If there’s one positive thing that happened because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s the acceleration of the digitization of services across various industries. With the strict enforcement of social distancing in various parts of the world, people have become more and more reliant on online services for their basic needs such as food, errands such as banking, and their indulgences as movies and TV shows. But the biggest industry that has contributed to the growth of eCommerce. And that is the clothing industry.
According to a study conducted by Netcomm in collaboration with Kantar, 54 percent of shoppers took up eCommerce services for clothing. Because of this high rate, it’s clear that buying clothes online is slowly becoming the norm. But despite the clear success of clothing companies in eCommerce, we should never forget that these companies did experience a myriad of challenges before forging strong customer ties online. As people who own clothing businesses or are planning to build one, these are the challenges we may face with eCommerce and how we can overcome them.
Customer Skepticism
For many people, online shopping is a great cause for concern. And that is largely because of the feelings of skepticism. They might see, say, a gorgeous evening gown online. The product description says that the flowy skirt is made with the highest quality of Paris chiffon. The lace of the bodice, with delicate floral details, is specially handmade to perfection. This description of the dress, for many people, might be too good to be true. After all, we’ve seen too many social media posts about expensive clothing orders that ended up being made from terrible materials—turning out to be a textbook case of a scam.
To overcome this customer skepticism, we would need to work on our marketing strategies. Genuine reviews of customers are a must to encourage more customers to buy clothing from us. We would also need to upgrade our website and social media pages to properly show off the quality of our products. We can’t just take a full picture of a product and be done with it. We need to magnify its best qualities so that customers would be able to closely examine them before making a purchase.
Hesitation in Investing
Buying clothes is one of the things that doesn’t require much investment. Customers can scroll through an online shop, look at affordable clothes, and shop on a whim without feeling guilty about the total bill. But there are online stores that do offer high-quality clothes that require investment from customers. If a customer is planning to go on a ski trip, then they would need to invest in proper ski wear. But they might hesitate because that would entail putting a huge sum of their money on the line by making an online purchase. They might think, what if the products get lost in the mail? What happens to the money that they’ve lost?
There are many ways to overcome this. For example, we can offer cash-on-delivery services. This way, customers would feel safe about their money before the product gets delivered to them. By ensuring the customers that their money is safe, they will, in turn, be more encouraged to invest in the best Bogner ski wear that they could buy online.
Lost Shopping Experience
When people take a trip to the mall or the shopping district for new clothes, they make a whole day out of it. They use this opportunity to hang out, explore the physical stores, and try out some clothes. And clothing stores bank on these people. They, especially luxurious boutiques, make shopping an enjoyable experience, from the way they set up the ambiance to the way they conduct their services and even to the snacks and drinks that they serve (champagne and strawberries if they were a very upscale boutique for, say, wedding gowns). But when people shop online, they are deprived of this experience.
However, we can overcome this issue in many ways. For example, we continue investing in the development of our websites to set up the ambiance of our online stores. Another thing that we can work on is our social media engagement. By building a strong relationship with our customers, they would still be able to build rapport with us. And, lastly, to make sure that the luxurious element is not lost, we can upgrade our packaging. Explore high quality boxes and bags. This way, our customers may not be able to enjoy a shopping experience in a physical store, but they can still get to enjoy the unboxing experience.
Online shopping for clothes has slowly been becoming the norm. But we can always improve our customers’ experience by overcoming these challenges successfully.
