taking steps to make the idea of buying from a company more desirable.
When offering customers a vision or a unique goal, products obtain a new meaning. It’s all about providing a purpose that reflects values that target customers will love.
An excellent example of a brand taking such efforts is Nike. The global dominance of this brand is a function of its brand image — excellence, determination, and self-awareness. Customers appreciate these values, and it keeps Nike at the top of the sales and visibility rankings. They help customers believe in themselves and ensure that all of us are the athletes, no matter what. Their purpose of inspiring athletes allows millions of people to change their lives for the better and achieve results turning Nike sneakers from just footwear to a secret power. And Nike is not the only purpose-driven brand. Now brands compete not only with each other but with the whole philosophies and beliefs!
Nike’s brand purpose
How eCommerce Fashion Brands React
eCommerce fashion brands are finding innovative ways to respond to industry trends. Some of the responses geared toward boosting brand image and sales include:
Create Sustainable Fashion with Care
Creating sustainable fashion means manufacturing products and fashion essentials with one eye on the future. This means doing it without impacting the ability of future generations to carry out such activities. The starting point for most eCommerce fashion brands is ensuring the sustainability of natural resources. However, they also focus on preserving social as well as economic resources.
Clothing brand Filippa K is an excellent example of this trend. They use a conscious design for all products. Filippa K uses sustainable raw materials and offers complete transparency.
Also called reverse commerce, this strategy involves re-purposing, renting, or reselling items that have been used in the past. General shopping platforms such as Craigslist and eBay have used this technique in the past. However, the growing usage of the “Upscale Resale” trend means that more and more eCommerce fashion brands are using re-commerce.
Today, the global re-commerce market is about $20 billion and should double in size over the next two years. Furthermore, half of this is attributed to fashion brands. A popular re-commerce strategy that fashion brands can use is renting methodology. eCommerce fashion brands can rent already-worn clothes out to people at affordable prices. Another approach is to buy used fashion products from customers, exchanging them for gift cards and store credits.
There’s also the option of turning used materials into new products. For instance, The Renewal Workshop collects discarded clothing and repurposes them, creating new clothing. Applications like Depop allow users to buy and sell old clothing.
Make a Difference with Brand Manifests
In reaction to fashion industry trends, brands are taking extra steps to make a difference in society. These kinds of actions are a manifest that shows prospective customers that the businesses offer meaning and societal value in addition to quality products.
Customers are quick to identify with fashion brands that display values that they uphold. Furthermore, it can be a critical tool for building brand trust and loyalty. Brand manifests can include anything from giving to local charity organizations to participating in relief efforts. Take a look at how footwear giants Toms UK are making a significant difference with brand manifests.
How Toms makes a difference
Engage Customers with Authentic Websites
What is fashion eCommerce? At base value, it’s the ability to purchase fashion products from anywhere in the world using digital tech installed on websites. As a result, engaging customers with authentic, functional websites is key to boosting customer experience and keeping up with fashion industry trends.
There are different ways to make a website seem authentic to the average buyer. For starters, blog posts are a great way to share ideas with customers. Secondly, a simple, neat design should align with brand image and vision while remaining functional is encouraged. Finally, in terms of product catalogs, use sharp, clear pictures and content that emphasize the quality of your products. Vevie is an excellent example of an authentic website.
Vevie fashion online store
What Fashion Website Trends to Follow
There are many useful eCommerce trends that you may find online. They are breathtaking designs, various product customizers, social media features, voice search, and cool mobile interfaces that all have a goal to provide a high-level life-like shopping experience.
Wait a minute!
How exactly can you use all these trends correctly on your website to increase your conversion and customer loyalty?
We understand how it’s challenging to create a great shopping experience and your eCommerce website from scratch. That’s why we’ve got you covered, and collected trends, useful tips, and examples that will help your store sell successfully. These are the basics.
Fashion Website Design That Strikes
Website design creates the first and the lasting impression about your website, and also about your brand. It should work from both sides: be beautiful to evoke positive emotions, and help the customer shop quickly and easily. There are plenty of works that we can find for our inspiration. And taking some great examples from your business niche is a good idea to understand what you like, what your customers need, and collect some references. We suggest you visit the following websites for inspiration and picking up the ideas:
Before you go for the inspiration and stick to awesome websites of talented designers, stop for a while. Design is an emotional thing but also functional. Each feature, image, and button has a purpose and leads the customer to their shopping point – purchase.
Look at the list of user-friendly features that will help you understand the purpose of design elements and make a modern fashion store convenient, intuitive, and attractive for customers.
And finally, think about your business strategy and plan to launch your successful fashion brand online. We are always glad to help you grow your eCommerce fashion brand or just give some useful advice to take off! Thank you for reading and staying with us.
eCommerce Website Design in 2021 – 2022: Trends & Examples
Design is an art, a tool, and an approach to make an emotional impression and captivate hearts. Good design can convince people to accept your ideas, choose your product, and love your brand. If you are looking for helpful advice on modern eCommerce website design, our ultimate overview is what you need.
We analyzed the winners on Awwwards.com, asked experts, and collected top trends, examples, and practical tips to help you create an impressive eCommerce website. Enjoy reading and have an exciting journey around design artworks! We promise you’ll derive aesthetic pleasure.
Modern web design becomes more lightweight, authentic, and creative. It focuses our attention on a product and doesn’t destruct from shopping.
The following design tendencies help eCommerce web designers create an outstanding user experience and impress the website visitor right from the first glance.
Focusing on Brand Products
Products become the stars of the show. If you look at the majority of modern online stores, you’ll find the common trait. High-quality product presentations make 60% of the successful design. Juicy and clean visuals make an impression and increase our desire to buy the product.
If we take a product card, we’ll see only the necessary information needed to make up a decision: price, short product description, list of materials and features, a few rows from the care guide, shipping detail, and that’s all! 🙂 It’s better to show than tell!
Just look at how the Khrio brand shows its beautiful footwear. We don’t know about you, but now we want their shoes. Their products look fantastic, as well as their website.
Khrio, Footwear, Italy
Getting Closer to Nature
The mainstream in the modern world is saving our planet and creating sustainable products. People are not indifferent to these matters. We all tend to get closer to nature and get back to our roots. This trend is growing its relevance in all design directions.
Natural color palettes and shapes, rich textures of materials help brands create a connection with nature. They draw our attention to natural beauty and make us feel comfortable.
Look how masterfully Bite offers its sustainable solutions with plastic-free packaging for their eco toothpaste. They build a connection between their products and nature using calm natural colors and smooth shade transition in this eCommerce website design color scheme.
Sustainable Swedish fashion brand, Filippa-K, supports their vision by showing natural textures of their products in detail. When you are picking out your perfect sweater, you feel like touching it right on the screen. Filippa K values natural beauty, and their models demonstrate fashion looks without any makeup or complicated hairstyle.
This nature-inspired trend helps to evoke sensual and visual emotions that are so desirable in our hectic and busy environment. People feel drawn to nature: organic materials, soft natural colors, green and airy spaces that create harmony, and make us feel relaxed.
Enhancing eCommerce Mobile Design
Mobile devices bring half of website traffic, according to Statista. Mobile design is critically important. It must be user-friendly and unfussy in such a way so that you can buy the product. Web designers should adapt web pages to easy finger taps and get rid of unnecessary elements on mobile that can still be present on a desktop. Furthermore, we should pay special attention to mobile payment methods that allow buying products contactless with a few taps.
MOS MOSH is an excellent example of a user-friendly website with an elegant design. Their website elements are accessible and easy to use on mobile. You can select the color and the size of clothes using swatches without additional taps. The buttons are large enough to tap with a finger. Take a look at their product page on mobile and evaluate your experience.
And to be fair-minded, let’s see what Google thinks about their mobile usability and check the page with Google mobile-friendly test.
Mobile design should also be lightweight to load fast on mobile devices. If your customer can see the page after a second, the chances they’ll stay and make a purchase grow.
After Google introduced the mobile-first index, the website speed on mobile is also a critical factor for your online store visibility. That means Google ranks search results by evaluating its mobile version. So, the higher your website speed on mobile is, the higher you’ll be on Google search, and the more people will visit your site to become your customers.
Showing How a Brand Makes a Difference
Brands focus on quality, individuality, and emotional connection with customers. They not only sell their products but also introduce their values, mission, and brand positioning.
Why is it important? People want to believe in something, stand for something, and make a difference. Brands are eager to make the world a better place, inspire their customers, and turn them into brand advocates. That’s amazing! We can see how brands compete not only with each other but also with different philosophies and beliefs.Companies provide additional information about their manufacturing processes, innovation, design, and sustainability initiatives, dedicating inspiring and informative web pages for these purposes. Furthermore, they are consistent with their brand on all website pages. Responsible brands also improve their website accessibility for people with disabilities, ensuring that fonts and colors are readable, and content is easy to see and hear.
Look how Eton, Swedish menswear brands, delivers on their brand promise.
They show how their brand creates sustainable products and build trust with customers.
Whether that is awards, media quotes, key stats, it’s important that (especially for new or challenger brands) you provide trust signals that provide the user with confidence. Understand your audience, be clear what you want the user to do on each page, then make sure the page is designed around this goal. Make sure you have a clear call to action on each page. Things that tend to work well to drive conversion include countdown on deals/promotions, high page speed, social proofing, providing trust signals that provide reassurance.
Brands bring us closer to nature, focus our attention on their products, work hard to be accessible right on the go, and make a difference with care about our future. Hopefully, you got some inspiration from these great eCommerce website design works!
*Don’t forget to save the list of eCommerce design tendencies to have them always around!
Top eCommerce Design Trends
We have just seen what views set directions for today’s design concepts. Let’s move on to practical design trends that you can apply for your eCommerce website.
Keep reading, the most outstanding website examples are waiting for you below!
Minimalism & White Space
As said before, products get into the focus of our attention. The white space in the ultimate black or white helps create a contrast with a product and put it into the spotlight. However, it’s not necessary to use only black or white – that can be beige, gray, and other shades.
Look how This Is Sleep showcases its products and emotionally supports its value proposition. They offer conditions for a calm sleep and sustain this thought with soft colors and whitespace.
Stock images for eCommerce websites go out of fashion. Companies invest in their product presentation. Brands even add motions to their product presentations using Gifs and cinemagraphs to make the experience more involving. They attract talents and search for faces that can express the character of their brand. Authentic, high-quality photos that look natural and hand-crafted illustrations help to put an accent on individuality and stay unique.
Jacquemus does this highly professionally. Their product images are true to life.
&Tradition goes even further and adds interactions with their collections. Each photo features products used to create the particular interior. We can just hover on the furniture piece, see its title, click and get to the exact product page.
