3 Ways To Optimize Your Clothing Website To Increase Sales

In today's episode, we talk about 3 ways to optimize your clothing website to increase sales:

1. Get rid of the hamburger menu and automatic sliders - Automatic sliders have become quite famous in the last few years. But nowadays you want to avoid these. They are distracting and deter people from your CTA. You will need hamburger menus for mobile but it is recommended that you include text with them to facilitate your navigation. Avoid hamburger menus on your desktop version. You want for customer to find items in the least amount of clicks possible.

2. It needs to run fast - If there is something that you should ALWAYS be doing to optimize your website.. It should be speed. There are numerous studies that show having a faster website improves conversions and sales. First you should run a speed test on your site from multiple sources to get an understanding of your current situation. Usually these websites will give you suggestions on what to improve.

3. Create videos for your all products - Another way to increase sales is to show more of your product with videos! Not a lot of ecommerce website take advantage of videos but in reality a lot of customers are going to YouTube to check out your product. I know I’ve done it for shoes multiple times. Why not create YouTube videos of your clothing, shoes and accessories and embed those videos in your product pages? It’s easy to do, but maybe a little time consuming.

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[00:00:15] Christian: Welcome to another episode. Today we're going to be talking about three ways to optimize your clothing website to increase sales. We're talking about hamburger menus, we're talking about automatic sliders, we're talking about speed and we're talking about videos. It's going to be a really good episode.

[00:00:31] Aaron: I'm super excited. I love e-commerce and I love. It's great. It's like instant gratification when you can sell something online and you can see like, "Oh this ad was directly related to this purchase here." And I guess from one of the biggest issues that I see is that the ads are not necessarily the issue, the website is which is kind of what prompted this episode. So all right let's jump into this.

[00:00:57] Christian: Let's get it. All right. So first off we're going to talk about hamburger menus and automatic sliders.

[00:01:05] Aaron: You to explain what those are? Because hamburger menus; people are probably thinking of like you know Dona-.

[00:01:10] Christian: A nice juicy In-N-Out or WhataBurger and did you say McDonald's?

[00:01:14] Aaron: Yeah, I said McDonald's...But we don't eat it.

[00:01:15] Christian: Yeah, that's terrible.

[00:01:17] Aaron and Christian: WhataBurger or In-N-Out.

[00:01:19] Christian: Anyway so let's go with the hamburger menus. So hamburger menus are usually, you typically see them on the mobile version of the website and they're typically on the left top corner and they're usually three horizontal lines stacked on top of each other. And they just kind of look like a hamburger I guess because of the you know bun burger bun combo.

[00:01:42] Aaron: Pickles, lettuce...

[00:01:42] Christian: Yeah. Anyway so yeah. Normally the three little lines horizontals on the top corner of your website. And usually when you click on it that's where you get the full menu. I guess on on mobile.

[00:01:56] They're very hard to replace because typically e-commerce websites do have a lot of what is that called? Uhh...navigation links.

[00:02:09] Aaron: Uhh...yeah there are these places to click on the website.

[00:02:11] Christian: Yeah, so I mean on a mobile site where you know space is very limited. It's very hard to avoid the hamburger menu. But something you can do to improve the user experience is to include the word menu along with the hamburger menu. This just makes it easier, I guess more pleasing to the eye and you know it's just better for the customer to know that, "Okay, that's where I need to go to start shopping." Another great way to avoid I guess the hamburger menu on mobile is to have that exactly - have a "Shop Now" button that will sort of walk them through. And you know what. For all your items, so let's say you're a clothing boutique and you have tops, bottoms and shoes, and that's all you sell. So right there. Right off the gate. You know you have that "Shop Now" button that will take you to another page that has tops, bottoms, and shoes for them to look at. Now something that we do say is, "Do not. Do not do hamburger menus on desktop versions of the website". On with the desktop version, you have all the real estate possible to make it easier for them to just click on "Tops" and move on. You know by adding a hamburger menu on a desktop website, you're adding you know more clicks for that person or that customer to find the top that they want. They have to click the hamburger menu and then they have to click "Tops" and then they get to see the product. So just make it easier for them and avoid the hamburger menu altogether. When you have a desktop version of your website.

