Volusion's marketing experts are here to show you how to effectively promote and sell apparel, jewelry, and home goods online. In this webinar, our experts explain how to create marketing campaigns for the unique needs of the fashion industry. From SEO best practices to social media, this is your ultimate guide to grow your fashion business.
Growing a Fashion Business | How to Sell Clothes, Jewelry and Home Goods Online - [Allison] Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's webinar: Growing a Fashion Business Online. Before we start, I want to let everyone know you will be receiving these slides and a recording in about two days' time. The deck sent out will also include a bonus slide with a bunch of really helpful resources. So keep an eye out for that. We're also going to have an exclusive giveaway at the end of the webinar, for webinar attendees only. To qualify, you're going to have to tweet. So get your Twitters ready. In the meantime, you can also join the conversation at #sellinginstyle. All right. So let's get started. Today's agenda includes meeting the hosts, covering the unique challenges we face when marketing style-oriented merchandise. Then we'll talk about the importance of savvy differentiation, finding your niche, and carving out your brand. Next, we'll cover product page setup, which is profoundly important. Then we'll conclude with specific tactics that work really well for the fashion industry. At the very end, we're going to have a Q&A section. So please, send us your questions as we move along. No need to wait until the very end. Send them through now or, of course, you can tweet those questions at #sellinginstyle. All right. So let's meet the hosts. Let me introduce myself first. My name is Allison Garrison, and I'm a search marketing manager. I've been with Volusion nearly seven years now. I'm passionate about business strategy, and my background is deeply rooted in SEO, branding, and content. When it comes to my personal fashion consumption, I'm an avid Pinterest user and, frankly, I spend a little too much of my time investigating clothes for my toddler and my dog, because nothing makes me happier than a well-dressed baby and dog. - [Samantha] I can personally attest that you have the most fabulously dressed baby and dog. - Thank you. - Hello. I'm Samantha. I'm a search marketing specialist, here at Volusion, with about four years of experience, working in the digital marketing industry. I'm originally from New York, but just moved to Texas last winter. I'm extremely passionate about SEO, branding, keeping up with the latest trends on social media. When I'm not here at Volusion, you can find me paddle-boarding or spending hours perusing Tumblr for fashion and interior design ideas. - Absolutely. So let's get started by addressing your biggest challenges as fashion industry professionals. - Well, first and foremost, when it comes to online stores, fashion is a crowded marketplace. Most business owners open up a store because they're passionate about the industry. They want to sell something that they truly enjoy, understand, and believe in. Unfortunately that makes for a saturated marketplace, and competition can be fierce, which brings us to our second challenge. Even if your product offerings are solid, and there's a demand for what you offer, smaller retailers can be overshadowed in the search results by big competitors. Entrenched brands, like Nordstrom, Forever 21, J. Crew, they already possess significant brand awareness and great social media activity, solid website authority, and they already have earned many natural links. This helps their SEO and continues to grow their audience even larger. - Right. So we're not just competing for visibility with niche boutiques like our own, but also with these large brands, which brings us to challenge number three. Search engines are machines. So they don't really get fashion on a human level. Fashion is largely aesthetic, emotional, and conceptual, things that are really hard to relay to search engines because they can't really evaluate an image the way a human can yet. Who knows what the future holds, but right now they can't. Algorithms rely on website content and tags to understand what you're selling and what each page is about. That means your keyword selection is of critical importance, and we'll talk about this in a little bit of detail later on in the webinar. - Lastly, challenge number four. You run a business, and you have a finite amount of time to devote to marketing, and that's really what the heart of this webinar is all about. We want to show you which tactics are worth your time and your effort and provide tips to make your store stand out from the crowd, as well as reach the right market for your product set. - So on that note, we've identified three strategies for overcoming these challenges: differentiation, setting up products for maximum exposure, and focusing on the tactics that work, and that means throwing out the ones that are a waste of your time. - All right. Remember that challenge number one? It's a saturated marketplace. So you need to clearly stake out who you are and differentiate yourself clearly and effectively. This will impact everything, from your branding strategy to targeting your audience and selecting your keywords. - As a general rule of thumb, we recommend starting by targeting a niche market and growing your success from there. So you're far more likely to gain traction for something like retro-inspired women's bathing suits, than with a broader concept like swimwear. - There are many real-life examples of companies that have leveraged this strategy into multi-million-dollar enterprises. Companies like Bonobos has had huge success with this theory. If you're not familiar, Bonobos started with a specific type of men's khakis that promised an impeccable fit. This specific approach made them wildly successful, and now they offer a full array of impeccably fit men's clothes. It makes sense to build your brand on your biggest strength, establish yourself in the market, and then expand to your loyal customer base. Just make sure that you're expanding into areas that make sense with your flagship niche. For Bonobos, it's men's clothes that are well-fitted. - This strategy always reminds me of a client I worked with maybe five years ago. She was very dialed into fashion and knew that skinny jeans were going to be big for at least a few seasons, at a minimum. She also knew, though, that skinny jeans weren't the most comfortable for everyone, and she mentioned a product that she carried and liked a lot, called Jeggings. - Oh, I love Jeggings. - Me too. I could sleep in Jeggings. They're so comfortable. So I looked at Google Trends at the time, and phrases like "Jeggings" were gaining search following. Right? As you can see with this red circle, it was on the rise for that time. It was on an upswing. So we strongly targeted Jegging phrases, and, lo and behold, search went through the roof. It's actually still pretty strong today. If you watch that trend, it's on an upward trend still. So I know women still want their Jeggings. I do. Heck, I think even men are wearing Jeggings now. She made a fortune. It was a very profitable niche to target and start with. On a side note, what you're seeing here on the screen is Google Trends. If you haven't used it, I highly recommend it. - I definitely recommend it as well, Allison. Google Trends is super helpful when doing market research. - Absolutely. - So once you've defined your niche, it's time to start learning about your audience. Begin by digging into Google Analytics, Bing Analytics, Facebook Insights, to get the lowdown on your customers. Pinpoint demographic information, like maybe age, gender, and location. It's also a good idea to look at your competitors, because chances are they are trying to target the same audience. After you've compiled all this information, create personas that represent your target audience. Personas help store owners truly understand their customers by defining their needs and their values. It's also easier to craft messaging and marketing materials that are effective and connect on an emotional level. So here, we have an example of two personas that would be applicable for two different types of fashion businesses. The first one, Leah, is a 37-year-old mother of three with a college degree. She's a little bit older. So she owns a home, and she's looking for cute, but functional, clothing that she can wear every day. Because she has children, she still needs this clothing to have a great price point and stand up to the everyday wear-and-tear. So for example, this persona may fit for a clothing store like Old Navy, which has a lower price point, but is also fashionable