Major design trend is to be 100% UX driven. So it is all about testing and weeding out all design options which reduce chances to turn a user into a lead. For sure in our every days business life we also need to meet CI, those superiors with their “gut feeling” etc. which often do not work towards this goal. But you should always keep the UX and testing perspective in mind. Let the numbers speak. Your users and customers will thank you.
Jörg Pfennig,
Senior Executive Manager International Ecommerce | SIXT
Geometrics & Natural Shapes
Natural patterns, colors, and shapes grow their popularity. Geometrics is a part of nature. Websites become cleaner with the use of classic forms, straight and rounded angles, and geometric shapes such as square, round, and rectangle. Website elements (and brands’ products as well) often have close-to-organic forms.
Let’s see how Ashley & Co demonstrates its eco-friendly products. Regular shapes and lines make this online store look elegant and clean, bringing our attention to products and helping evoke the right emotions.
Another good example is Gritz Brewing, which uses geometric shapes in its design. Bright elements help create a festive mood and emphasize the emotional benefits of their products.
Thin lines add elegance to web design and create clean and airy space to highlight the key ideas. You can use them in grids, separators, buttons, illustrations. They work like accents and can create a handcrafted feeling or add a more straightforward business character to the website look.
We like the Swedish House of Dagmar. Their overall design consists of thin lines used in accents, fonts, buttons, and other interactive elements. This website looks pretty airy, doesn’t it?
Virages use a lot of thin lines on their website. We can see both types: illustration lines that associate with a road trip, and straight lines that put an accent and separate ideas. The design creates an emotional impression and brings us close to the exciting adventures of motorcycle trips.
Virages, Road trips, France
Creative Typography & Storytelling
The trend of catchy typography is making a comeback. Creative fonts help bring the main ideas to the fore, catch the attention, and give a final touch to brand image. Now fonts become oversized and bold to grab the attention; creative and artistic to create the feeling of artwork; light and classic to serve as an emotional background. Furthermore, they contribute to the growth of another trend – storytelling. Brands don’t just sell products but tell their stories that are behind the scenes. They share their values and bring customers to their world.
Collage Crafting plays with fonts and creates interesting digital effects.
Stick to less is more type of design. Provide specific info and clear design, use the psychology of colors to add it to your color template. Use fonts that are readable for users. Optimized design that loads up faster is for users to enjoy.
Ivy Xandra,
Arts & Design Professional | Mad Monkey
Mixing Illustration & Photography
Another design approach combining technology and artwork is mixing photos and handcrafted illustrations. Such works look fresh and unusual and add genuine authenticity.
Déplacé Maison put their footwear into the handcrafted artwork. That looks stunning!
With all these creative concepts and tricks, brands aim to create life-like experiences and a sense of reality right on their websites. They add floating effects with parallax, implement more interaction, and use 3D models to recreate the real products.
Moooi designer furniture looks real, and you want to touch and test it right now. And yes, their menu button deserves our special attention.
Look at this bottle of fresh Hinderer Wolf wine. It makes you feel like you are preparing for a picnic in a forest. This wine is almost in your hands – just add to the cart and take it. 🙂 Visit the page and scroll down: floating effects enhance the feeling of reality and make our experience more involving.
Take and share these trends to keep up with the top eCommerce brands!
Attention Grabbers & ‘The Icing on The Cake’
If you carefully look at all previous examples, you’ll probably find several tricks used on each website. They all are clean, use geometric shapes and thin lines, and work on their creative typography. All these brands work on their product presentations and do their best to create life-like product images.
So how can the website differentiate itself among beautiful and modern competitors?
Of course, we all tend to copy some great ideas. But it’s hard to repeat something that has an unobvious but cool feature, the icing on the cake. That can be a hand-crafted illustration, small floating bubbles (like we saw on Gritz website), authentic font, emotional video or unexpected image, juicy and bright background – anything that highlights your brand and triggers emotions.
These elements can grab attention or create an emotional background that hooks a website visitor. Find your WOW moment and stand out.
Now let’s see how these trends work in action on the particular website pages.
eCommerce Design Best Practices
Besides being just beautiful, eCommerce design must serve two main goals: make an emotional impression and lead the visitor to the conversion. If the user can easily find things they need and quickly place an order, it’s a successful design. We’ll focus on the essential eCommerce website elements and best practices of design.
eCommerce Homepage Design
Home pages have brand style elements and communicate the brand’s value proposition. They also feature benefits, such as free shipping, special offers, and sale. The home page has the purpose of catching attention, introducing product categories, and providing user-friendly navigation. Useful homepages are balanced with the primary information and emotional accent. Show your best offerings, use bold imagery, and communicate your brand power messages.
Greats apply this approach: they use brand elements, main menu, offerings, such as free shipping and promo code, buttons leading to the main categories. If you scroll down, you’ll also see the elements of a brand story, such as social responsibility, their story, and how people wearing Greats sneakers share photos on Instagram. This home page delivers on its primary purposes: makes an emotional impression and motivates the customers to go shopping.
Sometimes it can show contacts and work hours, or it can be minimalistic and consist just of a hamburger menu and logo. This section is better not to overload.
eCommerce Menu Design
The modern menu tends to be minimalistic and focuses the user’s attention on pages to visit. We can observe the tendency of light-weight and small hamburger menus (often consisting of two instead of three traditional lines) and big fonts in the open menu occupying the full web screen. This way, it offers easy access to any website category.
eCommerce Navigation Design
Navigation should show particular categories (by demographics/product purposes/occasions) and be accessible on all modern devices. It can be classic (just with text) or visual (with associated images). Ashley & Co offers an excellent example of the visual menu:
There are many ways to create a good wish list for your online store. However, we should remember about its main goal: to save the goods that the customer liked and bookmark them in one place for further consideration before the purchase.
It’s a well-organized list consisting of the product image and short description with a price, add-to-cart buttons, ability to delete and add the number of items. You can also print your wishlist or learn where you can see these items in-store. Quite handy, right?
Also, you can add the rating or short reviews for each product to remove any doubts, or include the share button to send the wishlist to somebody who is thinking about a present for your customer.
eCommerce Cart Design
The shopping cart is one of the essential elements of the eCommerce website. Talking about the shopping cart icon design, it can be classic or look more creative with the use of illustration.
We should pay attention to the design of the shopping cart page. The right approach is to show the shopping cart in the pop-up or sidebar without page reload. This way, the user can continue shopping without any distractions.
The shopping cart should contain the necessary information: visual identification of the product, its price, buttons to delete items from the cart or increase the number of selected items, shipping costs, subtotal and total, ability to add promo code, and a go-to-checkout button. The shopping cart should focus our attention on the buying process and include only minimally necessary elements.
Let’s look at the Prime Ambassador’s shopping cart. They provide all the necessary information and use a good trick: suggesting complementary products to increase sales and offering various payment options right at the shopping cart.
We get to the checkout right after the shopping cart. Here is the critical moment: we spend our money and become a happy customer, or we go away because of the complicated checkout process. The checkout must be as simple, as it could be, but so informative, as the customer feels comfortable and confident about their purchase.
The best way to organize your checkout is to offer one-step and guest checkout. One-step checkout means that the user fills all needed forms and pays for the order on one page. It’s fast, informative, and user friendly.
Guest checkout offers an ability to make checkout on your website without login and saving any personal detail in your database. This way is quite useful when you want to order a product quickly in two clicks right on the go.
The checkout page design should be simple, minimalistic, and intuitive so that the user can perform all the necessary actions without any doubt and effort. Tiger of Sweden offers a convenient solution for placing an order:
Good e-commerce design involves testing, no doubt. There is no single design that works for every product and customer profile, we have seen the same UX perform very differently based on the type of product and buyer (and even when you find the design that you feel is ideal, it will likely not be that in six months). B2B vs B2C buyers a different, demographics, economics, product type, the type of sale it is (one time, subscription), price point, etc. it all comes into play. For the most part yes we do try and not present any extra information (or work!) for the buyer, the idea is to minimize the ‘friction’ when trying to minimize abandonment and maximize conversion.
Jason Foodman,
Strategic Advisor for eCommerce & Tech Companies
eCommerce Footer Design
Footer is a vital website element that summarizes the website story. It also should be informative but not overloaded. All links and texts must be readable and have enough contrast with a background.
Here are the things you can include in your footer:
Navigation: product categories, about pages, care guides, etc.;
Links to the privacy policy, terms of use, and responsibility pages;
Contacts: phone, email, physical address;
Payment methods;
Widgets with client reviews (on Google or Trustpilot);
Social media pages.
Other essential elements, such as product and category pages, care guides, look books, and about us pages, deserve dedicated attention. We’ll consider them in other posts and focus on the features that help to increase the conversion rate. Stay tuned!
10 Best eCommerce Design Website Examples
That was quite a long but inspiring excursion across the web. Now we are getting to the final round. See the top 10 e-commerce websites from Awwwards selected for your inspiration.
The idea for you: try to find the trends, best practices, and tendencies that we previously considered. Go to each one and pick exciting ideas!
SuperFluid
The SuperFluid brand strikes us with their colorful and catchy website giving you a great mood and positive emotions. They are brave, authentic, and bright. Different visual effects and creative fonts add action to our experience and make it even more exciting.
SuperFluid, Cosmetics, Netherlands
Salty K Swim by Kim Zolciak-Biermann
Solty K Swim is an example of well-structured product categories and an excellent product presentation. The overall website’s summer mood brings you back to the seaside. Pay attention to the InstaShop feature, allowing you to see how swimwear looks on real people and shop by clicking on the photo – that’s a great idea!
Salty K Swim, Swimwear, the USA
Greats
We turn back again to this brand and look further on their website. So, what we can see: minimalistic look, high-quality images, nothing over, storytelling, and showing brand responsibility – they make the score!
Orgreen is a premium designer eyewear – and it looks exactly this way on their website. Their design is clean with the use of light lines, soft colors, and bright accents. Look how creatively they play with colors and create the effect of a kaleidoscope (that also associates with optics).
This brand makes a great impression right from the home page. It feels cozy and calm, translating the atmosphere of craftsmanship. Light typography and illustrations support this concept, and the overall design creates an association with hand-crafted products.
This brand offers luxurious Italian footwear. It supports their positioning with high-quality product presentation using classic fashion looks and natural materials in the interiors on their photos. Their collections look impressive, as well as the navigation menu adding the spice with elements of illustration.
It all starts with a pair of dry denim, precisely like their homepage design. The brand focuses our attention on their jeans, shows the benefits of new models with motion, and provides all necessary information about their stores, repair service, and sustainability views. Perfect product presentation, catchy typography, elements of illustration, and denim-inspired colors help communicate the brand image.
