Tips

Interested in a fashion (or fashion planning) website?

There are many reasons why someone may be interested in starting a fashion website, and all reasons are relevant.  As the web is the fastest way to share information, you may be someone who is interested in following trends, keeping up with celebrity trends, or looking for new ideas for your own wardrobe (ex: http://stylebubble.typepad.com/).  You may be a fashion designer or stylist yourself and need a website to easily show your design portfolio to employers, photographers, models, or potential clients (ex: http://elleleary.com/).  Or you may already have a business in the fashion field and need an online presence or eCommerce website...maybe you own a retail boutique and you want your customers to be able to take a second look at what they already saw on location, or vice versa.  They may look online, find a piece they like, and then come to the store to try it on (ex: http://playcouture.com/).  In any situation, having a fashion website is crucial in developing a name for yourself worldwide.

How do I start my own fashion website (fashion website development)?

Before you begin your fashion website development, you should draw up a plan to figure out what you want to get out of the site.  Once you’ve established that, you want to think about what key pages are essential to get your point across.  In the fashion industry, some of the most important pages to consider are a photo gallery, a fashion blog, calendar of fashion events, and quite possibly an eCommerce website with a shopping cart for retail fashion items (ex: http://bcatthreads.com).  In the photo gallery, you can share photos of fashion events that you attended, highlights of seasons’ trends, photo shoots, and wardrobe ideas (ex: http://christiesboutique.com/gallery.html).  The fashion blog can be created as an online journal of your travels through the fashion world, it can be made informative about events that your viewers might be interested in, exciting news about your fashion business, it can show how-to pictures of mixing and matching looks, and can highlight other places to find more information (ex: http://bcatthreads.com/news.html).  A calendar can pinpoint fashion industry special events that you know are going on in your area, around the world, on television, or something your business is involved with.  You can list fashion shows, fashion design contests, the upcoming “Project Runway” episode, or new fashion related movies coming out in the theaters (ex: http://fortune421.com/p-1148-events.html).  And, of course, the eCommerce shopping cart can be used for items in fashion that you wish to sell to your customers.  Boutique owners would want to sell the merchandise that they offer in their store online, or you may strictly sell retail merchandise online.

How do I design my fashion website (fashion website design)?

Once you have an idea of what substance you would like your fashion website to have, its time to think about designing the site.  The design of a website is just as important as the information that is found on the site.  It is the first thing that people see and it is the one thing that captures their attention immediately. In knowing this, you should keep in mind that too much clutter (as in too many words, too many pictures, or too much information on your home page) will drive a person away from your site.  You want to develop something simple, clean, and interesting to look at.  But, you also want it to be unique and represent you (ex: http://calyxclothing.com/).  Also, if you don’t have experience in web design, it is best to go to an outside source to help you in developing your fashion website (ex: http://webdesignsolutions.com).  While most people in the fashion industry have a great eye for art, and understand the appreciation for art, this does not mean that they have the ability to develop a tasteful website.  There are people who design websites for a living and know what works and what doesn’t.  If the web designers have any credentials at all, they will have worked with both successful and failures of websites and know what is the most appealing to the general population based on their previous experience.  So the saying goes “do what you do best, outsource the rest”.  You can find an established web designer in many different ways, but one of the best ways is doing research on well established designers who have positive reviews from their clients.  Web Design Solutions has very creative designers with a vast portfolio of work, who have designed a number of fashion websites - they are well established, and have great reviews from their already existent clients.  A case study of some of their successful fashion websites are listed here: http://webshopmanager.com/p-695-clothing-apparel-fashion-ecommerce.html

How do I gain success from my fashion website (fashion website marketing)?