[00:03:47] Aaron: Yeah I think that's...you only think that it's one extra step but that one extra step could be the difference between 10 percent of your sales or not just because there's so much that could happen between that one step. It stops them from clicking the "Add to Cart" button like it really does affect it a lot. And then you mentioned the automatic sliders.

[00:04:08] Christian: Yes, so the automatic sliders are just. They're usually on the what we call the hero section. So right under the navigation you'll see those big banner images we call that the hero section of the website.

[00:04:18] And for the past few years I guess the automatic part of that has become very popular for people to include multiple banner images and just have them automatically rotate. I think it's fine to have a rotating slider. You know as your hero section but don't make it automatic or automatically just starts. Make it so that the customer has to click on it and you know see other things. So we typically try to avoid these sliders because they are very distracting from - I mean visually. You know you go to a webite and you want people to do one action which is purchase. If you have something that's sliding, it catches people's attention and it deters from people doing what they came there to do which is purchase your product. So that's another big one. So I guess our first point was to avoid these two things: avoid the hamburger menus and avoid the automatic rotating sliders.

[00:05:18] Aaron: Yes, you do those two things and you're really going to help your website stand out because we say this because a lot of people build their websites themselves or they just hire people that are website designers that aren't necessarily in the business of understanding the marketing for your business where it's supposed to generate business online.

[00:05:36] Christian: Yeah I was always just really reading something the other day where Squarespace and Wix and all that. Like people think that they should follow the design of these templates that they see on Wix and Squarespace but in reality these temples are not made for optimization they're just made to look pretty.

[00:05:56] You know all these template that you see on all those websites and all that, they're made from them from designers like you're saying they're made to look pretty. They're not optimized by you know the marketing or sales or any data to support that having a hamburger menu works on a desktop version.

[00:06:13] Aaron: Yeah. So I mean if you're with a Squarespace website right now, one of the things that bothers me the most and this is something to think about because this is not for our list but just...What is the correct word? The public service announcement. You don't want people to be able to go to your website, click on a product and then have to click the "Back" button up in the top hand corner to go back to other products to look at them and with Squarespace that's like one of the main things you have to do. You look at one single product and you can't go back and browse others very easily. So whenever you do that it really just takes away from the ability to scroll through multiple products at one time. So all right. Number two let's get back here is the way to optimize your website to increase sales. And this is a huge piece here and that is that it needs to run fast. I can't remember the exact data but basically every second your website loads slower than in three seconds. That's potentially 10 percent of the business has gone.

[00:07:13] Christian: Wait, you can't remember the data but you just give us some data.

[00:07:15] Aaron: Yeah I know. I get it, I lied. Yeah, it's one second and the reason why I say that is because I can't remember if it's like three seconds or three and a half seconds. But roughly after every three seconds, so four seconds that your website takes to load. If it takes that long, you're losing 10 percent of your business because people leave and you're like, "Oh, I'm not that impatient myself or you know I I don't do that."

[00:07:37] But if you find yourself like looking around Facebook or something like that and it doesn't load and you're like "Why's this not doing that?" and you get frustrated or you go to a website and you're like just clicking on it from Instagram or coming somewhere and you go to load something and it just doesn't load you're like "Whatever I'm out of here, I'm going back to Instagram or I'm going back to Facebook."

[00:07:55] That happens a lot. And if you think about it four seconds, let's just pause for four seconds. OK.

[00:08:04] Christian: That was a long time.

[00:08:06] Aaron: That was a long time. Can you imagine sitting on your phone?

[00:08:09] Christian: No, oh man.

[00:08:10] Aaron: That was a long time.