This is a perfect example of a nature-inspired brand. Their website design uses a natural color scheme and resonates with its focus on high-quality products made of sustainable materials. The distinct feature of their home page is the intro of how the brand makes a difference with its low-impact website and sustainable way of making clothes.
This elegant store makes an impression with its measured amount of colors, stylish fonts, and fashion photos. Illustrations and menu look interesting, involving us to see brand arts.
This brand brings you back to childhood. Their website is lively and breezy. Lots of white space, bright colors, light website elements, use of handwriting fonts, and illustrations make it look fresh and playful.
That’s enough for the first time, but there are numerous great websites on Awwwards that are amazing works from all points of view: design and usability. You can get there regularly for a daily portion of beauty and inspiration.
How to Design an eCommerce Website
If you are almost ready to create your eCommerce website, it’s a good idea to start with your goals, competition analysis, and discovering your ideal customer. Think about the big idea of your brand and what sets you apart from the other companies. Try to imagine how your brand may look like, and of course, fulfill yourself with inspiration and pick the most interesting ideas.
Find eCommerce Website Design Inspiration
We hope you found something here, but there are plenty of great resources that will help you select the references and discover your niche. There you’ll find works of professional web designers from all over the world and will be able to see their portfolios and check out how these beautiful websites work in action. We suggest you visit the following resources:
While creating something custom and unique is a good idea, you can also start from pre-designed solutions and eCommerce website design templates for your online store. It will be much easier and cheaper for rising businesses. With your content and unique images, your web design will look different anyway. You just need to decide what platform you are going to use and select the website theme on one of these resources:
If you need to work with design content, create social media posts, or just make up a mood board with your web designer, here are the best creative and handy tools from professional web designers for not-designers:
Finally, before creating a design, your project needs a well-throughout page structure. Before creating any feature, we should understand why we need it, for what purpose it exists. That’s why you should train your eye but also test all appealing websites in action: try to find the product like a user and put it into the shopping cart, go to the checkout page. Then evaluate your experience. If you feel comfortable, you deal with a good website design that is worth your attention.
To help you learn more about modern eCommerce websites, we create website overviews explaining how website design works and what features help increase conversion. Here are some of them:
Let your design be user-friendly, beautiful, and work for your brand growth!
*Our credits: each website mentioned in this article makes an outstanding design example thanks to their website owners who put their hearts into their business projects and talented design teams who worked on these websites.
We are thankful to Awwwards.com for their job and opportunity to get daily inspiration from the masterful web designs and share talented works.
Top 15 Useful Features for an eCommerce Fashion Website
If you are thinking about growing your fashion business online, here you’ll find useful advice on how to create a modern eCommerce fashion website. We collected the most trending and user-friendly features to help you create an excellent fashion online store that drives sales and delivers value to your customers.
The home page is one of the most visited site pages in online stores. That’s where customers start their journey and get acquainted with the brand and its background. Navigation and search play a valuable role as guides to the essential pages and products of the store. So, it’s crucial to make them user-friendly and visible to users. Let’s consider the examples of trendy and user-friendly navigation and search.
Navigation
More site visitors start their journey from the main page. If your site structure has a common look, you might have a menu that navigates to the site’s pages on the top of the home page. The navigation menu helps site visitors to know where they are, where they have been, and where they are going.
If we look at the customers’ perspective, they all come to the online store with a question: “does this site have the product/service that I’m looking for?”. Main navigation with a drop-down menu gives shape to a site, helps customers to learn about the products, and guide them through the entire process of purchase. You can ensure that you put the best products in the first place and use creativity to name each category according to your customers’ type and the products that you sell. You can do it in a minimalistic menu, or add more visual even to the menu.
Look at the perfect example of visual navigation from ETQ:
This type of visual navigation on the desktop helps a user to get an overview of the product range. Images help to differentiate specific products, which leads to an informed decision.
If we look at the mobile version of visual navigation, we can see that it is also possible to keep images and a list menu to make the products/categories accessible and understandable for a user.
However, for the diverse category levels, the text menu will be a great option to load the page faster and to show all the categories on one page.
Let’s move on to the second important site feature – search. We’ll consider the most trending search options, and how they help customers to complete the purchase at the end of the shopping journey.
Autocomplete Search
According to the Google consumer insights, customers don’t follow a predictable path to purchase and have a clear understanding of what to look at before they shop. The second insight is that the shopping process helps customers to answer questions related to their life. So, if your website provides the details about your brand, products, and/or offline store information, it will be appreciated.
Let’s mention the basics of search in an eCommerce site. The site search is performed by filtering products according to user queries. So sorting and filtering are key features for the search bar on the website.
We want to stop on an autocomplete search. This search feature helps to get recommended products in the dropdown when a customer types the word or phrase in the search box. It also leads to an increase in on-site time total by all site visitors, familiarizes with the product range, and helps to draw attention to the current offers. Let’s look at the examples of an autocomplete.
Also, the mobile version of the site plays an important role in the great user experience. Search suggestions can include images that lead to better navigation and ensure great UX.
Take note that on mobile it will be better to place 1 or 2 products per screen, and the same with search results, i.e., 8-10 search results per screen.
Banners
Banners are attractive and informative parts of the site’s pages that guide to the categories or products, tell about good deals and prices, and give a chance to save and buy the desired piece. You can use various banners and sliders on the home page, and also for other important selling pages at your store.
For a business owner, banners give endless options to showcase their products and best-selling items to engage their customers, make more sales, and convert site visitors into customers.
Pacsun has provided a perfect example of a colorful and descriptive banner that attracts its customers.
Banners can have different looks. You can add them to any part of the page, assign them to various customer groups, fill them with text, buttons, and links to the important pages. You can also make animated GIFs or use engaging videos at your banner.
Category & Product Pages That Sell
Categories need to be intuitive for any customer. The category page leads to the products for special occasions, products for different customers’ groups, and additional offers.
And the most important, when creating a category, think about not only demographics but also the real everyday needs of the real person. That’s great if you can add specific categories for special occasions (for example, party, work, walks, etc.); or to particular needs, like comfortable and easy-to-wash clothes for walks with children; or a product line for different body types and sizes. Be creative and show genuine care to your customers!
Let’s look at the most trending features for a category and product pages.
Interactive Swatches
Interactive swatches help to preview a product in different colors in the product listing, without the need to visit the product pages. This feature helps to save customers time by checking the specific product and selling more products.
Look at Skims product listing that includes an option to view different product colors.
They give customers a detailed overview of each product and entertain them with such interactive elements.
If a customer goes to a product page, he or she wants to get a detailed description of the product. A user-friendly product page includes high-quality images, information about the size, color, description, care guide, and delivery.
Let’s look at the care guide as a part of the product page.
Care Guide
A care guide is a piece of useful information for customers on how to clean clothes or shoes they buy from your store. If you have specific materials used for creating your products, they may require special treatment. That’s why customers find it helpful if the store has a care guide section with all the essential information in it.
Look how it can be performed with the Eton’s example:
Eton has created a care guide with excellent attention to detail. The guide has covered each clothing piece, how to wash, clean, or iron their clothing. You can follow Eton’s example and provide customers with detailed information about the clothing they want to buy and keep for a long time.
Let’s continue with another great feature.
Quick Product View
This feature allows customers to check the product details from the product listing. It helps to showcase products in the best possible way and attract customers to buy them faster.
Forever21 has implemented this feature successfully.
Customers can see the size, color, product information, and additional products to make even more purchases.
Alternate Views Feature
An alternate view or a multiple product views helps to present a product on the page from different angles and perspectives. You can do it by placing various pictures of one product but in particular colors. The second option is to download one product image multiple times and name each separately.
Boohoo has a clear example on their product pages:
It helps to show products from all angles and give a customer a clear overview of how the product looks, and gives confidence regarding the quality and size of the product.
Custom Product
It is additional functionality for the product page that allows you to choose different criteria to get a customized product. Also, it can be a separate page, where you can select a custom print for a t-shirt, dress, etc. This is a complementary feature to help customers get a desired style of the product and make them loyal to the brand.
According to Thinkwithgoogle, customers now are more conservative about their expenditures. By allowing them to buy custom options, a brand increases the possibility of more purchases and sales in-store.
Once again, Eton has a perfect example of this feature on its product page.
Customers can choose among styles of a shirt, its fit, change the collar, cuffs, add a monogram, or fit the shirt in size. This gives an endless opportunity for customers to get a unique product, and become a fan of the brand.
Next, we’ll consider a feature for cross-selling.
You May Also Like
You may also like or People also buy or it can be named differently, but it is a strong instrument for a cross-selling. This block helps to showcase related products on the home page, product page, and checkout page.
You can show more products to customers and give them the freedom to choose the unique piece. This leads to additional sales because you can showcase different products related to the one that is being checked by a customer. And the customer can move to another option and still buy the item.
Let’s continue with one more feature to highlight your clothes and make your brand visible.
Shop the Look
This feature allows for the showcasing of clothing from the fashion brand’s Instagram posts, and customers can add it to the cart from the gallery. Firstly, you can build the community around your brand, and work with your audience through social media and a website.
Stutterheim is using this feature successfully and attracting new customers through social media and a website.
This feature can be placed on the home page, lead customers to the product pages, and they can go deeper to other site’s pages.
We’ve considered useful features for the homepage, category, and product page. Now, we’ll continue with other pages that can attract customers and showcase your products in the greatest way possible.
About Us Page That Builds Trust
This is a place for creativity and storytelling. Tell your brand story, highlight your company’s history, interesting facts, and make this page as a place to involve the target audience. Increase trust to your brand right on this page: place your mission statement, give some more details about your product/service, and fill in on your plans. This could be a strategy for optimizing the manufacturing process or product improvement and innovative approaches in client care.
The page could include even more information about your company initiatives. Nike’s About us page is a perfect example of engaging content and a clear brand position.
LookBook That Showcases
The lookbook is a collection of pictures or models gathered in one place to show the clothing line. This is a handy page to represent your brand and tell about your upcoming collections. You can use it to notify customers about new pieces and attract them with creative images.
Look how Tiger of Sweden has performed the lookbook page at their online store:
Checkout Page That Converts
One Step Checkout
On the Checkout page, customers finish their purchase. When a customer adds a product to the cart and proceeds to checkout, they want to get their order quickly and conveniently. If a customer sees many forms and pages, they get frustrated and could leave the cart abandoned. To avoid it, most of the stores use one-step checkout with a guest checkout option. It has no more than 2 or 3 forms: one for the delivery and the second one is an online payment form. Both forms appear at one page and make it simple to order some items within 5 minutes and one click on the Order button. Let’s check one of the examples below.
Filippa K has the perfect example of a simple checkout.
This page includes all parts needed for the order placement. A one-step checkout helps to decrease cart abandonment rate and increase conversion.
Partial Payment
Partial payment allows customers to split the total invoice into two or more payments.
Some payment providers offer split payments or pay later options to help customers buy the desired product, and pay less for the first time. For example, a customer may have different credit cards and want to pay with 2 or more cards. Partial or split payment features allow it.
Gift Cards
Gift cards are vouchers that can be used to get some products or to give a voucher as a present to another person. Customers can get a gift from a store for a particular purchase, or it can serve as a discount for additional purchase. This feature increases the loyalty of a customer to a brand.
A customer can choose among prints and types of the gift card, and apply the amount of money that they want to include to this gift card. Overall, this option helps customers to make a good present for their friends and family or to spend some amount of money later.
There are many useful features for stores, and it could be even more of them. However, you can find inspiration and ideas from famous brands. Let’s look at some great examples!
eCommerce Fashion Websites That Inspire
It’s a good idea to take an example of already powerful and successful brands that make a difference and create an exceptional user experience for their customers. These brands are the trendsetters that have been crafting their fashion products for decades. Their websites are truly outstanding examples of mastery. We broke their online experiences into precise elements that will help you understand the goal of each useful feature. Take a look at the fashion global brands with their roots in Sweden and popularity in the UK, USA, and globally.
Complete eCommerce fashion websites overviews for your inspiration:
Top Tips on How to Stay in Business in a Time of the COVID-19
The world shift during the COVID-19 means that entrepreneurs have to think again about how to stay in business in this new environment. Over the past few months, governments worldwide are reacting to changes. Now, more than ever, the world is going digital.
With many more people staying home, each industry has seen a shift to digital commerce. The use of digital and as e-commerce techniques is a great way to reach your customers. In essence, a significant business impact of COVID-19.
E-commerce isn’t a relatively new concept. However, many entrepreneurs have a reason or two to avoid it — until now. Now we all must adjust. In a way, it’s an avenue to double efforts on harnessing the power of digital commerce.
To learn how to stay ahead of the competition in business, you must adapt quickly. For most Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises, it is a chance to re-evaluate business strategy, making changes that will allow your company to navigate the pandemic smoothly.
To make this simpler, we have gathered a list of tactics that will ensure your business stays relevant in a changing environment. From web design to social media, automation, and keeping employees happy, we’ve got it all covered.
Power in business is the ability to influence other people’s behavior. This requires understanding their psychology and being able to build trust. When you apply power tactics in business, you can convince others to do what your business needs. This can range from getting a good deal from a supplier to boosting the output of employees.
Rational Persuasion
This psychological tactic seeks to convince an audience using rational logic, valid reasons, and cold, hard facts. For example, when ironing out a collaboration deal with other business owners, you can use figures and credible numbers to drive your points home.
Inspirational Appeals
This power tactic is built on enthusiasm. It works by appealing to the ideas, emotions, and values of an audience. It is handy for building a following on social media. For instance, you can sway a target audience passionate about affordable services with enthusiastic takes on pricing.
Consultation
Now more than ever, you need every employee on your side. This tactic focuses on encouraging participation via group planning and decision-making. It may be the solution to how to keep team members engaged. A good example is when you ask employees to come up with a plan of action for a particular task.
Ingratiation
It works by getting someone in a friendly mood before asking for help. Praise, flattery, and friendliness are the major strategies of this tactic. Also, it can be useful for boosting employee productivity. Sometimes, something as simple as buying a meal can increase the chances of getting positive answers from others.
Personal Appeals
This technique refers to a pre-existing bond of friendship while asking for some help. If you need better business deals during the pandemic, this might be the way to get it. We mean friendship and integrity is a natural way to keep relationships, support others, and get support in return.
Over the next few sections, we will go in-depth into other business techniques and solutions for the pandemic. Keep reading to learn how to stay ahead of the competition in business.
Expand Online Presence
Increasing revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic can only be achieved by expanding online presence for your business. You see, 1 out of every 4 shoppers start their process online. Also, with more people spending time online due to social distancing, it’s up to you to connect with them. In the same vein, if you’ve been thinking of how to start, run, and stay in business, the first step is to go online.
Think About Your Website
A website is an important tool in the digital commerce world. If you have been avoiding building a website, the time to do it is now. Make sure that it is aesthetic, neat, and attractive. Furthermore, you can get an expert to optimize it.
As a part of expanding your online presence, you need a ‘yes’ answer to the following questions:
Does your website copy speak to the type of customers you want?
Does your website show that you can provide value to clients?
Does your website show professionalism?
If you were a customer, would you choose yourself based on the website alone?
Make an Audit of the Online Experience
Part of learning how to stay in business is remaining fluid. Your online presence must flow with the times and the moment. If your business requires close physical contact, an update on your website should show how you’ve adapted due to COVID-19. For example, Google recommends putting up a banner that shows these COVID-related changes.
For a full audit, start by reviewing website copy, going through blog posts, and removing clutter. Additionally, remove outdated files, images, and pages to ensure that your website runs as fast as possible.
88% of customers use detailed product pages to make a buying decision. As part of your online audit, ensure that your product pages are accurate and optimized. This is where Search Engine Optimization comes in. Most shoppers start their search with Google. With SEO, you can infuse specific keywords within your website copy. This ensures that your business shows up when those keywords are searched. However, this is a technical process that may require you to hire a professional.
Finally, don’t forget social media. Make sure your social media pages are active and relevant.
Check Your Offers for Customers
There are certain factors that customers look out for when making an e-commerce transaction. These include pricing, packages, discounts, and reviews from other customers. To beef up your online presence, make sure that these sections on your website are up-to-date.
Update pricing where necessary, encourage old clients to drop positive reviews. Additionally, focus on discount pricing. Let prospective customers understand there’s a lot of value on offer!
Invest in Useful and Trustworthy Content
For digital commerce, content is a king. As such, the most effective strategy to secure your business for the times to come is content marketing. From time to time, create relevant content for your business. This may be through blogs, media posts, and mail newsletters. Whatever medium you use will be beneficial in the long run, as long as you follow SEO rules.
Engage Your Customers
With creative advertising and marketing ideas for small businesses, it is essential to consider the customers. As you make the shift to digital commerce, your strategies must be optimized for your customers.
Communicate About Changes to Customers
If you have changed the way you do business, you have to let your customers know. Perhaps you have adjusted your working hours, or you now do deliveries, now is the time to let them know. A simple email can contain all of this information.
If you are working from home now, you can put this information on your website or the front of your physical store. Even with the pandemic in full swing, communicating change to customers will put your business at the forefront of their thoughts.
Establish Deeper Connection via Social Media
The effectiveness of social media to communicate with customers is enormous. Currently, more than 3 billion people use various social platforms. There’s no doubt about it. The customers are still out there. The onus is on you to establish a deeper connection with your customers.
When you include social media in your arsenal, creative advertising ideas for small businesses are as direct as setting up a photo contest. As you very well know, more people have free time on their hands. With a photo-based contest, you can get more people to use this time to interact deeply with your brand. Starbucks recently used this technique to significant effect.
This photo contest involved designing a white cup from Starbucks. To participate, you simply had to post the designs on Instagram with the hashtag #WhiteCupContest. The winning design was made available to customers worldwide by Starbucks.
Ask for Ideas and Show Empathy
We often ask ourselves the same question: How to stay in business successfully? The answer is always the key, bold, but not so simple as it seems to be. We should satisfy our customers. If you’re confused, a simple option is to request for suggestions from your online audience. They are coping with quarantine and social distancing. Therefore, they are in the best position to spell out their unique demands.
During this period, your customers’ range of solutions may need safe delivery systems, contactless payment, or unique packaging features. While making arrangements for this, ensure that you find a way to give back to your clients. Show empathy for the current situation and explain how your crisis-handling will help them. Additionally, freebies and donations are an excellent method of showing empathy.
Learn from the Leading Brands
Even big organizations are doing the same. Nike recently announced a donation of Air Zoom Pulse footwear designated to healthcare workers.
Gucci makes a difference with their #GucciCommunity and is going to make separate donations of 1 million euros each to crowdfunding campaigns.
Mailchimp also made a significant contribution giving $500K to COVID-19 recovery efforts and supporting their community.
You, too, can do it in your way! If it’s important to you, any contribution makes a difference.
Enable Creativity in Email Marketing
Email is an excellent medium that helps with communicating change to customers. However, there’s more to it. Instead of straight to the message mails, get creative with your email content. As much as possible, create a reason for your subscribers to smile with your mails.
For example, gift cards without an expiry date can be useful. Swarovski Spain is a great example. By extending the expiry dates on gift cards, they made their customers smile.
Another approach is to give your subscribers helpful resources. Down Dog Yoga is giving customers access to free yoga content. You can even offer more discounts on purchases. Sometimes, just a link to a funny video can deepen the connection with customers.
Reimagine Workplace Relationships
Learning how to keep team members engaged can make a difference for your business. Now more than ever, it is vital that all hands are on deck towards a common goal.
Stay in Regular Touch
Apart from regular team lead checks, it is essential to touch-base personally with members of your team. If you can’t do it yourself, encourage managers to do it personally. Doing this will help you catch possible problems and support team members during a difficult time. You can also create an internal working-hour calendar with enough flexibility, where people can fill in their working and dinner hours and daily meetings. More importantly, it means you’ll always be in touch with the team.
If you’re working from home, this becomes doubly important. Personal issues can ruin the effectiveness of an employee. With a candid check-in, you may be able to help. Consequently, this will deepen loyalty and boost the productivity of your employee.
Communicate Openly
With the uncertainty of the times we are in, many workers feel uncertainty about the future. A great way to keep your workers engaged and locked in is to practice open communication. Make sure that employees hear from the company regularly.
Share your business concerns with employees, answer questions that they have, and even share a joke. That’s how to keep team members engaged. As long as they feel in the loop, they won’t leave the loop!
Set Up Various Activities
Finally, to keep your team members engaged, take their mind off work. This may seem counterproductive, but it works. There’s no doubt that we are going through tough health and economic situations. Therefore, you have to find new ways to get the morale up. With Slack, you can set up sections related to cooking and fitness. On these channels, workers can share cooking tips, recipes, and more.
For example, at WEB4PRO, we regularly send an interesting newsletter with useful links to the virtual tours of world museums, like Versailles Palace by Google, Salvador Dali Museum, Museum of Natural History in Washington. We also share cool blogs and create email contests like Guess Who: when people share their childhood photos or photos of their hobbies and journeys. It’s pretty fun! 🙂
WorkStride is doing this to a significant effect. Another method is to pencil in time for virtual gaming sessions. A simple game of chess can go a long way in building team morale. In the long run, that’s the goal — happy, productive employees.