and fun. - I got to say I am someone who identifies with Leah. I'm very much like her, and that's something I look for, is clothes that are easy to care for, which fits into her lifestyle. I have a baby, a dog, two cats, and I have not seen an ironing board in probably more than two years. All right. So our second persona here is a younger male. Mark is 25. He's what we like to call an urban professional. He wants to have fun and look good doing it. He goes to brunch a lot. He doesn't really want to care for his clothes or look like he's trying too hard. This persona might be a good fit for a company like Zara or Bonobos. Next up, we want to do our competitive research. Start with three to five direct competitors. These probably will not be the Nordstroms and Macy's of the world, but rather stores that are really functioning in your specific niche. Review their website thoroughly, with attention to things like aesthetics and graphic design. Consider the brand voice they use with their written communication. - Also, look at what they're promoting, as you can tell a little bit about their strategy and focus from this. Consider how their website is maybe structured. How is their navigation and category organization laid out? What does this tell you about their business strategy? Consider their advertising. Just Google their brand and look at the search results. Are they doing paid search? Maybe they're showing up in the shopping feeds. Their social media channels can also give you a wealth of information. After all, brands are typically more personal on these social networks. So look at Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, even their blog. If you want to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing on a weekly or monthly basis, you can even add them to your "Pages to Watch" section of the Facebook Insights. All of these things will help you to discern who your competition is targeting, how they are doing it, and you can borrow the good ideas, leave out the bad, and try to adapt these ideas to fit your individual brand and tone. Once you have mapped out all of the competitive landscape, state how you're different and better, and then drive that home to your customers. - Once you have a solid understanding of your target market and competition, you need to clearly define who you are, and that's your brand. Solid branding is more than a logo. It reflects your company values, influences how you speak to your customers, and impacts how your customers feel when they interact with your store. If you get your branding right, it adds value, increases conversions, and separates you from the competition. - Your brand voice is essentially what you use to engage and motivate your customers. So it's very important and should remain consistent on all mediums and platforms. - Simply imagine your brand as a person and describe that person. For example, Betsy Johnson here, over on the left. She is pretty much the personification of her brand. She's exuberant, maybe a little eccentric, wild, over the top, fashionably tacky, and a bit rock-and-roll. - We would love to know how you would describe your brand personality. So tweet it at us, at #sellinginstyle, and we'll take a look. - I can't wait to review those. - Next, it is important to define your brand's value proposition. Most great stores know their selling proposition, which is that special quality that makes them both attractive and memorable. If you don't already know yours, start thinking about what makes your store stand out to your target market. Ask yourself why customers should bypass your options to shop ...why customers would bypass other people's options to shop with you. Whatever it is, your selling proposition should help you convince customers that you're the best source for the products that you sell. It might be free or fast shipping or no-hassle returns, kind of like Zappo's, or maybe a free gift with purchase. I've definitely seen a few stores include handwritten thank-you notes with some styling tips, and that definitely made a difference to me. - That's something big-box brands just can't do. There are some advantages to being a smaller brand, and one of them is you can establish a sense of intimacy that the big guys just can't touch. - Yeah, agreed. The ability to create that connection is definitely a big potential value proposition. The bottom line is you need to know where you fit in the fashion ecosystem, and this can really help you understand your target market and better communicate with it. - Something that's always really appealed to me is when a store aligns themselves with charities, social causes, and philanthropy. - Oh, yeah. I totally agree. Think about Toms. For each pair of shoes you buy from Toms, they'll donate a pair to a child in need. This unique selling proposition helped them gain immense popularity because customers were able to connect and understood that their purchase was actually making a difference. Now that you've defined your brand, you have to ensure that your messaging resonates with your customers by invoking an emotional response. Consider possible emotional motivations for buying your products, and then use these emotions to help motivate your customers to make a purchase. You can do this through all mediums, whether it's your website product descriptions, social media or email newsletters, but the bottom line is you have to gain their trust. A really great way of doing this is making your customers feel like they're on the inside. You should be connecting with them individually to make them feel like they know you and that they are valued. - All right. So we've staked out your place in the shopping ecosystem, as we like to call it. Now let's talk about some specific strategies for increasing online visibility and driving that traffic that converts, the first of which is setting up your products for maximum visibility. How you set up your products ultimately decides how well they will perform in the search results and then how often they're purchased. Just as a fun teaser, this section is highly relevant to our free giveaway at the end of the webinar. So stay tuned for that. - Send us your questions at any point during the webinar, or tweet at us, using the #sellinginstyle. So first and foremost, when setting up your products, they should clearly communicate what the product actually is and what sets it apart. This could be having fabulous price points, great quality, a strong customer following, demonstrated through those helpful reviews that we've seen, or offering consistent fits, which I know is a big concern for many online shoppers. But whatever makes you stand apart, it should be written loud and proud on your product page, in the description. Next, try to be as transparent as possible, to increase your conversions and limit your returns. Your customers can't try on the clothes before they place an order, so provide helpful information, like size charts and images. You can even list clothing length details right in the product description. It can be beneficial to even reveal how the clothing fits on a model in the picture. For instance, listing the model's measurements gives the customer a point of reference, and they're able to imagine how it would look on them. I've seen Forever 21 do this a lot, and it's really a great conversion tool. - So next on our SEO checklist, we want to make products SEO-ready. When we talk about SEO, we're referring to the natural visibility to the search engines, like Google, Bing, Yahoo, give to your products and your homepage, category pages. These are not paid results, but rather the results Google and Bing choose to display when someone searches for something. Okay. First things first, remember to create unique product descriptions, even if the manufacturer provides you with a fabulous product description, and they often do. It's best to create your own, to avoid duplicate content issues. Just keep in mind that, with that manufacturer's review, there are going to be hundreds, maybe thousands of other pages out there with that exact same content. So who will Google display? The odds are against you. - When writing these descriptions, pretend you're a personal shopper. What would you want to see? What would get you to click that "Add to Cart" button? Feel free to give styling advice in this section or provide more information about the fit, the material, or even appropriate occasions to wear the item. The description is where you help customers decide if the product is right for them. Next, product names and descriptions should include highly descriptive, long-tail keyword phrases. We'll delve into this pretty deep in a bit. Don't forget to encourage reviews after your customers receive