[00:08:11] Christian: Yeah, it felt like an eternity.

[00:08:12] Aaron: Yeah. And you guys were like, "Wow" and they pause for dramatic. Christian: Yeah, it was crazy.

[00:08:19] Aaron: Yeah, but anyway...it needs to be fast.

[00:08:20] Christian: Yeah, technically like the number one thing you should be doing right now is either going to what is it called the Google...I mean Google has a pretty good one where it tells you exactly, you know some of the things that you can improve on your website. But there's also I think it's Pingdom. It's another one but I would check your website on multiple sources to check the speed out for your website from multiple sources, so you can get a better understanding of what exactly is your speed because the different websites that test the speed of the website will have different criteria that they base those tests on.

[00:08:57] So I would do it from multiple websites to check your speed and right there from those websites, they'll give you suggestions on things that you can do. Normally a lot, I mean a lot of things that has to do with the size of the website has to do with either one: picture sizes or number two: plug ins or attachments or things like that, that you add to your website that just bogged down and just slow it down dramatically. I would definitely recommend you to look at it from multiple sources and I would do this regularly. I mean if out of the three things that we're telling you today. This is the one that you should probably be doing every month just checking the speed and always always be optimizing and always be looking out for new things that you can do for your website that will you know make it faster. What is that?

[00:09:51] Aaron: That was our infamous rap airborne. So whenever you meet in person just call us the rap horn on guys. I found it funny. All right. So this is our favorite part of the episode. Kind of. It's where you get to find out a little bit more about us Aaron and Christian and the guys behind this mic. We are located in Allen Texas over the Yeager office suites in Allen obviously. We are suite 271 come by and say hi. We've got a new skateboard in the office. If you want to do tricks and potentially by the time you're reading or you're listening to this we will hopefully have a basketball goal. So come by hang out, chill with us and we'll talk marketing. But I wanna really focus on these next couple of weeks as you are getting into the fourth quarter and starting to think about 2019. A lot of people get to the fourth quarter and they're like all right, "You know I'm down with 2018, I'm thinking about 2019. What's going to be great about 2019?" And as you're thinking about that if you're marking marketing wasn't up to par or you weren't hitting the goals that you wanted to hit because you're like "Oh I just don't want to hire somebody." This may be the time to think about talking to us and figure out, you know do you need that new website? Do you need those online advertising ads on Facebook or Instagram so that you can drive more sales or traffic to your website and grow your business. So if you are thinking about how to have an awesome 2019 and make it way bigger than 2018. Shoot us a message, you can shoot it to hello@bitbranding.co. That's hello@bitbranding.co or just shoot us a direct message on Instagram or...Really those are big things but we're on everything - every social network as Bitbranding so if you have questions we want to help you with your marketing online in 2019.

[00:11:39] Christian: Awesome. You're so good at this commercial's, man.

[00:11:46] Aaron: Oh, thank you. I can't...I'm looking at him right now and I don't know if he's being sarcastic so...

[00:11:50] Christian: No, I'm being serious. I am.

[00:11:52] Aaron: Oh, okay.

[00:11:52] Christian: And those are really good. I cannot do that. Yeah...

[00:11:54] Aaron: Well, if you listen to last week's episode we were bad.

[00:11:59] Christian: Yeah, I screwed that one up bad.

[00:11:59] Aaron: But it was fun.

[00:12:01] Christian: Yeah. So listen to Episode 65.

[00:12:04] Aaron: Go back and listen it, but that's our authenticity. I didn't edit it out because for fun.

[00:12:08] Christian: Gotcha. All right let's go back to this. Three ways to optimize your clothing website to increase sales. So number three coming in even hotter than number one and number two.

[00:12:18] Aaron: Woo! Burnin'.

[00:12:19] Christian: Is to create videos for all your products. I think this is something that a lot of websites a lot of e-commerce wrbsites in general are not doing. It's so easy to do.