Keep Your Business Running Effectively
When you figure out how to stay competitive in business, you are building a reliable platform for your company.
Adapt to the Current Situation
The first rule of how to stay positive in business lies within the boundaries of adaptation. With the tips above, it is possible to change your marketing techniques to reach more customers.
Instead of becoming a dormant company, find revolutionary methods to adapt. More importantly, keep striving towards set KPIs & objectives. For instance, a cleaning business named Aman for Homechanged its target market from private homes to buildings belonging to essential services.
Predict Your Steps for the Long Term
Most people consciously learn how to remain cool in business clothes. However, staying cool can only be possible with long-term planning.Instead of just focusing on the now, chart out a course for your business that will work even after COVID-19.
For instance, you can focus on marketing and lead generation. Van Van Go, a top company that offers motorhome rentals, is collecting customer details by offering a free week of rentals. With this strategy, you can build up a ready database of prospective customers. More importantly, you already know they are willing to do business with your brand.
Build a Human and Machine Workforce
Work smarter, not harder. That’s how to stay competitive in business. Advances in tech mean various business activities can be automated. Instead of doing hard work yourself and leaving out essential tasks, let technology work.
A human plus machine workforce can combine effectively on the following:
Tasks that can be scheduled
Repetitive activities
Tasks that get in the way of more important stuff
Use a Distributed Global Services Model
With more companies working from home, remote productivity can be improved using a distributed global services model. Instead of consolidating your business in a single locale, use technology and spread out.
With this working system, you can spread delivery centers for your services across different locations. Virtual customer call centers can be set up in different countries to service more people. Finally, doing this can even double, even triple your customer base! For instance, in our team, over 40 team members cooperate with our clients and partners in different pockets of the world. We stay connected with them via Skype, Slack, Google Hangouts, etc.
Stay in Business and Grow Your Power
With the tips and tricks above, we hope you can figure out how to stay in business even in these changing times. You can choose what suits your business best in this situation and pick up the most useful thoughts. Let’s wrap them up:
Use power psychological tactics and just be friendly to build trust with people;
Expand your online presence with a user-friendly website and digital marketing;
Engage your customers with a power of social media and useful offerings;
Strengthen relationships with your team to support their productivity and mood;
Keep running with strategic thinking and long-term goals for your business.
5 Great Email Template Builders for Your Creative Emails
Whether you are already running your email marketing strategy or you are just looking for the right email template tool, we’ve got you covered. In this article, we are going to share thoughts on what email builder to choose for creating perfect emails and why you need to consider online email template builder as a platform for making them.
Let’s start from the beginning.
Why do you need email marketing?
If you are running an online business, one of the ways to attract customers to your store is to let them subscribe to your email newsletter. This allows you to remind your customers about your brand, communicate with current and new customers, present them with your initiatives, and make more sales.
Sending plain emails became more common for personal communication. However, brands that sell products to hundreds of people need to be more creative now. That’s why, if you want to stand up from the crowd and present your products or services in the best possible way, you can use stylish email templates.
What are the email templates?
It is a ready HTML version of an email that allows you to create your own unique email design and apply it for your email marketing campaigns.
You’ve come to the point that you need an email template. How can you get it?
Create your HTML template. You can create a template from scratch in HTML. In this case, you’ll need to have some programming skills. If it sounds interesting to you, there are plenty of tutorials, for example, check the Tuts course from Envato. However, it can be time-consuming, which is the first concern for most business owners, web designers, and marketing specialists.
Use online email template builders. Here we’ve come to the easiest way to get the desired email. There are many email builders on the market that allow editing the ready professional design. They all have something in common and also are different in features and interfaces. The last one is crucial if you edit your emails on your own or if you lack time.
But before we consider the five best options that exist now, let’s observe what to expect from an online email template builder.
What to Expect From an Online Email Template Builder?
Before choosing a specific builder, you need to look at several criteria that will make your work easier. The price range is not the crucial point; however, we recommend you to look at the subscription plans if you need to create lots of emails.
Your email builder should have the list of the main functions:
Friendly user interface (drag-and-drop editor);
Email template library (also emails for special occasions, such as Christmas, Black Friday, Halloween will be a plus);
Compatibility with popular email clients, such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.
Responsiveness for different desktop and mobile devices;
Quick email preview option to test the result before sending it.
The online builder should be fast and convenient. You can use pre-made templates and edit their layout in minutes with the drag-and-drop feature. You can also play around with blocks by adding images, buttons, text, and changing the order of blocks and get the unique email.
The builder should not be heavy (bulky). This is an online tool, so you don’t need to install additional software to work with your template. It will autosave your sessions, and allow you to edit it later and re-use your template another time.
It should allow keeping the branded design of your emails. With a flexible email builder, you can re-use the same templates and use designs again and again. This will save you time and allow you to create the same brand appearance for every email.
Now you are aware of some recommended traits of a good email building tool. We hope it will help you to choose the most useful one. Let’s move to a short review of the tools available on the market.
What Online Email Builder to Choose?
Take a look at the list of useful email builders that can help you to create excellent newsletters. They have some features in common and serve the same purpose. But they differ depending on the goals, the scale, and the level of technical skills you have. We suggest choosing the most appropriate one for your specific priorities and test each one to select the most comfortable solution.
It is a freemium email editor. This is a product of MailUp Group. It allows you to create and edit the template in a free plan and offers extended functionality in the premium package.
Pricing & Plans
It includes 3 different plans in one, called BEE Pro:
freelance – $15/m,
team – $25/m,
agency – $45/m.
That means the editor is helpful for teams and allows them to assign roles, control the work done, and add/remove notes. It may suit advanced project teams.
The third package available is called BEE Plugin. It allows embedding an email or landing page in SaaS apps.
Distinct Features
The drag-and-drop editor is quite simple and allows you to create an email from scratch in about 20 minutes. The free plan allows exporting the file in HTML format. You can choose among 120 ready email templates.
Mailton is a creative space for crafting your emails. It is our new product, and we are glad to launch it for your convenience after ten years of releasing our email templates on the Envato market. Our Mailton allows for editing the layout of the email, saving it for later, export in HTML, Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor versions, and use for email marketing campaigns. Each template has 20 modules. Our goal was to make it simple, flexible, and useful for creating various types of emails.
Pricing & Plans
The price for the subscription is equal to a price for the cup of coffee, which is $5/m or $20 for six months. All packages give an unlimited number of templates, professional support, and flexibility in the creation process.
Distinct Features
Mailton builder mode has a user-friendly interface, drag-and-drop functionality, and responsive design. You can create and export an email template in less than 15 minutes. Use one of the 85 ready templates and launch a successful email campaign!
We think Mailton is an affordable online tool, and it lets you spend more time on creativity and prepare your email campaign with ease and calm. Drop in to test in for free and form your opinion.
Topol is a drag-and-drop email template editor with 7 pre-made templates, free and premium packages, and a few unique features.
Pricing & Plans
The price range is the following:
Free plan with limited features
$7/m per premium plan
$20/m per plugin plan
Distinct Features
You can insert GIFs, videos from Vimeo and YouTube in a link format, and they will be appropriately displayed in your emails. Also, you can download your email templates as ZIP-files to use them later or send them as test emails.
Among other options this email builder offers, is the export of HTML file, however, without full editing mode, except the ability to edit images and text. The time for creating an email from scratch is about 20 minutes.
This platform is perfect for working in teams. It offers deep customization options to use the editor, plus it has 100 ready-to-use templates and around 1000 modules to create, edit, and send unique emails to customers.
Pricing & Plans
There are several plans available:
The free plan (5 exports/m)
Premium package $20/m
Enterprise package (price by request)
Distinct Features
The interface is similar to a simple CMS admin panel. You can also choose among creating an email template from scratch, use a ready version, or import your template in HTML format to edit it in the builder. There is a block with elements to add/edit for the template.
Using the buttons in the upper panel, you can export, preview your template, and send a test email. The time needed for creating and exporting the email is up to 40 minutes.
It is a free open source email template editor created by VOXmail. It differs from other email builders because it has only two drafts that you can use as a base to create email templates.
Distinct Features
The menu of the editor is simple, you can click on the block, and it will automatically be added to the email body. In the menu tabs, you can also edit the content part, change the style of the text, background color, images, paragraph, and buttons. As Mosaico is free and open-source, you can’t store your email templates, images, and files. It is also limited in features, and you can create only a basic version of an email template. Still, if you need simple emails, this builder will be okay for you. The time required to create an email from scratch is 25 minutes.
After the review, let’s summarize and compare all the solutions in one table:
We showed solutions that are similar to each other, but you can look into details and differences and choose the one that is good for you. We will be very glad if you share your experience working with these emails or our email builder Mailton, and write us on our contact form below.
Weekday: Denim and Fashion Brand That Teaches Making Sustainable Choices
We’ve come across the next exciting and sustainable brand that not only fits current consumer tastes but proves itself as a company that helps people choose eco-friendly clothing.
Learn how to deliver the exclusive style of a brand’s products and provide the same price and high quality involving eco-friendly materials by combining it with a perfect marketing strategy.
Weekday is a Swedish brand of denim and fashion clothing. Their story started with an idea formed by four friends. In 2000, they decided to launch their fashion store in the suburbs of Stockholm. Originally, they opened only on weekends: Saturday and Sunday, so they called the store Weekend. However, as the store became more and more popular with its customers, the owners decided to increase the opening hours to seven days a week. So, what happened with the brand name? Simply, they changed it to Weekday. Since then, the brand has expanded by shipping to 88 markets and it has stores in 14 countries.
Weekday was a kind of modern retail shop in the beginning and has since grown into a strong sustainable fashion brand using various creative ways to reach its customers. Weekday offers scandi high street fashion which appeals to young people’s tastes with its styles of modern yet minimalistic clothing.
We will look at what makes Weekday an exceptional brand through an overview of its modern-looking website. You can use this as an example and source of inspiration for your website.
Website Overview
Firstly, what we notice straight away is the set of collections for men and women that are highlighted on the main banner. Also, you can find all the deals and limited collections right from the main page. Quite simple and classy, right?
Underneath you notice the banner with the information about the materials used for crafting its products.
This serves as a strong marketing tool for new customers and tells us more about the brand’s attitude to manufacturing. Also, it highlights its sustainability goals which we will discuss later on in the article.
Let’s move on to a detailed overview of the site’s features and pages.
Easy Category Navigation and Filters to Help Choose the Right Product
In each of our website overviews, we mention that navigation plays a crucial role for customers when they browse a site. This helps to reduce the time for decision-making and to help them find the most relevant products.
Weekday completed this mission 100%: they’ve created banners for each category broken down by the material used, collection, and items on sale. Colorful pictures and styles navigate customers to the right sections.