products. Volusion embeds schema markup on product pages. So these reviews will show up in the search results, which makes your product more appealing to customers when they're performing a search, as you can see in this example. Reviews help to build the customer confidence in your products, and also have been proven to decrease returns and improve conversion rates. - I know when I see a search result like the one here, with those stars, I'm really visually drawn to that page. - Definitely. - All right. So I promised you some keyword information here. We mentioned using more descriptive keyword phrases in our last slide, and I want to delve into that pretty deep here because it's really of critical importance. Let's take a look at these dresses together. So if you were to be vague, you could describe each one of these as a red dress. Right? But in reality, you can also see how really different they are. There are more to these red dresses than a broad term like "red dress" really communicates. That's because there's nuance to fashion, and this is something I talk to a lot of my colleagues about, and we sort of debate about it. Nuance is something that search engines really have a hard time with. They need to be told explicitly what a product is and what it's about. So if I Google "red dress," Google is going to give me a very diverse results set, and I'll have to dig much deeper to find the type of red dress I want. It's great for window shopping, but not so great for conversion. Chances are, if I'm close to purchasing, I have a bit more in mind about the dress I want, like style or length or specific characteristics. I'll probably use those more descriptive keyword phrases to communicate that to the search engines. - Yes. If you're looking for a one-shoulder evening dress, like the second one pictured here, you're not going to be satisfied if the search engines pull up a listing for that white and red, knee-length floral dress to the right. Unfortunately this tends to happen when apparel companies use broad keywords when describing their products. As a result, the products get lost in the sauce. - Right. So to keep your dress from being lost in a sea of dresses, it's best to look for descriptive phrases that signal more specific purchase intent, such as, in the case of the dress on the right, tee-length, floral red dress would be more appropriate. - You can also use trend and style phrases to differentiate your products and heighten their search visibility. Take the first dress, for example. It's edgier and trendier and can be described in a multitude of ways, such as red chiffon skater dress or red-and-black, fit-and-flare dress. There are many different ways to describe certain items of clothing, and these modifiers can significantly help increase your chances of success with your keywords. - I can personally attest to that. I have searched for fashion, using modifiers like "flattering." I know I've searched for flattering jeans more than once. I even went through what I called biker chic, a biker chic phase. So here's where knowing your audience is really helpful in determining those keywords that you should be targeting. And yet, there's more. We really want to drive this point home because keywords are critical. Search engines really rely on text rather than photographs. So you need these descriptive keywords, and we recommend targeting three to five per page. These keyword phrases should include unique descriptive modifiers. - When deciding on your keyword, it's really helpful to think of your product's identifying factors. Think of brand name, style, color, material, or occasion. Like we said before, someone is not simply going to search for something as general as a red dress. They're going to use these identifiers to narrow down their results, to find the ideal dress, whether it's for a specific occasion or even a specific trending style. - Exactly. So let's take this dress over on he left, for instance. It's not just a black dress. It's a black boho maxi dress. I could even throw button-down in there because that's a pretty distinct characteristic of the dress. So a second keyword for this product page could be "black, button-down maxi dress for summer" or something like that. The second example we have here, the gentleman on the right, men's green lightweight rain jacket would fit the bill, or we could do something like "olive green waterproof jacket." We could also include a brand name. If this was a well-known brand with brand awareness and search volume, the brand name would be appropriate there. Okay. I think that I've talked about keywords quite enough. I just want to drive home the fact that they're important. We discussed it on the last three slides. So we'll move on, but keywords, they're important. - Now that we've talked about how to communicate to the search engines, let's talk about how to engage the user. Easily, the most important part of a product for fashion is the pictures. Showcase multiple high-resolution pictures of the item being worn from a variety of different angles. This will enhance the user experience and remove doubt, which can be a purchase barrier with online shopping. You want to ensure that your customer has only one lingering question before they purchase: how many should I buy? High-quality pictures are also great for sharing on social media, and they're very important for paid-search options as well, like shopping fees. Essentially good photos help a customer decide if they want to make the purchase. In turn, that improves conversion rates. If you're selling clothing, try showing your items on models instead of laying them flat, and don't cut off the model's face. It's important to showcase how the products will look on actual people, to provide context. - Here, in our example, Anthropology does a great job with this, as you can see in this image. It's very beautiful, highly detailed, high resolution. They always offer multiple angles of their products. They even have a gallery, if you look closely, where just everyday people can share images of their own, of them wearing the dress. - If you're handy with a video camera, try creating some videos for your products. I've seen QVC do this a ton, but it's really effective to give your customers a better idea of the fit and the design and the quality of an item. I personally know how frustrating it can be to see an item that you like, but you hesitate on buying it because you're unsure if it's going to look good, or what the material looks like in certain lighting. - If you'd like more tips on how to make great product photos for your website, our colleague, Juliann, put together an amazing DIY product photography resource guide. It lives on the Volusion blog. Of course, we'll include a link to that in our bonus resource slide that'll be included in the slide deck we send out in a couple days here. - Now that your products are primed for online visibility and conversion, let's talk about marketing tactics that work for fashion stores. So we've definitely touched on SEO already with our keyword slides in the product section, but we're going to dive a little deeper now. In terms of SEO, categorization for fashion can be extremely complicated. As a best practice, we suggest offering a variety of sorting options to help your customers find exactly what they need, in the easiest way possible. For instance, when talking about clothing, you might like to sort by the type of occasion, color, material, or clothing type. Occasion is definitely a big one for me, personally, especially if I'm looking for dresses. I don't want to have to scroll all the way through pages and pages of dresses to find a formal dress that was hidden on pages with a bunch of casual ones. Installing a mega menu can also help customers navigate your site more effectively, while keeping your display clean and visually engaging as well. - Another great option is allowing customers to filter within categories to find the products they want faster. So you can see in this example in the slide, it's mod cloth. They allow you to, once you get into a category or subcategory, to also filter pages by things like color, length, size, that sort of thing. Keep in mind, as an SEO, I feel like I have to say this. Filtered pages are great for user experience. However, if they are dynamically generated, meaning that software creates them on the fly, and most are, they are not static pages that can be optimized for search engines. So that's a little limitation. But at the end of the day, it's fabulous for conversion and user experience. So we highly recommend including a filtering system. All right. Content strategy, something I'm really passionate about, is another critical part of SEO. It allows you to build brand awareness