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Web Design for Fashion and Apparel

Fashion and Apparel Web Design

Main image courtesy of Playing Fashion

WEB DESIGN FOR FASHION AND APPAREL

The fashion and apparel industry has always been at the forefront of eCommerce and web design and has often aided in eCommerce functionality innovation. Although fashion is arguably not a necessity or as important as buying car parts or vitamins online, it is still a trillion dollar industry here and around the world.

Sure there’s a lot of competition, but there is also a lot of information out there to help you achieve success. So with some research and expert help, you can start to steer your fashion and apparel eCommerce store in the right direction. Much like web design, fashion is always looking for the next trend that will push the envelope. This is why you see things like the Net-a-Porter app which is a shoppable magazine, or the social media platform Polyvore where you can share outfit inspirations and shop products.  Let’s take a further look into what makes a successful website for the fashion and apparel industry.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Both product photography and branding photography are top priorities for fashion and apparel websites. Great product photography can offer multiple views, and thus act as virtual customer service for products that cannot be tried on. Multi views highlight the best attributes and can help drive customers to purchase.

Photo shoots and lookbooks serve as advertisements and are the medium through which you can communicate with your audience. Photographs can strongly influence how your customers perceive products and your brand as a whole.

BRANDING AND AESTHETICS

As mentioned, everything for fashion and apparel websites must be visual with carefully curated aesthetic choices. More than just having great photography to showcase products, your branding should induce a feeling through its message. If you are re-branding or looking to redesign your website, extra effort should be made in the initial research phase.

Having a home page that is dedicated to large format pictures is an industry standard, and if you have the budget, video content is also a very dynamic and effective way to show products and branded content.

Generally speaking, fashion websites have minimalist aesthetic which draws attention to the products. The use of black and white color schemes make it look clean, elegant and can add an air of sophistication (a). In addition, special attention is placed on font types and display (b).

Minimalist Web Design for Fashion

a. Acne Studios

 

Screen Shot 2015-06-18 at 10.52.11 AMb. Nasty Gal

DESIGN AND USABILITY

Having a clear navigation structure can help with conversion. This goes along with a minimalist design approach. As a rule of thumb, try not to hide your products too far from the homepage. Shoppable items should be no more than two clicks away. You should think about the person who may have discovered you via social media or another online source, so make it easy for them to navigate and shop.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is a great marketing tool for fashion and apparel brands, especially social media outlets that are reliant on photos and photo sharing. Think Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Polyvore. Pinterest has taken this relationship a step further by partnering with Shopify to offer shoppable pins. To read more about this partnership, see our previous 1DA blog article Good News for Shopify Merchants: Sell You Products on Pinterest 

Since visual branding is everything social media can be a perfect outlet. It is also great for referral traffic and can help generate product reviews, especially if content and products get reposted by customers.

If you feel like your fashion and apparel site needs a makeover or you are a launching a site for the first time, we suggest that you first check out Awwwards for design and aesthetic inspiration. After you have a clear vision and a to do list, our designers at 1Digital Agency would be happy to work together with you to design a fabulously chic, shoppable and minimalist site.

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Joe Chilson

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BigCommerce Pros

  • All-in-one SaaS solution that provides hosting and templates for building and customizing a storefront, along with analytical, inventory management, and marketing tools.
  • The platform is supported by a huge ecosystem of designers, developers, digital marketing professionals, and thousands of apps. The open API is also compatible with countless third-party tools.
  • With multiple subscription plans available, starting at $29.95, BigCommerce can be both affordable and highly scalable.
  • BigCommerce does not charge transaction fees.

BigCommerce Cons

  • BigCommerce does not natively support additional languages. To do so you will need to integrate a third-party app.
  • BigCommerce imposes yearly sales limits; if your website sells more than the threshold you’ll be automatically upgraded to a higher plan, incurring additional (and potentially unexpected) costs.
  • There are a limited number of free themes available (though many premium themes are available for purchase, and the large BigCommerce ecosystem supports developers who can design and code custom themes and templates).

Shopify Pros

  • The Shopify platform is a hosted, SaaS platform that is ideal for those that are not technically savvy. The website builder is easy to use, even for those with no coding or development experience. It is also compatible with a variety of free themes and integrates easily with countless apps and third-party tools.
  • Shopify offers excellent, 24/7 support and a wide range of robust marketing and inventory management tools.
  • Shopify supports a huge network of developers, designers, and digital marketers; the so-called Shopify ecosystem. There are also over 7,000 Shopify apps, along with countless others that are compatible.
  • Even though it is a templated SaaS platform, it is still relatively easy to make basic customizations to Shopify websites though its easy-to-use website builder. The available themes are also designed to be editing-friendly so you can make basic changes.

Shopify Cons

  • Shopify charges transaction fees, depending on your subscription plan.
  • While Shopify does have a built-in blog, the native blog is lacking in content marketing functionality, with inflexible layouts, an outdated blog editor, and no native option to create blog categories.
  • Migration from Shopify is not particularly easy to do. All you can do is export a CSV file and use that to support the migration, so it is best handled by eCommerce migration professionals.
  • Both apps and paid themes (though there are a lot of them) can be pricey.

Magento Pros

  • Because Magento is an open-source eCommerce platform, it is effectively limitless in the scope of customizations that can be made. You’re limited by your development skills. As a result of its open-source nature, it also offers excellent omnichannel capabilities.
  • Magento supports a large community of hundreds of thousands of developers around the world, so help is available.
  • Magento offers helpful regulatory and compliance features, such as a GDPR extension, which is useful for businesses working with European customers. Magento also supports select tax and accounting functionalities.
  • The granular level of control you have over the structure and functionality of your website makes it easy (though resource-intensive) to produce a hyper-optimized store, with respect to SEO, landing page optimization, and conversion-rate optimization.

Magento Cons

  • Magento demands an extremely high level of technical acumen and can be extremely resource intensive and expensive to manage.
  • The platform requires users to manage their own hosting, and requires them to keep up with platform version and security updates.
  • Magento is far more difficult to manage and customize than most SaaS platforms, and it is very difficult (nearly impossible) for someone with no coding/development experience to launch and manage a Magento store.

Volusion Pros

  • Volusion is fully-hosted and fairly affordable, and does not claim transaction fees.
  • Volusion offers abandoned cart recovery tools, SEO tools, a mobile app, is a secure platform, has a native review feature, and accepts a wide range of payment methods in multiple currencies.
  • Volusion has powerful inventory management and marketing tools, including product videos, suggested products, and “deal of the day” features.
  • Volusion offers 24/7 customer support for all plans.

Volusion Cons

  • Volusion offers a limited theme selection and only 11 are free.
  • Volusion only offers limited native functionality and has no built-in blog.
  • While building a store with Volusion is fairly easy and straightforward, some users will find it very hard to make customizations to the platform without extensive development experience. Other users even say the the editor is somewhat confusing to use.