Filters also save time when searching for the exact product. Weekday has category-specific filters that help customers to specify a search for a certain product via subcategories of color, size, or brand. You can set almost any search criteria that come into mind.
Besides filters, all products have two different views from listing, i.e. the product itself but also what it looks like on a real person. This helps customers to understand how to wear and style the product, and whether it is right for them or not.
Color swatches and the price on the product listing helps to quickly overview all the options regarding the exact product and to make the right decision. We’ve seen such features on different websites before and it is developed even further on Weekday’s website. You can even make a quick color choice without redirection from the product page. Check out how this feature works on the Skims website, the brand owned by Kim Kardashian West. When you have multiple colors of the same product, it’s a good idea to allow color change on the product image without reloading the page.
This ensures that customers can buy quickly and get what they want in less time. Afterward, you can get loyal fans for your brand and subsequently raise sales.
Website Animation to Attract Customers for Purchase
Animation is one of the simplest options to attract customers and get them to stay on the website longer. For example, the scrolling text which is used on the main page of Weekday’s website and also on the product cards looks attractive from a user perspective and makes the page more dynamic.
According to 99designs, animation can bring a brand to life and it also has a positive impact on the overall number of site visitors. People love creativity and interactive elements and any of these could catch their attention, convince them to continue their stay on the website, and lead to purchases.
Simple Checkout to Reduce Cart Abandonment
Weekday has a simple one-step checkout page which is a must for the online store. Customers want to shop quickly and efficiently, that is why by making the checkout as simple as possible, you increase the chance of getting more sales. In most cases, we all like to do routine actions as quickly and simply as possible.
The checkout form is simple to fill out. A customer starts with the first form and then progresses through to the end, a very easy process. The best part of it is that the page doesn’t need to be reloaded, and a customer places their order in just a few clicks.
Print Studio to Make Customers Feel Unique and Creative
Print Studio (The workshop) is a separate page on the Weekday website that allows customers to feel as though they are creators: customize t-shirts, buy one from the limited collection or redesign premade models.
It is a little bit tricky to find; customers can either get onto the page from the navigation bar by clicking on ‘the workshop’ or from the Zeitgeist page with its limited collection of t-shirts. However, when you get there, you feel like a pro by applying all the different available designs!
The design mode is simple and it lets customers choose the color of their chosen t-shirt, add text, and insert some graphic images. This lets the customer get a unique design or to style their clothes with one of the already available designs.
Here, Weekday customers feel unique and become more loyal to the brand. The bonuses that come with a custom t-shirt are a fixed price and eco-friendly package, which proves the position of Weekday as a sustainable brand. By additional services and rewards, you elevate the customer’s shopping experience and make them feel valuable, stay true to your mission and commitments, and keep coming back to your store.
Sustainable Approach to Manufacturing
Sustainability underlies the Weekday mission: to help people make sustainable choices. This reflects not only on statements but on the quality and materials used for the production of clothing.
Weekday has a separate page that consists of all the information about their initiatives in sustainable manufacturing. With the long-term goal of becoming 100% climate positive, they have already stepped on this path by creating their denim products from organic cotton in 2015, launched a swimwear collection from recycled waste in 2017, and will continue with the goal to use only recycled or organic cotton from 2020.
Customers can find all the information about the goals and achievements on the Sustainability page. Besides initiatives from Weekday, its customers can be involved in sustainability initiatives by bringing used clothes to any of Weekday’s physical stores and get 10% off their next purchase. It connects customers with the brand, lets them feel like a part of the big idea, and also provides a personal reward.
Among other useful pages relating to their sustainable approach, Weekday teaches how to take care of their clothing created from eco-friendly materials. The information is explained on the Garment Care page.
As a responsible brand, Weekday shows its commitment to covering non-profit organizations’ needs and collaborates with different companies to teach, support, and spread the word about current issues in the world.
The brand’s website and strategy serve as a perfect example for young eco-friendly and youth-oriented brands. We are enjoying this experience and believe that Weekday’s customers feel its care as well. Take the insights learned from this article for your business strategy and keep growing your brand step by step.
Let’s sum up with several tips for online stores:
Use the latest design trends to keep your site attractive. By following design trends, you will solve two typical issues: website usability and web presentation of your business. Modern designs correspond to a high level of usability and responsiveness, according to the design statistics, and also give you a long-term website look. A functional user interface helps attract site visitors to explore and buy from your store.
Ensure that your customers know your achievements. Weekday shows that there is nothing better than being honest and transparent in all business processes. Showcase your achievements and initiatives on the separate page and make it clear that you follow them. This way, your customers will be involved in your ideas, and it will ensure a deep connection for customers with the brand. It will also have a positive impact on your sales and business growth.
Add custom features to highlight your exclusive products and show respect to individuality. Some brands now add custom features to ensure that customers get what they want. For example, a customer can customize a t-shirt online, or measure themselves to get the right products with the AR tool or use live chat with 24 hours support. Make them feel like kings and queens with the personalized shopping experience, and you will get a loyal audience that orders your products regularly.
Simplify site structure. Simplicity is a key to getting more visits and then, as a result — purchases. By creating a clear site hierarchy and navigation structure, you’ll make your website pages easier to reach for users and search engines.
Improvements to a website can be time-consuming. However, by following the main recommendations regarding website usability, site structure, and design, you can grow your business and ensure its high position in the market. We hope that Weekday’s example will inspire you to keep going with your brand strategy and grow its presence on the web.
With an ever-increasing amount of business taking place online, it’s worth remembering that the internet is still evolving. In this landscape, more and more people are looking for online business ideas to earn money over the Internet. Working online brings a variety of pros and cons but the benefits can include a more flexible lifestyle, higher income, and the fulfillment of owning and operating your own business.
If you own or work for a company, it’s also worth thinking of some creative ideas for how your business can benefit from earning more money from online business.
Below, you can read about the various tips and tricks we’ve collected, all of which will help you get into a journey of doing business.
Since 2015, eCommerce sales have doubled as a percentage of all retail sales. But if you’re worried that the best online business ideas for eCommerce are already taken, remember this: even today, only a small percentage (14%) of all shopping transactions take place over the Internet. Within the next three years by 2023, eMarketer predicts that this number will reach 22%. What’s more, an increasing number of niche market eCommerce retailers are attracting customers with products that have never existed before. eCommerce is still growing and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.
If you’re planning to start your own eCommerce business, there are a few things to keep in mind. These include:
Your online store (how you will showcase your product and receive orders from customers);
Marketing (how you reach your customers);
Logistics (how you will get the product to your customers);
Inventory (how you will source and maintain sufficient stock for your product);
Taxes and regulation (understanding and complying with local requirements).
For setting up your online store, a good option, if you’re a beginner, is to use an off-the-shelf solution like Shopify, BigCommerce or Woocommerce. These platforms have many customizable design features and can handle all the checkout and payment processing needs of an eCommerce website. Many more advanced eCommerce companies choose to work with an agency that can help them to further customize their online shop.
If you’re already experienced in marketing or skilled at using social media, you might think that promoting your product and reaching new customers will be the easy part. However, this is also a significant amount of work with testing and choosing the right strategy for your business. A good idea to think about when marketing your product is: what customer problem am I trying to solve?
Consider different marketing content you could create that would be helpful or interesting to your customers – and how this content can draw attention back to the core features of your product. Then think about how you want to build your “funnel” for acquiring customers. How much will you be using social media to market to your customers? Will you be driving traffic to a blog or landing page which you can use to collect emails? To what extent will you invest in paid marketing such as Facebook and Google Ads?
Brands like Away and Glossier are good examples of companies that use content marketing strategies to attract customers within their specific niche.
Build a Niche Site
By now you hopefully have an initial concept of what it takes to set up and market your eCommerce idea. But what should that idea be – particularly if you are new to the world of online business? Profitable eCommerce sites can be difficult to achieve for most products, especially with competition from Amazon and other independent sellers. That’s why it’s important to find a successful niche.
Here is a list of ideas for niche products currently trending in eCommerce, backed up by Google Trends data. These include:
Pet beds;
Sofa and couch covers;
Minimalist jewelry;
Beard straighteners;
Infant and baby carrier;
Smartwatches.
However, for each product, you need to know how to market in a specific niche.
Start a Blog and Promote Yourself on Social Media
Although eCommerce might get more attention, starting a blog is also a creative online business idea with good prospects.
It’s true that blogs require a lot of time to create and maintain content while growing the audience. However, it’s an online business idea that requires almost no upfront investment. To set up a blog, all that’s needed is a good internet connection, hosting service, and a platform to publish content. Most blogging websites offer hosting services and content publishing together.
As a blogger, there are many different ways to monetize your blog. One of the most popular methods is selling ad space – although this requires a large amount of traffic. Another method is affiliate marketing, where bloggers promote products in exchange for a commission if the customer buys the product through a dedicated link. Blogs can also be used as part of an eCommerce website in order to help attract new customers and promote the products on the website. Some bloggers also publish sponsored posts from brands and other bloggers, who pay for access to the blogger’s audience.
The key feature of all of these approaches is traffic. Those hoping that their blog can be a legitimate online business idea to earn money must therefore also have a strategy for growing their audience. Creating in-demand content using keyword research and other SEO strategies is helpful for landing high in Google’s algorithm and other search engine rankings. At the same time, bloggers should also be able to promote themselves and their content on social media and other popular websites.
Many people get stuck on the question: “What kind of blog should I start?” The truth is that there is no specific answer. The right blog topic will depend on you and, more importantly, on the audience you are hoping to reach.
Popular Blog Topics
Think about your areas of knowledge, passion, or expertise. In order to have a successful blog, it is important to be seen as an expert or credible source on your chosen topic. So Step 1 is to make sure you are writing about something in which you have a good deal of familiarity, which matters to you.
But before you think about the content that you would like to create, consider what information is in-demand, and how you can respond to the needs of customers. Luckily, there are more tools than ever to help come up with content ideas and get to know the specific terms that internet users are searching for.
Resources like AnswerThePublic can take keywords and help you to generate additional keywords based on target actual Google search data. Experts like Neil Patel, meanwhile, suggest a “system” for coming up with content, consisting of 4 strategies:
Strategy 1: Figure out what your readers want (by using tools like AnswerThePublic and KeywordTool.io to do keyword research);
Strategy 2: Use Amazon Look Inside tool to get an overview of relevant books and see the topics which are already popular;
Strategy 3: Ask your readers what they want to learn (by surveying them directly using tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms);
Strategy 4: Use tools like RiteTool to analyze Twitter hashtags and identify the most popular content.
When it comes to online business ideas for beginners, blogs offer some of the highest potential. Those willing to put in the work can reap significant rewards.
Set Up Your Dropshipping Business
A dropshipping business is another example of an online business idea with low startup costs. It is similar to setting up an eCommerce store but requires less involvement in supply, inventory, and logistics. It can therefore be established with almost no upfront investment.
In a dropshipping business, entrepreneurs work with established suppliers to seek out relevant and/or popular products based on research into customer demand. The dropshipper then markets the product to the end consumer but is not responsible for shipping or restocking products. In addition to third-party logistics (3PL) providers who handle all warehousing and order fulfillment, there are also end-to-end dropshipping services which take care of the full process of sourcing and restocking products from suppliers, storing products, shipping them out to the customer, tracking inventory, and handling returns.
When thinking about online business ideas for dropshipping, marketing and demand are everything. Most important is finding a niche. New dropshippers need to look for potential niches based on products matching your personal interests that are in high demand. Just like with starting a blog, dropshippers can use keyword research to identify products that customers are searching for or areas where a product may already exist but where customers are looking for a better solution.
A good way to find trending products is also to use the Google Trends tool. This allows users to search, compare and analyze trends by country and worldwide, which is useful for defining the right product for starting a dropshipping business. Dropshippers should then follow this up with research into other companies selling similar products in order to identify current gaps in the service and where they can do a better job. Marketing should then be created based on the target demographics for the product.
As with eCommerce, dropshippers should think about how to attract audiences with interesting content to build awareness for their brand. Creating an appealing website is also highly important.
In the end, dropshipping is very similar to starting your own eCommerce store but with some key differences. Compared with starting your own eCommerce store, dropshipping (despite zero or very low upfront investment) has high marginal costs associated with paying a third-party for all supply, inventory, orders, and shipping. As a result, the ROI can be higher when managing your own eCommerce store. Still, dropshipping is a good way for eCommerce beginners to start an online business, especially those with limited amounts of startup money to invest.
Though all of the ideas so far have plenty of potential to earn money, they are not without their downsides. eCommerce and dropshipping typically have very low margins unless the product is significantly more expensive – therefore, even a company with high revenue can turn a much smaller profit for its owner. eCommerce and dropshipping companies must therefore sell a lot of products to be profitable, requiring a big investment in marketing. This could be an investment of time instead of money, but it still takes lots of work to get established.
At the same time, as mentioned earlier blogs need to have a significant number of loyal fans and readers in order to be successful. While this is possible, it also takes a lot of work, often making zero or very little money in the beginning, in order to get to this point.
One alternative to both of these options is to create an online course. This has two major advantages over starting a blog:
It is more scalable – you create the product once and it reaches a growing amount of people around the world;
It is more profitable – each time somebody buys your course, you earn a higher margin since the running costs are low.
But how to launch an online course, or come up with ideas? Many people incorrectly believe that they do not have anything to teach that people would pay for.
Author and online course teacher Ramit Sethi suggests starting with 4 questions:
What do I already pay for? This will open your eyes to all of the things that others might consider paying you to teach them.
What skills do I have? This is a great way to identify which skills you might be able to teach to other people.
What do my friends say I’m great at? By asking what other people think are your best skills, you can see the value you are capable of bringing.
What do I do on a Saturday morning? This is a simple trick for uncovering your passions and recognizing what it is that you really care about.
The first step is to discover that everyone has the potential within them to be a teacher.
Create Your Brand and Sell It
The final idea for starting an online business is to create your own brand online. What does this mean in practice? First, it’s different from creating a personal brand (such as with a blog or online course). Instead, it has more to do with creating potential brands that other people will turn around and sell on their products. Because you created the original brand yourself, you will earn a percentage of money on the sale.
This is an online business idea for creative people who have a high level of artistic skill and like to make visual designs for other people. Designs are then printed onto products like calendars, bags, greeting cards, posters, and clothing items. For aspiring designers, this can also be a gateway toward a more lucrative career as a freelancer if your work starts to get noticed.
The best way to get started is to start making designs and upload them to websites like CafePress, Teespring, Zazzle, and Lulu. When companies are interested in the brands you have created and make products with your designs on them, you earn a commission on each sale.
YouTubing is one of the most popular businesses online at the moment. Anyone from celebrities to those looking to review products can become a Youtuber and can create a career out of this field.
In order to become a YouTuber, you’ll need to follow many of the same steps as you would for building a website or a blog. You’ll want to find your niche market and develop your brand before anything. This will include developing a logo and having an overall idea of the content you want to develop in the future. You can look at the most trending videos, types of channels, and YouTube celebrities’ examples.
Grow Your Audience
Growing your audience within YouTube can be difficult. One of the best ways to do this is to invest in marketing. Ads, for example, will provide you with the opportunity to have your content targeted toward audiences who will be interested in it.
Not only this, but you’ll want to keep developing content that your potential viewers care about. When you do this over the long-term, you’ll always have people returning.
You can also follow the social media page’s growth approach when you are building the content, involving the audience, and building the community. These people will be your support and also a driver to your channel and popularity growth. You can use the full potential of comments, YouTube Stories, live video or streams, and discussions in comments. This will keep your channel active, and your brand alive.
Magento 2.3 Logout Bug
When analyzing server logs from Magento 2.3.3, an error message of this kind was found:
2019/11/2616:03:05 [error] 19565#0: *114206 FastCGI sent in stderr: "PHP message: PHP Fatal error: Uncaught TypeError: strpos() expects parameter 1 to be string, null given in /home/magento/www/vendor/magento/module-theme/Controller/Result/JsFooterPlugin.php:44Stack trace:#0 /home/magento/www/vendor/magento/module-theme/Controller/Result/JsFooterPlugin.php(44): strpos(NULL, '</body') #1 /home/magento/www/vendor/magento/framework/Interception/Interceptor.php(121): Magento\Theme\Controller\Result\JsFooterPlugin->beforeSendResponse(Object(Magento\Framework\App\Response\Http\Interceptor))#2 /home/magento/www/vendor/magento/framework/Interception/Interceptor.php(153): Magento\Framework\App\Response\Http\Interceptor->Magento\Framework\Interception\{closure}()#3 /home/magento/www/generated/code/Magento/Framework/App/Response/Http/Interceptor.php(26): Magento\Framework\App\Response\Http\Interceptor->___callPlugins('sendResponse', Array, Array)#4 /home/magento/www/vendor/magento/framework/App/Bootstrap.php(262): Magento\Framework\App\Response\Http\Interceptor->sendResponse()" while reading response header from upstream, client: 127.0.0.1,
We needed to identify the reason for the error and fix it. To do this, we had to analyze the code of the Magento core.
Analyzing the Code of the Magento Core
Starting in version 2.3.2, the following plugin was added in the Theme module in etc/fronted/di.xml.
declare(strict_types=1);namespaceMagento\Theme\Controller\Result;use Magento\Framework\App\Config\ScopeConfigInterface;use Magento\Store\Model\ScopeInterface;use Magento\Framework\App\Response\Http;/** * Plugin for putting all js to footer. */classJsFooterPlugin{privateconstXML_PATH_DEV_MOVE_JS_TO_BOTTOM='dev/js/move_script_to_bottom';/** * @varScopeConfigInterface */private $scopeConfig;/** * @paramScopeConfigInterface $scopeConfig */publicfunction__construct(ScopeConfigInterface $scopeConfig) {$this->scopeConfig = $scopeConfig; }/** * Put all javascript to footer before sending the response. * * @paramHttp $subject * @returnvoid */publicfunctionbeforeSendResponse(Http $subject) { $content = $subject->getContent(); $script = [];if (strpos($content, '</body') !==false) { if ($this->scopeConfig->isSetFlag(self::XML_PATH_DEV_MOVE_JS_TO_BOTTOM,ScopeInterface::SCOPE_STORE ) ) { $pattern ='#<script[^>]* (?<!text/x-magento-template.)>.*?</script>#is'; $content =preg_replace_callback( $pattern,function ($matchPart) use (&$script) { $script[] = $matchPart[0];return''; }, $content ); $subject->setContent(str_replace('</body', implode("\n", $script) ."\n</body", $content) ); } } }}
As you can see, its purpose is to transfer JavaScript to the footer, if the shop administrator has enabled this. The error arises in the strpos function, since the $content variable is null. Let’s determine when this happens, and why.
There is also the Amazon Payment module in the Magento core, which requires the Amazon Login module to function, which is responsible for logging in using Amazon. If a user logs in using Amazon, this is noted in the session. Starting in Magento 2.3.1, the module unchecks this box if the user logs out of Magento. This was implemented using an asynchronous request, which is made when the user gets through the logout page. The controller Amazon\Login\Controller\Logout\Index is responsible for this, which looks as follows. class Index extends \Magento\Framework\App\Action\Action
As you can see, the execute method of the controller returns an object of the type \Magento\Framework\Controller\Result\Json. In theory, we should have passed JSON to the front end, which should have been generated by the method.
The problem is that $this->json is NULL. One of two methods could have initialized it:
/** * Set json data * * @parammixed $data * @paramboolean $cycleCheck Optional; whether or not to check for object recursion; off by default * @paramarray $options Additional options used during encoding * @return $this * @SuppressWarnings(PHPMD.UnusedFormalParameter) */publicfunctionsetData($data, $cycleCheck =false, $options = []){if ($data instanceof \Magento\Framework\DataObject) { $data = $data->toArray(); }$this->json =$this->serializer->serialize($data);return$this;}/** * @paramstring $jsonData * @return $this */publicfunctionsetJsonData($jsonData){$this->json = (string)$jsonData;return$this;}
However, this was not done in the controller Amazon\Login\Controller\Logout\Index, since this controller does not need to pass any data to the front end. There’s something else we should mention. PHP has historically been a language with weak typing data. This means that in versions prior to PHP 7, if the type of the variables entered didn’t match what was declared, the most that would happen would be the function would throw a warning and return an empty or false value. This means that the code of the beforeSendResponse method could process without fatal errors. It’s the same in versions starting with PHP 7, except for the statement declare(strict_types = 1). This statement includes more strict data type control and throws a TypeError instead of automatically converting variables and throwing a warning. The conversion could have been processed in this method using try{}catch{}, but there is no such processing in this version. Using strict type control is the current Magento policy, and most core classes in Magento 2.3 contain this statement. However, developers of third-party modules, including Amazon, do not always abide by this policy.
Either way, this error should not exist. It can be fixed using a plugin:
What Is reCommerce and Why It Can Rule the World of Retail in the Future?
As consumers try to reduce their impact on the environment, the “circular economy” is becoming more important. Lately, this innovation has come to the world of clothing and online shopping, where there is a growing market for secondhand goods.
The popularity of “fast fashion” has led to a massive increase in clothing production in recent years. The problem is that new clothes need lots of energy to produce, and are being thrown out faster than ever before. According to the EPA, Americans threw away over 16 tons of clothing in 2014 – a 71% increase since the year 2000. At the same time, total greenhouse gas emissions from new textile production are higher than the sum of all international flights in the world combined.
To address this issue, conscious consumers are trying to buy more secondhand products online. And more and more companies are emerging to meet the demand.
In this article, we take a closer look at reCommerce, its business models that work, and some of the businesses that are capitalizing on this increasing trend.
reCommerce Definition
The term reCommerce – or “reverse commerce” – describes the process of renting out, reselling, or repurposing previously-used items.”
While vintage clothing shops and websites like eBay and Craigslist have been around for a long time, the growing popularity of reCommerce trends like “Upscale Resale” means that reCommerce is reaching more people than ever before.
According to The Shelf, the global reCommerce market is already worth $20 billion and is projected to double to $40 billion by 2022. Half of this comes from clothing, where reCommerce is growing at 5 times the rate of the entire industry.
reCommerce doesn’t have to take place online. Some mainstream brands like REI (in the US) even use reCommerce strategies to bring more customers into their stores.
With that said, many leading reCommerce companies are succeeding with internet-first business models.
What About reCommerce Business Model?
reCommerce does not have one single business model. The reCommerce market is diverse, with many strategies in place.
Informal market
This refers to person-to-person exchanges, or what some might call “traditional reCommerce” taking place in garage sales or over platforms like eBay, Amazon, and Craigslist.
Trade-In & reCommerce Services
The growing popularity of reCommerce is partly due to the expansion of reCommerce services that make it easier to buy and sell high-quality used goods. This reCommerce business model includes platforms and specialized reCommerce marketplaces that rent or resell pre-owned products.
Luxury reCommerce marketplaces like The RealReal, for example, help extend the life of designer products. The platform allows people both to buy and sell used high-end goods. Other companies like Rent the Runway offer subscriptions where customers pay a monthly fee. In exchange, they can rent high-end designer clothes that have already been worn by other people, for much less than it would cost to buy.
Buy Back & Trade-In Offers by Vendors of New Products
This business model for reCommerce applies mostly to brands that buy back used products from their customers, in exchange for cash or a credit to purchase something new. Consumer electronics companies like Apple have been doing this for some time, along with most major mobile phone providers. The buy-back model is now also growing in fashion and apparel.
Sustainability-minded brands like Patagonia, for example, now buy back and sell their own used apparel online. Customers can trade in used Patagonia apparel for a gift card that they can use to buy new Patagonia merchandise. The company then resells the used apparel on its own reCommerce marketplace called Worn Wear. In only its first year, Worn Wear already sold more Patagonia apparel than eBay.
Some of the most common examples of typical reCommerce products include:
Accessories like watches, eyeglasses, and handbags;
Cultural goods such as books, films, and vinyl records; Jewelry;
Secondhand electronic devices like smartphones, laptops, tablets, and cameras;
Clothing (all types);
Over-the-counter (OTC) medical supplies which can be reused.
Regardless of the reCommerce business model, the principles of reCommerce are the same. By renting or buying secondhand products, customers save money. They also reduce waste, limit unnecessary consumption, and lower their carbon footprint.
By embracing reCommerce, companies can tap into a growing market, reach new customers, and make a positive contribution to the environment.
reCommerce Brands
Who are some of the leading businesses in reCommerce? As we have seen, the reCommerce trend is being driven forward by a combination of new companies and established brands.
Here are a handful of the dedicated reCommerce businesses that are leading the way:
thredUP is the world’s largest fashion resale marketplace. Like The RealReal, thredUP gives customers the opportunity to buy brand name clothes at deep discounts. The main difference is in volume. While The RealReal is more focused on designer luxury, thredUP boasts over 35,000 brands and claims to add over 15,000 new items each day. The company started in 2009 as a men’s shirt swapping company but has since grown to cover all clothing categories.
thredUP Fashion Footprint Calculator. The thredUP Fashion Footprint Calculator, formerly the thredUP Brand Calculator, is a handy tool for calculating the carbon footprint of your wardrobe.
The tool includes suggestions for practicing more sustainable fashion. ThredUP also provides a tool for calculating how much money your clothes will earn based on different brands, estimated selling prices, and consignment windows.
Circos
Circos, formerly Vigga, is a rental subscription service for baby, toddler, and maternity clothes. Founded in the Netherlands, Circos is available in most of Europe as well as the US. Users can create a “bundle” of items for a subscription fee of as low as €35 per month. Then, when children have outgrown or stopped wearing clothing, it can be sent back for new items.
Bureo makes innovative products out of recycled fishing nets from the ocean. Though it doesn’t sell secondhand items like other reCommerce brands, by repurposing the nets, Bureo helps to reduce ocean pollution. Bureo’s main products are sunglasses and skateboards, a great example of how companies can use waste material to create new value while protecting the environment.
Founded by a group of assistant supermarket managers from the Netherlands, Instock focuses on the issue of food waste. Working with the support of the Albert Heijn supermarket chain, Instock began providing unsold supermarket food to restaurants and catering services. Today Instock makes its own products and also has three of its own restaurants in the Netherlands. With one-third of global food production wasted each year, food is another important part of reCommerce.
Another marketplace option to sell and buy products is Tradesy. It was made by women and for women, which means curated unique luxury goods and excellent support services exclusively for women. One of the most interesting things about this platform is that it offers the buy-now-and-pay-over-time service. This way, shoppers can buy the products they want without paying immediately. Instead, they’ll pay by installments every month.
The RealReal mentioned already in the previous section, is the market leader in luxury consignment. Founded in 2011, the company offers everything from men’s and women’s fashion to jewelry, watches, children’s clothing, and fine art. After a successful Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange last year, The RealReal continues to be one of the biggest stores in reCommerce.
reCommerce Solutions
There are many solutions on the market, helping to enable the growth of reCommerce. These range from services like Yerdle, which work with larger brands, to the Elemental Excelerator, which helps early-stage companies focused on solutions to the climate crisis.
Elemental Excelerator focuses on deploying solutions related to different aspects of climate change. This includes environmental challenges as well as social and economic issues stemming from the climate crisis. Each year the company funds 15-20 companies focused on everything from food and agriculture to water, energy, and mobility. The company was an early investor in Yerdle Recommerce, one of the leading reCommerce solutions.
Yerdle Recommerce
The Renewal Workshop
The Renewal Workshop provides a range of circular solutions for the apparel and textile industry. The company collects discarded apparel and textiles and turns them into new products. It also aims to create more circular systems in the industry by collecting and sharing data to improve the design and production of future products. By combining its own reCommerce activities with a reCommerce service for brands, the Renewal Workshop is enabling multiple aspects of reCommerce.
Depop is a social shopping app for Gen Z shoppers. It is considered as a combination of eBay and Instagram, which allows consumers to buy, sell, or explore the trending fashion. Depop is currently available for iOS and Android devices.
Brand Growth and Development in the eCommerce: Interview with Peter Bergkrantz, CEO of Stutterheim
Stutterheim created a new sense to melancholy and now uses it as an authentic brand definition. Not only that, the history of this brand and their success is incredible and inspiring.
We had a chance to communicate with Peter Bergkrantz, CEO of Stutterheim. We want to share his thoughts regarding the growth and development of a fashion brand online. But first, let’s start with the brand’s background.
Stutterheim is a Swedish fashion brand offering functional and beautiful rainwear famous for the highest quality, hand-made crafted products, timeless design, and melancholic yet beautiful personality.
The company was founded in 2010, and from that time, they are massively extended worldwide. The story of their creation was unusual, and with a stroke of genius: founder of the brand, Alexander Stutterheim, found his grandfather raincoat in a barn on a rainy day. Soon, he came up to the thought that there was no proper rainwear that he could find in Sweden for such occasion. That’s where it all has begun.
Over the years, the Stutterheim mission was and remains the same: Make people look good in bad weather.
From that time, the brand grew offline and online as well. Many collaborations with famous brands, featured celebrities’ looks, new stores worldwide, a user-friendly website, all of it is combined in a mature and extraordinary-looking brand with a rich history and special mood.
Now, let’s move on to the interview with our guest, Peter Bergkrantz, CEO of Stutterheim. Started in 2016, as Global Sales Director, he brought his vast experience of sales and leadership in the fashion industry to elevating the Stutterheim brand to new heights of success.
Peter shares practical insights from his experience regarding the direction for business strategy, revealing issues that companies are challenged in the eCommerce field. Also, he gives recommendations on how to set priorities and build a successful business strategy for young and growing retail brands.
WEB4PRO: Peter, you have broad experience working with different retail brands for many years. What inspires and motivates you and your team the most working at Stutterheim?
Peter: To see and follow how we develop the brand globally, especially in our digital sales channel.
WEB4PRO: From your perspective as the CEO of a famous fashion brand, what is your recipe for its success?
Peter: Stay true to your original idea of how the brand should be. In all aspects as product range, communication, and so on.
WEB4PRO: Product design, creation, and fitting is a long-term process. On what does your team put the focus when working on your products at Stutterheim?
Peter: Make sure it’s on-brand. Its got to be within our frame of look, quality, and colors.
WEB4PRO: How do you gain customers’ trust for the Stutterheim brand?
Peter: You do as you say. If you state you do premium rainwear, it’s got to be that – right?
WEB4PRO: What are the priorities which young and growing retail brands should set? What are your three main recommendations for them?
Peter: My first recommendation will be the following: don’t do all things at once, set your goals, and all but go for set milestones on the way.
Secondly, listen to your fans, your community, your customers.
And last, but not least, make sure to have a steady eye watching your inventory levels:-)
WEB4PRO: The last question is related to the future of eCommerce. What do you think will be trending in the eCommerce industry in the next few years?
Peter: Wow, big question! I hope there will be general actions among eCom companies taken against these massive return levels with stuff being shipped back and forth across the world. I see this as a big problem for the environment, and it’s for sure, not sustainable.
WEB4PRO: Totally agree with you. Environmental problems which are caused by products’ waste is a massive problem.
Due to climate change, people started to think about lean consumption. We also see companies that have the intention of using natural resources sustainably. They are looking for ways to decrease manufacturing waste and also building a sustainable business strategy. We agree that it is important to keep our planet up and running, and want to contribute to the growth of sustainable brands all over the world. That’s the part of our mission statement and business strategy.
In the end, we want to give massive thanks to Peter for his time and willingness to share valuable insights. It was a great opportunity for us to talk about eCommerce with such an experienced person that is truly passionate about his company and work. If you want to learn more about this brand, you can visit the Stutterheim official website or check our article about Stuterheim’s online store.