by establishing your company as a thought leader. A good content strategy will capture leads at different stages of the buying cycle. For example, someone might Google "how to style men's jogger pants" and discover a blog you wrote about styling men's jogger pants. They read the blog, and maybe they even like some of the products you showcase in that blog. So a solid blog will not only allow shoppers to discover your brand, but it'll bring them back to your brand again and again. It also increases their engagement and sends over these happy signals to the search engines about your website and brand. It also builds and diversifies your keyword relevancy, for a greater set of keywords, which is always great, meaning you'll earn more traffic, and great content gets shared. So this will earn your website and blog natural links and online mentions, which is, of course, very helpful for SEO. - Good content will use your brand voice. It will be engaging. It will be unique, and it will have the end goal of sharing or converting a purchase, without being overtly salesy. Now, with fashion, oftentimes, we understand that products move in and out of stock very quickly, as trends shift. So we're going to talk a little bit about how to tailor your SEO strategy for fast-moving products. - Now, fast-moving products are just the name of the game when it comes to fashion, but they can be challenging because, typically, it takes time for optimization to resonate with the search engines. SEO is a long-term strategy. So even if you find the time to optimize these products, they might go out of stock before they really start resonating and the search engines start showing them to potential buyers. - In order to increase your search visibility in the best way possible, we recommend focusing your optimization on categories and subcategories, by adding keyword-rich title tags, meta descriptions, and keyword-rich on-page content. These pages will continue to gain momentum, even as the products discontinue. So make sure you start optimizing the categories first. Once you've nailed down those keywords for the category and subcategory pages, you can repeat the process for product pages. Keep in mind, fashion can be extremely specific. So make sure you're using those adjectives and modifiers that we talked about earlier. Also, be sure to create unique product descriptions. Search engines hate duplicate content. So if you're using the same text over and over again, it's going to negatively impact your SEO. - Absolutely. Keywords and content matter. All right. Last but not least, 301 redirect any dead product pages back to their relevant category, subcategory, or a suitably close alternative product. That's a product that's really, really close to what was discontinued. I know 301 redirect sounds highly technical and scary, but we're going to include a link to the how-to guide that'll walk you through doing it in the bonus resource slide, and I promise it's very easy. - Next up is social media. SEO and social media work hand-in-hand and often complement each other. For fashion, social media is almost a necessity. After all, online shoppers are more likely to make a purchase after reading a review or seeing a post that they saw on social media. So let's talk about how to get started. As I said, social media can be a fashion store's biggest asset. It's a great way to interact with your customers on a more personal level. Now, with the rise of Instagram, Poly War, and Pinterest, the fashion industry is thriving. These are some general best practices that all fashion and lifestyle brands should be implementing in their social campaigns. First off, you need those high-quality pictures that we spoke about, especially if you want your followers to get excited about the products and share your photos. Try showcasing products at different angles or being styled differently. Your followers don't just want to see a plain old stock photo. They want to see real images of real products with real people. You can even encourage your customers to share their own pictures wearing your products. These types of posts generally garner a lot of engagement and enforce your credibility. - I know we're talking about fashion in terms of clothing a lot, but this works well for furniture and home goods too. I was just shopping for a kitchen buffet. People were making fun of me for it, but I want a kitchen buffet. I was looking at West Elm, and they allow people to share how they style their various buffets. It really helped me overcome some of my reservations and build that confidence to purchase. - Yeah, context is everything, especially seeing other people do it as well. You can also create how-to images or tutorials that showcase how to wear your product or how to use it. Not only does this provide context, as I just said, but it helps them relate and think of you as a style authority. Use social media to determine customer opinion as well. For instance, find out which product shoppers most like, by asking open-ended questions or creating this-or-that posts. For instance, would you rather wear this dress? Or that dress? Try pairing these posts with contests. Maybe ask your followers which pair of shoes you should give away this month. This boosts engagement and also provides insight into what your customers like. Last but not least, make it easy for your customers to share products from your website. You can even add calls to action at checkout, and you can turn on social sharing features in the Volusion admin area. But before you start posting, start thinking about your target audience. Only join the networks where your audience interacts. You do not have to be on every single network all at once, because you don't want to spread yourself too thin. Take a step back and do a little research about the demographic composition of each social network. The chart here represents age demographics on some of the most popular social networks. You'll notice that Facebook is most evenly spread out, whereas the younger generations are more dominant on Instagram and Snapchat. - For fashion, generally the most effective networks are Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, and that's because they're visually driven, like the fashion industry itself. Though not pictured here, Polyvore is also one of the best social media channels for fashion right now. It's a niche network. Again, the name is Polyvore. It's specific to fashion and beauty industries, and it is used by beauty bloggers, magazines, and other various fashion-obsessed individuals. It's a lot of fun. - Once you decide on your networks, the first order of business is a profile optimization. Spruce up your pages to provide more information to your customers and ensure that your pages match your brand. The first thing I always recommend is to create a custom default profile image, which can just be your logo, as well as a unique cover photo. Again, the photo should be high resolution, properly cropped, and properly formatted. Good cover photos will include a relevant image from your website or a compelling stock photo or even a custom image created with a free photo editor maybe like Canva or Pic Monkey. These will be linked to later in our helpful resources slide. Cover photos should also maintain minimal copy. The copy should represent your brand and showcase your products, but really let the image speak for itself. - Next, make sure you populate your "About" sections with accurate information, but don't simply copy content from your website. That's a big no-no. All of these descriptions should be unique. As we stated before, search engines can crawl this information, and having duplicate content here can be a problem. - Some social media channels have special features, such as the call to action button on Facebook or the website verification requirement on Pinterest. Just make sure that you're utilizing these as you create your profiles. Lastly, always be sure to link to your website and other important social media channels. These networks usually have easy linking options, but Facebook requires you to create a custom tab with use of a third-party app. One that I usually recommend is Wubox. More information on that app will also be on our resources slide. - Next up, we have some posting 101. When it comes to posting, we like to use the rule of thirds. This is a common strategy for social media, and it involves three steps: promote, share, and engage. First, go ahead and promote your products. That's what you're here to do, but temper the sales speak. You don't want to clutter your audience's feeds with things like, "Buy my shirt, " over and over again. There are more effective ways to increase your sales, for example, creating the "How to Style" type posts or "What to Wear" type posts. These can be really engaging and sort of a covert way of getting your products in front of your audience. Next, share other types of posts to go along with your products. Think about what your audience values. What do they like to see? This could be anything from soccer highlights to a makeup tutorial, depending on your audience, or maybe even a parenting topic if you sell children's clothes. The content you share should reflect your target market's tastes and values and be interesting to them. Lastly, engage. Respond to posts and ask for your audience's opinions. Post often and consistently to maintain engagement levels, and let your customers know you want to hear from them. Engaging daily can be very beneficial when growing your presence, especially on networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. - Times to post can also vary, depending on your network and your audience. It's important to track down when your audience is active on each platform. I know Facebook Insights is really great for this. Obviously you want to post when most of your fans are online. We'll provide some more other resources for learning this information in our bonus slide. Now I don't know about you guys, but I am a serial online shopper, and I always make sure to check out brand emails for deals, free gifts, and other news. - Me too. - That leads me to my next point. Email newsletters are one of the best ways to directly engage with your loyal shoppers. You can showcase new products, or you can introduce new seasonal product lines or even a large sales campaign. For instance, you can see here part of an email from Kendra Scott, a popular jewelry designer. The big focus of the email is the sale, and then the next two sections give tips. They provide color and style options and even how to stack their bangles. Lastly, consider promoting products that fit with the customer's past purchasing behavior. Have they purchased many pairs of earrings from you in the past? Then perhaps an earring-related promotion might make sense for that customer segment. - I have a great example of this in our next slide. All right. So I got an email just last week from Land of Nod, and they sell cute lifestyle stuff for children. If you haven't seen them, check them out. The email I got featured this idea of the great indoors, which is shown here. If you were to scroll down from here on the email, there was some sub-themes, like "how to have a camp-out in your living room" and cute things like that. I'm fairly confident I received this email because I purchased a large teepee from them, like a teepee that is in my daughter's nursery now. From that purchase, they kind of get who I am. This email, I have to say, is so right for me. It really reached out to me in a very emotional way. I definitely want to have a camp-out with my daughter in the living room. So this is what I call effective email marketing. I'm going to spend way too much on this stuff. So how do you create an effective email blast? Well, first, it should be relevant to your target audience. Segmenting email lists based on specific interests or traits or past purchases, like Land of Nod did with me, can help you craft a more effective email. - When you're setting up your email campaigns, don't forget to show your products in a fun, likable way. Connect on an emotional level whenever you can. So having great pictures also makes a world of a difference. Don't publish an email with images that are too-low quality or too tiny. Your products are the stars of the email. So it's important to ensure that they look great. These products should also be clickable and linked to the corresponding product page, so that if people want to buy it right then and there, they can navigate directly to the product page and hopefully add it to their cart. Last but not least, social media. Don't forget to add your social buttons to your email. It's extra exposure and also a great way for you to engage with your shoppers. Have you seen any marketing emails that you've liked lately? How about sharing your experience with us? Tweet your story, using the hashtag, #sellinginstyle. - Send those our way. - The fourth tactic here is creating a look-book. Look-books are traditional when it comes to the fashion industry. In the past, designers and clothing brands would create look-books to show their new lines to buyers and customers. Now they have even evolved into living pages on your website. Look-books also pair perfectly with seasonal SEO strategies. You can create a special landing page with an interactive look-book, depending on the season. I've been seeing this a lot for the fall season. I'm sure you guys have too. Show your customers how your products look together and how they can be styled. Take this example from Tory Birch, on the right. They showcase a chic look-book, sorry, up at the top, and then list all the products underneath. This allows customers to browse the look-book, find an outfit they like, and then add the products directly to the cart from below. Our bonus slide will also create a great resource that walks you through adding a look-book to your web store. - I spend a lot of time looking at look-books. They're super effective. - Yeah, definitely. - Last, let's talk digital advertising. So choosing the right type of digital advertising strategy really depends entirely on your audience. Where do they live? Where are they looking? And your product offerings ... So for fashion, one of the easiest ways to get quick traffic is through shopping feeds. Shopping feeds are large lists of products that are aggregated from data submitted to these comparison shopping engines. The most popular one I can think of is Google Shopping. These feeds have a lot of benefits, especially if a store is looking to gain traffic right away. Shopping feeds allow people to search and sort by very specific parameters, such as product type, color, clothing material, brand, and even more. It allows them to shop and compare prices very easily, from multiple vendors, in order to find the best value for the store they most trust. So if low price is your thing, shopping feeds could be very beneficial to you. - This form of paid search is also known to have a high conversion rate because it takes people directly to the product, and that makes it easier for them to purchase exactly what they want. Another paid search strategy is re-marketing. I'm sure everybody has stumbled upon a re-marketing ad and wondered, "Are they reading my mind? Do they know I was just on Macys.com? How do they know that?" See, re-marketing ads only target people who have previously visited your online store or a specific page on your site. They're often used to remind shoppers of your product offerings and usually the best tool to convert customers who left your store without making a purchase. These ads essentially work as mini win-back campaigns. While re-marketing ads often display at the top of a website, they can also be created on Facebook. Facebook re-marketing ads will appear in a potential customer's news feed, as an effective reminder of your products. - I'd like to point out bottom left. You'll see there's a buffet that's haunting me. That's from my Facebook feed. All right. Display ads, or maybe more commonly known as banner ads, are large image-based advertisements that appear on websites. I'm sure you've seen them hovering along the top of a website or blog or on the right-hand side. These ads are generally considered more in-your-face advertising. They're very visual. They work best with high-quality images. Sometimes also, custom banners are great with compelling text that really attracts customers to click through. But in general, they're pretty visually driven. Sometimes stores will use these to post new offers or perhaps a new product launch or even a special event coming up. - Last but not least, we'll talk about social media advertising. I love social advertising because you can dig into data and filter your ads based on a variety of different factors, like age, location, interests, income, even job title, and also interests. There's so many different ways to segment and custom your desired audience. Most networks now offer some type of social advertising, but we recommend the ad platforms on Facebook, Pinterest, Polyvore, or Instagram for fashion businesses. But before you begin advertising, consider how you want to advertise your products and where your target audience interacts. For example, if you're selling clothing or accessories to teens, you might want to look into Instagram ads. But if your target market is older men and women, you may see more success on Facebook. Most networks have two different goals for ads: gaining traffic or boosting engagement. You're able to choose if you want to earn clicks to your website or increase the page likes, re-pins, and earn engagement on posts. If possible, we recommend running two campaigns that promote traffic to the website and boost engagement. This combination gives you extra double exposure, and it's the best chance of converting a social user into a customer. When writing these ads, it's best to make sure that they're short and snappy. You only get a limited amount of space to get your message across. So write copy that not only informs, but compels the user to click and make a purchase. While the text helps, the picture is what's going to actually capture their attention. The images you use in your ads should relay your message and speak to your brand. Don't be afraid to change them up once in a while. Images can get stale. So try switching them out during certain sales cycles and holiday seasons. - All right. Well, that completes the formal presentation piece of our webinar, but now it's time for your questions, and they've been coming in. Please, keep sending them either through the Go To Webinar question box, or you can tweet them at #sellinginstyle. Before we dive in, I just wanted to let everyone know about a promotion our team is offering, exclusively to webinar attendees. If you call or email in and use the coupon code "free style," you're going to earn a free month of our fashion marketing package. That's really been put together specifically for fashion and style-oriented stores. This will be a free month, with a six-month commitment. So there's a little bit of a commitment there. We have all sorts of different offerings. You can talk it through with a specialist and see what's best for you. This specific webinar attendee offer is good through the end of October. - Awesome. Now for the freebie that we promised you earlier. - Free things. Yay! - Tweet your favorite webinar takeaway, with the #sellinginstyle, for a chance to win a product page audit. We will have one of our SEO specialists take a look at your page and evaluate what you need to do to improve it. - So if you remember that product optimization section and how ... We spent a lot of time on it. - We did. - And on keywords. We'll have our experts looking at that for you. All right. So we've got our questions pouring in. I'm going to tackle this review one first. - Okay. - From a little bit earlier. How can I encourage my customers to review products? I think one of the most effective ways of doing this is an email campaign, following up a purchase. The Volusion software makes this very easy. You can set up a certain amount of days of a lag, and it could be five days, could be a month, whatever you think is appropriate for your product set. Encourage someone to review. You want to make sure if you're encouraging people to review, that they're having a good customer experience and that you're showing some consideration there too. Do you have anything to add to that? - In terms of social, if you're doing a giveaway or something like that, and you're talking directly with the winner, you can ask them if they want to, they can showcase how they liked the product, right on your Facebook page. So it kind of gives your social followers a better idea as well of the quality of the product and that, "Hey. They got something for free. But also, it was great." - So that's two different avenues, really, to use reviews. You've got the reviews influencing the stars in the search results, and also appearing on the product page, which helps with conversion. Right? They're on the fence. They're like, "I really like this dress. I like what I see." Oh, and then they read a couple reviews. Other people like this dress. I'm getting this. Or they can go to social media and see it there, and there's that social proof, telling them, "You're going to like this dress." - Exactly. That's kind of a more personal way of getting those reviews as well. All right. I'm going to tackle the store owner that was talking about selling T-shirts with different designs. They asked, "How can I make each product's content unique?" So you really have to dig into those modifiers here. I know we talked a lot about keywords and differentiation and stuff like that. Think about the color. What is the design? Really take a look at the design and pinpoint the unique things about it. Is it a pattern? Is it a sort of picture or something like that? Really kind of look at the whole product, as a whole, and pick out the words that accurately describe that product. I know color is a big one and things like that. You have any other tips for that? - Yeah. I'm thinking of just examples I might throw out there that might help get your creative energy going. If it's a shirt, let's say, of a hippo, you could have it talking about how it's a hippo shirt, with a hippopotamus on it. It's an animal shirt as well. If the hippo is kind of funny in how it's drawn, it's a funny shirt as well. There's different ways of describing a shirt to capture specific traffic. Like an MC Escher shirt. It could be an MC Escher shirt, could be an art shirt. It could be a geographic ... Sorry. I'm losing the word. - Geometric? - Geometric shirt, not a geographic shirt, a geometric shirt. There are many ways of describing something, and it's going to be specific to the type of shirt you're selling. You could even sell a blank red shirt, but it happens to be very comfortable. It's a classic shirt. It is a good basic. - Even the material. So if it's cotton, if it's polyester, you could throw that in there as well. - Yeah. I'll tackle, "How do I promote my products on shopping feeds?" This is going to be a little bit more technical and deep-diving than we have time for here, but I will promise you we are going to include some resources in the resource slide that goes out in a couple days here, and it'll include a link to the article in the Volusion knowledge base on this topic and also a link to some team members that we work with, that are sort of tandem to our department, that will execute these feeds on your behalf, should you hire them to do so. So you have the option to do it yourself or hire a team of professionals to do it and sort of optimize your bids. - Right. I'm going to tackle one of the social ones. Is it worth it to buy Instagram followers to look more official? The answer is no. It is never a good idea to buy followers on any platform. - I totally see why it's tempting. - But I do. I do. I do as well. It can take a long time to create a loyal following on Instagram. But if you have thousands of Instagram followers, and then you only have 13 likes for your picture, that's actually going to look bad to a customer. When I see that, personally, I kind of know that you bought your followers, and I'm a little perturbed by that. - Or suspicious. - Or suspicious. Yeah. The best advice I can give you there is it does take time. Use those relevant hashtags. Try to get your posts in front of feeds of people that are really interested in your products. - These questions are really good. I'm going to ... I'm all about keywords. Keyword party all the time here. What is the best resource for finding keywords? We will be including, in the resource slide, the standard is the AdWords keyword tool, keyword planner. - I love AdWords. - But there's something to be said for just your gut instinct and doing some Googling and seeing what Google recommends and what some top performers are targeting, and then scroll down to the bottom of the results and see some recommended searches from Google at the bottom of the page there. There's a number of tools out there, paid and otherwise, that can help you as well. But at the end of the day, accuracy trumps all. Don't get bogged down too much by search volume, because accuracy is more critical to conversion, but it is a little bit of a dance, weighing those factors. - I agree. Also, sometimes taking a look at competitors might give you a better idea of what other people are searching to get to their page. So you can kind of look to see how they're categorizing things and how they're calling ... what they're calling things. - Absolutely. - That definitely helps me too when I have a really niche product that I'm looking for a keyword for, and I can't exactly think of another word to describe that product. - We touched on it when we said do three to five keywords per page, but diversity is important. So it's a raincoat, but it's also a weatherproof coat. It could be a slicker. Find different ways of saying the same thing. That really helps Google sort of branch out on the type of terms that they'll drive traffic to your store for. - We have another one here. How important is free shipping? And what about free returns? When it comes to free shipping, that's definitely something I, as a person, will ... Me, personally, I'll say, "Wow. This is great." I'll definitely want to buy something from this company because I know I don't have to pay for shipping. So it's a good conversion tool, and I do highly recommend it. But at the end of the day, you are running a business. So you have to make sure that it works for your budget and your business model as well. Same thing with free returns, no-hassle returns. That's definitely great for conversion and getting people to buy your products but, again, it's about the money. It's up to your discretion to kind of look to see if it's going to be worth it to you. - I would say free shipping probably trumps the free returns. - For sure. - But I would like both, in my shopping experience, but we know that it's not possible for everyone. One strategy that some of my team recommends that I really have always liked is looking at your analytics and seeing what your average order value is. If you find that it's hovering, let's say, under $50 or $150, you can use free shipping as a carrot to sort of entice people to cross over that threshold. Say if you see everybody spending, on average, $130 on your website, you could say, "Free shipping on orders over $150." Then it might encourage them to increase their purchase with you. But again, I love free shipping. So how important is it? Gosh, I really like it. - Me too. - But it is a business call, really, at the end of the day. - Let's see. What are the biggest things to do when creating a brand? This is a loaded question, but I'm really happy that somebody asked it. The biggest things to do are to kind of find where you fit in a certain niche. Really identify what you want to offer to people and how you can offer it differently. We talked a little bit about our unique selling proposition, and I think that that's a big part, especially for e-commerce stores, when creating your brand. What is that special thing that makes you stand out from the crowd? Then really build your brand around that. Make sure that it's all over your marketing. It's on your website. People know that, "If I'm going to this store, I'm going to expect this type of service or this unique thing." So that's definitely something that I would recommend as well. Also, just looking at the competition out there, you want to see who you're up against, and you want to see how you can leverage yourself above them. - Something I might also include in that is making sure the brand is something your target audience wants to align with and isn't ashamed to share on social media. Also, another thing that I've been burned with in the past is if you have a brand promise of certain things. You need to follow through on it. - Yes. - So if you promise a great customer experience, but then don't reply to my emails and don't have a number on your website, well ... - That's discouraging. - Yeah, it's a broken brand promise. So that can also damage brand reputation. Okay. Another keyword question. Allison has keywords all the time. Do I use variance of a word, like T-shirt, tee-shirt, T-shirt, et cetera? Is that overdoing it? With everything in SEO, there's no absolutes, but I would say stick with one methodology, like T-dash-shirt versus tshirt versus T-E-E-shirt. You're going to look crazy to the human visitors if you're all over the board on that, I think. - Yeah, definitely. Using your keyword research tools, like the Google AdWords feature, it'll kind of give you a better idea of what has the most search volume, and you can choose which one to stick with based on that, but I would highly recommend picking one and sticking with it. - Yeah. I would say that the algorithms are sophisticated enough to know that these are interchangeable. Their semantic indexing and understanding of the relationship between words is outstanding. It's miles above what it was even just five years ago. So you're safe. I would go with what, perhaps, your audience wants to see. I might look at some of how the competitors term things or some aspirational stores that you think your audience might kind of apply to and see how they're doing it. - Yeah, I agree with that. Back to shipping. - Shipping. - Do you think certain policies discourage conversion? Shipping policies, return policies ... I do. Like we said before, kind of along the lines of the free shipping thing, if you are selling a $30 dress, for instance, and the shipping is $10, chances are people are not going to convert there. They're not going to want to spend that much money on a lower-priced dress or something like that. So those definitely have huge influence on whether our customer is going to follow through and purchase something. - I think a good rule of thumb, with any online store, is whenever you sew some sort of seed of doubt, you're injuring yourself, because it's not like a brick-and-mortar where they have to drive somewhere else and do other things. They can just click the back button and go somewhere else, fairly easily, if there's any doubt there. So anything you can do to relieve doubt and make it easy is going to help your conversion. Also, just on a random statement here, Allison shopping for her buffet. One of the buffets I was looking at had... I had a price point I wanted to stay under, and then I added it to cart and whatnot and started moving on my way out, and it jumped up $200 because of a handling fee and shipping fee. Yeah, I'm not going to buy that buffet. I'm sad because I liked it, but I'm not going to. So there's certain surprises like that, that can also derail conversion. - Agreed. Should I use alt tags for my images? Does that help SEO? The answer is yes, it does. - Absolutely. - You should always use alt tags for your images. I know it can be time-consuming, especially if you've got a lot of products on there, but they really do help out your SEO because Google does kind of look at the images. User experience, if somebody hovers over it, they kind of want to know what it is. So for user experience and for SEO, I think it's great to have those alt tags. - We have a duplicate content question. How can I avoid duplicate content when many of our product specifications repeat? For example, fabric type, size of curtain, et cetera. This is an instance where I find repeated content. If it's genuinely useful to the end user, it's not going to injure you, as long as it's supplemented with other unique content. Would you agree with that? - I would agree. - Okay. So it's a necessity, on many types of stores. It sounds like you might sell curtains. It's a necessity. If you've got ... The only difference is the pattern of the curtain material. You need to have those repetitions, and that's totally understandable, and Google gets it. Two minutes left. Let's have a few more here. This one's a tough one, but I'm going to tackle it because I think more than one person probably has this question. I want to start an online consignment shop. Any pointers for this type of business? Any time ... This is because I'm in SEO. I get obsessed with SEO. Any time you sell used products that have a finite number of supply, it's a challenge with SEO. That doesn't mean that you can't have success. It just means that's probably not the tactic to focus on to be successful. I think social media might be a much more appropriate channel. - I would have to agree. - You might need to focus on branding too because when you ... You have to build up a reputation for people to come back to your consignment shop for those things. That's my thought. - Yeah, and think that you're actually real and that you're authoritative. - I wonder if this is something. We like to do collaborative blogs on our team to address larger themes that are pretty difficult to address in this short amount of time. We'll add that to the list, and we'll do something along the lines of how to sell consignment clothing or used goods, effectively, and what sort of strategies work for that and which ones you should not waste your time with. All right. So I'm getting the "we're out of time" signal. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. Keep tweeting your favorite takeaways from the webinar, for a chance to win a free product page audit from our team. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. - Thanks. It's been great talking to you guys. - Absolutely. Happy selling, everybody. Here are some answers to some of the most asked questions during the webinar:
Q: My company sells a high-end product. Since our industry has a "norm" that it is okay to copy, we have noticed that there are DYIers and smaller brands that often try to tour our website looking for ideas. How can we weed out the folks who just want to copy our products?