[00:12:29] I know what we're talking about speed on the website on the previous one but this is something that won't add any more data to your website because all you're doing is embedding videos from either YouTube or Vimeo. And in essence creating more SEO dues for your website as well, if you created videos correctly and put their correct tags and metatags in descriptions. So yeah definitely do. One video for all your products where you can actually share you know those new shoes in every possible angle. Have someone walking with the shoes and you know have someone show 'em the bottom, show 'em the top, show 'em how they look with different pants, jeans, skirts, shorts and all that.

[00:13:10] And to be honest like I've done that before and even your customers are and are probably doing that right now. They're looking for a product, you're showing them only three pictures and that's it. You know usually when it comes to buying shoes at least and I've done this in the past. I would look at the shoes and then I'll be like OK I kind of want to see more of that shoes, 'cause usually shoes in photographs they don't ever look the same in real person. Like the shape of them is just a little bit different.

[00:13:37] Aaron: Like the toeboxis so much smaller.

[00:13:39] Christian: Yes. Or maybe like a little bit more bow shape. I don't know, it was weird but I always go to YouTube and check out some unboxing videos of that particular shoe. And it's just so much better. It's always better to have a video instead of just images.

[00:13:52] Aaron: I was going to say and I do the same thing. Like I will watch hours of reviews of running shoes to figure out like "How does this fit?" because you want to know. Wow, that's a great idea. I think every single one of our clients are doing e-commerce right now. Why we we need to have you do those. But if you aren't, I would love that project even...We're about to take on a product that sells, it's not clothing but food online. And I think even something like that could be you know worthwhile but especially clothing like what does it look like from the side you know what kind of person is this wearing. 'Cause you really get a really humanize your brain and say "Oh this girl I can relate to this girl and this is the shirt that she's wearing." That's...that's huge.

[00:14:34] Christian: Yeah, I mean it's think think about...I know we're talking about clothing but even and this is kind of weird. It might seem weird but I mean men usually don't buy a lot of cologne or they're not usually you know you buy cologne once every two or three years or six years. Yeah. And then as usually someone gives it to you like as a gift.

[00:14:52] You don't ever go out and buy cologne. But I recently had to go buy cologne.

[00:14:58] Aaron: Were are you smelling? Or was the...

[00:15:00] Christian: No. So I actually went to the place and bought it and just smelled a few and whatever. But then afterwards I was like "Oh I wonder if it's like..." because the one I bought it was like a unknown brand like you never heard of it.

[00:15:11] But there's a huge following on YouTube of people who do videos and they review and test the and they're like cologne connoisseurs and they tell you like " This is like a woody, fruit full long lasting flavor"

[00:15:27] Like dude, it's insane. But I found a guy his name is Cuba. I think CubaKnows or something on YouTube and he does. This is all he does is reviews of colognes and he's funny and it's like it's pretty entertaining. But I find like the cologne that I bought from the store was actually his in the top 5 of 2018 cologne that have come out this year. And I was like "Oh well that's kind of cool." And you just get like yeah I'm just talking because I mean we're talking about videos and this is not necessarily clothing but again is another thing that you would not think that you need to make a video of but people who do make videos of review and colognes and telling you what they smell like and all that and it's crazy. I mean he has a huge following and people asking him questions and all that. So I mean it's great. It's great.

[00:16:13] Aaron: Yeah. And there's not. So if you're listening to this now it's September of 2018. Look at really adding videos to your products, like just do it for a couple of your products and see compare those sales for those products to the ones that don't have videos and we will almost guarantee that you're going to sell more of those products because people can imagine it. So we need to do as much as we can to optimize sales online as possible.

[00:16:41] Christian: All right. So there you have it: three ways to optimize your clothing website to increase sales and we talked about getting the hamburger menu. Getting rid of automatic sliders. Making sure your website running fast and creating video for your products. Again if you liked this episode make sure to subscribe or leave a review on iTunes. Thank you for listening.

[00:16:58] Aaron: Peace.