Once your fashion website is up and running, the most important thing to do is keep it updated.  People often get discouraged when they visit a website and see that nothing is changing, and so they stop visiting altogether.  Even if you are using your website as a portfolio, but haven’t created any new work, you may want to change other things.  This is why a blog is very beneficial to a fashion website - when you have a fashion blog on your site, you not only have the opportunity to talk about your own work, but you can also talk about related fields or topics that the same reader may be interested in.  And writing new blog posts will keep the reader coming back and finding new information every time they visit the site.  Another benefit of having the blog is so that you can create an online experience for your viewer.  You can harvest a social network of people who have similar passions for the fashion industry, or may have similar style and taste that you may have.  While most trendsetters tend to go out on their own and develop a never-seen-before look and don’t want their own style to be compared to anyone else, there may be someone else out there who appreciates that you took that step in a new direction, or they want to follow your new trend. 

Deciding that you want to sell your products or services online is exciting. Trying to figure out what you need to make it happen can be exhausting. Finding the right company and program for developing your site can be frustrating and expensive. I experienced all of these feelings and more when assigned the task to create an ecommerce site for my employer.

If you sell a product or service developing an ecommerce site may be critical to the continued success of your business. Businesses today can no longer afford to think locally. Instead, businesses must think globally, and an ecommerce site expands your business into the global marketplace like no brick and mortar business ever could.

1. Your ecommerce solution must be easy to use for the company and the customer. Find a program that will create a storefront, shopping cart and will process credit card payments with little or no development on your part. It is always important to select a firm that offers a complete one-stop ecommerce solution. This will ensure that everything can be integrated properly without compatibility problems or relying on several different services or companies to work together.
2. Solution Provider must offer exceptional customer service. It is important that you can depend on the company to be there when you need them most, when you have a question or a problem. Find a company with a great track record for reliability.
3. Includes functions for inventory and accounting. You need this to be fluid. Do not make more work for yourself ensure that the program includes features to maintain inventory and offers the ability to export data for use with external accounting programs.
4. Ensures the requirements for SSL, Merchant Accounts and your Payment Gateway are met (critical elements to a successful site). There are several technical and critical components you need to have for a functioning ecommerce site. I recommend finding a company that includes setting up and assisting you with the steps for accepting your payments for goods or services rendered online.
5. Supports and establishes your overall design and menu structure of your site. A company that includes a design team will take your vision and make it a reality. Also, ensure they take the design and establish the template for creating your entire site. You should also have the ability to change or add to your menus without creating or editing programming code.
6. Helps you reach your goals within your budget and have options for monthly hosting fees. You need options and the options should include different levels for hosting your site. These levels should be in line with the size of your business, but would not restrict your growth. Find a company that will allow you to start out small or large.
7. Offers tools to analyze your site activity, i.e. #number of visitors, searched phrases, and # of orders. You will need to review your site for enhancements or changes based on visitor activity. There are many tools available for monitoring your visitors. Make it easier on yourself and find a company that includes this data.
8. Includes customizing functions to use for different views based upon the type of customer, i.e. business-to-business, business-to-consumer, or business-to-employee. If you plan to sell your products or services to different groups of people with special prices for each; then you will need to ensure that the feature to set up this type of structure is included in your site development program.
9. Includes features for developing customer friendly information, i.e. image gallery, FAQ, store locator, and news. These features engage your customer so they come back more often. They should be easy for you to set up and maintain.
10. Find a company that has a track record of short down-time (times when your site is unavailable due to technical problems or not enough band width.) Just remember that bigger and cheaper is not always better. Find the company that has the hardware and structure to support their customers and have plans for growth as their client base increases.

After researching solutions providers, get fresh, found Web Design Solutions and their program Web Shop Manager! Not only did their program have all the features we needed to easily create our site, but they also have a team with exceptional customer service. Web Design Solutions guided us through every phase of development and ensured we were ready for our launch. Our site and the tools available to create all the features exceeded our original expectations. Without Wed Design Solutions and Web Shop Manager, our site may not have been as dynamic, easy to maintain, and user-friendly. They provided web design, hosting, ecommerce solutions, and content management packages to let us control as much of the website as we desired whether it's managing our products, the checkout process, or informational pages.

We found that ecommerce website development is quite simple when using the right tools. You can see the results for yourself. Check us out at www.getfresh.net, and then visit Web Design Solutions at www.webdesignsolutions.com to get started on your site today!

Paulette Palladino, get fresh