A: Unfortunately, when it comes to the Internet, there is no way to filter or segregate who sees what on your ecommerce site. There’s no true way to identify who a prospective buyer is or who a DIYer is. The Internet is open to all and making it harder for people to view your products will only backfire. However, you can keep track of the IP addresses that visit your site and often abandon their carts. If you start to see a pattern with certain IP addresses, you can actually block them within your IP Firewall panel .
We understand that you run a business and when DIY-ers and crafters steal your designs, it may negatively impact your bottom line. Another great way to combat this is to discuss WHY your products are high-end. What makes them so special? If you highlight all the reasons why your products are a better value and made from higher quality materials, it may prompt customers to choose your products over a cheaper, similarly designed product.
Q: What is a mega menu?
A: A mega menu is a single drop down window that appears when you hover over the main navigation bar. This drop down shows all options for subcategory pages and can even feature images or additional shopping options, such as “Shop by Color” or “Shop by Brand.” These mega menus can be really helpful, especially when it comes to user experience because shoppers can see all their options directly in front of them. The Volusion design team has two different mega menu options with different capabilities, the standard mega menu and the advanced mega menu .
Q: With selling shoes, is it good to take photos of them shown on a whole model or by themselves?
A: For shoes, I would recommend providing close up pictures with the shoes from different angles (front, side and back), as well as at least one photo of the shoes styled on a model from afar. It allows the shopper to see how the shoes might look with an outfit, as well as how they look from far away. You want to ensure that your customer has no lingering questions after viewing your products.
Q: When you say be unique with your keywords, wouldn’t Google think you are more relevant if it saw the same keywords on different pages?
A: The short answer to this is no. You want to avoid keyword cannibalization, meaning your pages with the same keyword tags are competing for relevancy. Having the same keyword tagged on multiple pages is not going to tell search engines that you are more relevant to that generic term as a whole. Instead, search engines are going to struggle in identifying which page BEST fits the search query. Essentially, this means that your pages are pitted against each other. It’s best to research and choose keywords that specifically fit each page. You want to ensure that the users being directed to the page where they’ll find EXACTLY what they want.
Q: Does Google Analytics help determine keywords?
A: Google Analytics can help give you some insight into what people are searching to get to your page, which is a great place to start when choosing keywords. Taking a look at these can help you determine which terms to look into through the AdWords Keyword Planner tool .
Q: How do I put my products on a shopping feed?
A: We have a really detailed, easy-to-follow guide on how to set up and integrate the Google Merchant Center for shopping feeds. You can find the instructions here . If you prefer to be on another shopping feed platform, such as Shopping.com, please use this guide .
Q: How effective are banner ads for conversions?
A: Banner and display ads are considered “in-your-face” marketing tactics. Conversion rates depend on the messaging and the imaging within the ad. Unfortunately, some shoppers may not trust these ads, or simply ignore them. In my experience, other advertising methods seem to be more effective, such as social media advertising or paid search advertising. Shoppers tend to trust these types of ads more than banner or display ads.
Q: You talked a lot about high resolution photos. If you’re starting out on a budget, is there a good, inexpensive camera to use to shoot products? Any advice?
A: If you do not have the budget to support a professional photographer, I would advise investing in a digital SLR camera from a leading company like Nikon or Canon. Personally, I love my Nikon D3100. It’s easy to use and takes amazing pictures. If DSLRs are still out of your budget, then any good digital camera will do. The Canon Powershot and Nikon Coolpix take beautiful photos. You can even use a smartphone camera. You just have to make sure that the product is shown in the appropriate lighting, the picture is not too small or too grainy, and the background does not distract from the item. For more information on photography best practices, check out our DIY Photography Resource Guide .
Q: How do you add reviews for each product on Volusion?
A: We provide a detailed resource for setting this up in our Knowledge Base! You can find that here .
Q: If you have paid for SEO marketing, you have put the right keywords, and the titles, meta tags and meta descriptions, why you don't have sales?
A: Our specialists are asked this question a lot and the answer is that the lack of sales could be caused by many different factors. SEO is a fantastic tactic for driving relevant traffic to your website. Our SEO services are intended to get the customers to your page and provide the best chance for conversions. However, SEO alone does not guarantee sales. SEO works best as a one part of a comprehensive marketing plan. Website design and structure, pricing strategy, product images, social media, and paid advertisements can all factor into why customers may not be making a purchase. Volusion offers a conversion consulting and optimization service that can help you determine why customers are converting on the page and provide insight into the best tactics to remedy this.
Q: What do you think about having the customer help you promote on social media and then give them free shipping or a coupon code.
A: I have seen this being done a lot with apparel companies. I always encourage brands to search for brand ambassadors that can promote your items in addition to your efforts. Shoppers will often trust a review or another shopper’s opinion over a brand. Search for bloggers in your industry or niche, or track down social media influencers on Twitter or Instagram. Said influencers will usually have a large number of followers. Offering your products to them at a special discount, or even sending them free merchandise, will get them on your side. From there, they can then promote your products to their followers and offer a discount for those people with a coupon code, just like you provided in your example. This is a great way to generate buzz about your products and establish trust in your industry.
Q: For the holidays, what do you think about Value Packs or all-in-one gifts? For example, combining a shirt, a back pack and scarf.
A: Shoppers generally like purchasing gifts in bundles, and this would be an expansion of your current offerings. I think it’s a good idea as long as it’s at a good price point. You can also add value by throwing in free shipping with the purchase of one of those exclusive gift sets.
Q: How do find your niche?
A: Finding your niche begins with identifying your unique selling proposition. What makes your store unique? If you think back to our Bonobos example in the webinar, its niche was men’s clothing that offered an “impeccable fit.” If you’re just starting out and your business model has not yet developed, think of something that most people complain about when it comes to clothing, beauty or home goods and create a solution for it. Build your brand around the solution and you should be able to start defining your niche.
Q: What if I wanted to set up a clearance or overstock section on my site?
A: You can most certainly set up a “sale,” “clearance” or “overstock” category on your site and then add products to that category. Just make sure you enter the sale price in the Advanced Info > Pricing field on a product page.
Q: What is the best social media network to advertise sustainable furniture?
A: When it comes to furniture, I would suggest highly visual platforms like Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook. You may even want to check out Houzz . Houzz is what I like to call the Pinterest for architects, interior designers and shoppers looking for home ideas. As long as you have high quality pictures of your products and nicely staged photos, you should be in good shape for any one of those networks!
