Avoiding Mistakes With The Best Practices For Apparel Ecommerce Businesses

Nowadays, many people tend to start an apparel ecommerce business. Not all of them end up being successful. Have you already thought of the reasons? There are multiple mistakes that every first-level business does. Let’s see the most common mistakes as well as the best practices of an apparel ecommerce business.

Mistakes to avoid as an apparel e-commerce business

1. You underestimate the power of planning

Before starting and while you run the business you need to keep planning and researching everything related to the industry to ensure that you are ready to build your business. Planning means creating a Marketing and Financial plan. Through the Marketing Plan, you will set your mission statement, your brand’s promise, the touchpoints, and the brand’s image.

Furthermore, it will be easier for you to target your potential customers and learn more about your competitors. “Which social media platforms are you going to use and what tools?”, “What is the competitive advantage of your brand?”, these questions may help you build the marketing plan easier.

Also, what about a Financial Plan? Planning your budget has to be one of your very first steps. Some of the objectives of Financial Planning are ensuring available funds, estimating time and sources of funds, generating capital structure, and avoiding unnecessary funds.

2. You are not focusing on your stock

Stock is very important to your business since you are a fashion brand. Remember that you have to avoid overstocking out-of-style/out-of-fashion/ irrelevant clothes because they have “expiration dates” due to fashion trends.

Nowadays, customers ask for many requirements when they order products. In particular, they need:

a. High-quality products and

b. Fast delivery

When orders don’t arrive on time, this affects your customer’s experience as well as your brand’s reputation. In other words, you will have to be careful while handling your product delivery.

3. You’re mishandling your product delivery

Have you considered overselling? When you choose to sell your apparel through multiple online channels one of the common mistakes is that you may list the same products on different channels. What will this cause? You may end up selling by accident one product to two different customers which will buy it from different channels.

This mistake is directly related to your customer’s experience. Try to see it from your client’s perspective. Imagine buying a product from a brand and then contacting you to inform you that the product is not available anymore. This maybe would lead you to stop purchasing from them.

4. You’re not asking for help

Do you think you can do everything on your own? One person can’t run the whole business. Trying to keep up with all the aspects of the brand, from designing to sending the orders will not bring out the desirable results.

Are you doing any of these mistakes? If the answer is yes, then let’s see how you can avoid them.

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How to avoid these mistakes?

1. Plan extensively

First of all, you have to plan extensively! Start by preparing a marketing plan and an advertising strategy before it is too late. Which social media platforms are suitable for your product? Try to choose depending on your target group. For example, if apparel is designed for older ages maybe Facebook could turn out more profitable compared with TikTok.

Furthermore, create a timetable with dates and months including what you are going to invest in. Don’t forget to write down the goals you want to achieve. This way it will be easier to notice if you are doing something incorrectly.

2. Split the tasks

Doing everything on your own is a very frustrating process. Choose to build a team with the qualifications that your business needs. Then work closely with them to bring the brand to life and help you achieve your goals easily through teamwork. Plan their training and spend time to reach the maximum level of efficiency.

3. Avoid overstocking errors

Choose an inventory management software solution with which you will be able to manage your stock. It’s very important to choose an inventory application to create and track sales and purchase orders as well as check your stock levels. 

All these features are provided by Megaventory and you can start your trial here.

4. Avoid Delivery Errors

Doing research for the available delivery companies is another one of the best practices to improve your apparel ecommerce business. Then you can create a list out of which you can choose the trustworthy companies. You can then avoid product delivery problems by picking which one you will move forward with.

Another tip that will improve the customer’s experience is offering a variety of delivery methods. For example, delivery to customer’s house or office, pick up from your locations, pick up from dedicated points, etc.

To sum up

There are plenty of difficulties when starting your own apparel ecommerce business. However, by organizing a plan, including some of the best practices such as splitting tasks, developing a marketing and a financial plan, and avoiding overstocking and understocking errors, you will be able to deflect the most common mistakes of apparel ecommerce businesses.