The online fashion industry is undergoing a period of change more significant than most. Off the back of a pandemic, consumers became more demanding, but also more socially conscious. Coupled with supply chain issues and reduced high street sales, this put even more pressure on eCommerce. So how can today’s fashion retailers meet these changing expectations? And how can they leverage their online presence to better assure customers? It starts with addressing these five key fashion website issues.
1. High Return Rates
Fashion retail has a notoriously high return rate, averaging between 18 and 20%. With logistics costs, sustainability and resale to consider, this could spell huge losses for brands. Most of it can be mitigated with some simple website changes.
Sizing is understandably a common issue, particularly for women. A transparent sizing chart that doesn’t hinder the overall page experience may prevent returns. Similarly, colour issues were also to blame for failing customer expectations. More consistency around image files offers a simple solution.
Another option is to install a live chat system on a fashion retail site. Interaction with this should be measured, while its overall design should not hinder people’s browsing on desktop or mobile sites.
2. Unreasonable Shipping Options
How many times have you gone through the checkout process only to be put off by shipping costs? You’re not alone. One out of three online shoppers will abandon a brand to seek one with cheaper shipping costs.
This does not mean making a dent in your margins by offering free shipping. Instead, a range of options should be available, including click and collect where possible. This should be transparent on product pages and/or in footers, as well as website navigation.
Today’s shoppers want the best products at the best prices – and they don’t want to spend hours searching for them. One of the major fashion website issues includes poorly designed sites. These can make finding products a nightmare, whether it’s a badly functioning or non-existent search bar, or mislabelled categories.
More than a quarter of customers say relying on branding rather than keywords puts them off, while four in 10 took a disliking to badly designed menus. This needs to translate on mobile, too – making use of burger menus where appropriate and not overlapping elements.
A study into Google’s Core Web Vitals will determine if any elements are stopping your users from interacting.
4. Slow-Loading Pages
Those Core Web Vitals strike again. Fashion shoppers have no tolerance for slow-loading pages, and even a 1-second delay can cause a 7% decrease in conversion rates. Likewise, 90% of users will bounce (leave after viewing only one page) if they have to wait four seconds. With time-limited campaign drops, fashion websites need to be quick to avoid disappointing customers.
Monitoring your website performance can identify the bottlenecks in your site speeds. Looking at metrics like First Input Delay and Largest Contentful Paint will highlight which images or other media are slowing down your site. Better still, you can use this information to make changes, such as minifying CSS.
5. Failed Payments
As with any eCommerce website, transactional security is the #1 priority. Naturally, any vendor should have an SSL certificate and encrypt user data. But we also need to look at the payment process itself – are there fatal crashes at the point of payment that impede the sale?
In 2021, more than $118.5 billion was lost in online sales due to failed payments. These can happen for any number of reasons. Often, they are customer-related, such as expired cards, but they can also come down to simple issues like not being able to save payment details.
A synthetic user journey can highlight any payment issues your customers may encounter. Likewise, uptime monitoring can identify causes of outages to prevent critical losses – ideal for sales periods.
Fashion Website Issues? Streamline your User Journey with RapidSpike
Your eCommerce store should be up and running 24 hours a day, providing customers with a seamless buying experience. RapidSpike helps to identify any stumbling blocks to the perfect checkout process, as well as alert you to downtime or security breaches. Get in touch to arrange your free demo for eCommerce today.
For more information on how RapidSpike helps fashion websites, see our case studies:
