Fashion is dynamic. It is constantly changing and evolving. These changes reflect global trends, societal patterns, and a potpourri of several things that we love to flaunt and pull off.
However, our fashion tastes and expectations are not always constant.
This dynamic nature is explicitly on display in the eCommerce fashion industry as well. Both global and local fashion businesses are constantly evolving and trying to stay relevant in shifting markets (both geographically and economically). To accommodate newer technologies and blend ethics like sustainability while taking the profits a notch above.
But you might be still weighing the upsides and downsides of selling online vs. offline. The advantage of an online fashion store in WordPress could be a little difficult for you to comprehend without appropriate figures. So, let’s shed some light on the probable future of online fashion. How making fashion eCommerce websites will help leverage your business.
Why Take Your Fashion Store Online?
The COVID-19 pandemic added a significant thrust to the eCommerce industry. It has been evident in the online fashion sector as well. There has been a massive increase in online fashion demands. This has pushed industry leaders to contemplate newer ways to reach the masses. Direct-to-consumer brands have evolved as clear winners in this changing landscape.
According to Statista, the net worth of the online fashion industry was 439 billion USD in 2018, which reached almost 758 billion USD in 2021. It is expected to continue the bull, to reach nearly 953 billion USD by 2024. This growth is fueled by the significant sales of apparel, accessories, footwear, and others. All of these are estimated to account for almost 32.8% of all fashion eCommerce sales by 2024.
As we move towards 2022, online channel shares are expected to reach almost 22% of global fashion sales. And, the eCommerce penetration rate in worldwide fashion sales is expected to skyrocket to nearly 50%.
Thus, creating an eCommerce website on WordPress will help you take the first step to establishing a successful online fashion business.
Advantages of Creating Your Online Fashion Store with WordPress?
A commonthreadco.com blog reports a CAGR of 7.2% of the global fashion market in the forecast period of 2020-2025. The same report also highlights that 2020 witnessed a total eCommerce fashion growth of nearly 26.5%, whereas the eCommerce apparel growth was also phenomenal at around 29.6%.
The astonishing figures stated above have already made people realize the upsides of setting up an online store and understand why online business is popular nowadays.
What is the best eCommerce platform for clothing websites? Should I go forward with Shopify? Or should I go ahead with a combination of WordPress and WooCommerce? Is WordPress good for the online fashion business? Can I start a successful online fashion store using a WordPress eCommerce website?
I understand the dilemma that you might be facing here.
But don’t worry, we have you covered. I’ll provide you ‘actionable insights’ to enable you to establish a successful online store for your fashion business.
Shopify is a fully managed hosting eCommerce solution. It enables you to log in and start selling from the get go. However, integrating multiple features and setting up a payment gateway incurs additional charges. Honestly speaking, setting up an online store becomes a pricey affair when you select Shopify as your preferred eCommerce platform.
Choosing a WordPress eCommerce website is one of the flexible options for beginners to advance people in the fashion business. Building an eCommerce website on WordPress will help you reap all the benefits with multiple payment gateway integrations, multipurpose WordPress theme collections, and a holistic, user-friendly experience.
WordPress: One platform that does it All!
WordPress in itself is an all-in-one platform that takes care of every website need! Offering a lot of themes and plugins to get you started with your online fashion store. Read to know everything about WordPress themes and plugins.
Now the plugin in the spotlight here is WooCommerce. WooCommerce is a free plugin that turns any WordPress website into an e-store. Some also like to call it a WooCom-store. The plugin has a lot to offer and comes loaded with features. Rest assured, WooCommerce has everything to put your e-store right up there with the best-looking and performing online e-stores.
Well, for now, let’s summarize the highlights of choosing WordPress for your online fashion store. We’ll also discuss how WooCommerce enables you to start and run a successful online fashion store.
Start an Online store with minimum Investment
WordPress is an open-source CMS. Therefore, it enables you to set up your eCommerce store with utmost ease and create a robust online presence. It is free and the most cost-effective solution in case you need to start an online store for free. Starting an eCommerce website using WordPress is the best hack for a bootstrapping fashion business!
Seamless experience while setting up an online store:
WordPress helps you manage your eCommerce website and its content effortlessly. You don’t have to run around hassling much while establishing an online store using WordPress. Just don’t limit yourself to an externally hosted site or get stuck between expensive web hosting providers.
Here’s a guide to choosing the best hosting option that fits your business needs: Self vs managed WordPress hosting. WPWB is here with All-Thing Everything WordPress. We’ve all you need to start with WordPress, build and run a WordPress website, and establish a wide and popular digital presence.
Robust security that never lets you down:
Running an eCommerce fashion store is a daunting task. You have to take care of maintaining tons of sensitive information like, including login credentials, payment info, card details, etc. WordPress ensures high-security levels, adhering to all protocols, standards, and regulations. Security highly depends upon regular updates, database back-ups, themes, maintenance, etc. As a user, you should regularly update the WordPress themes and plugins.
The WordPress community regularly releases multiple security updates consistently, to give you a secure and intuitive experience. A plethora of plugins are available to enable you to make effortless data backups. Security tools like Wordfence security fortify your website’s defenses.
Also, there are dedicated teams of highly experienced security professionals, working in the WordPress core teams. So, you can concentrate on growing your Fashion store, without worrying about security. If you like to stay one step ahead when it comes to securing your WordPress website. Read the types of security threats WordPress websites face and how you can protect your website against them!
Never run out of options with Countless WordPress fashion store themes!
WordPress is the most feasible and attractive choice to start an e-store. No matter what type of products/services you sell, or what your brand is, WordPress has a lot to offer and then some more! It trumps all other CMS (Content Management Systems) with a fantastic library of themes that house different collections of designs, features, and tailor-made choices for your online fashion store.
WordPress themes are ideal for creating a mobile-friendly website with a user-friendly experience with seamless navigation and control. It also supports multiple customization options, enabling you to build an appealing site with a great design, custom fonts, etc. Appealing and engaging your audience was never this easy!
Choose from thousands of compelling themes and develop an eCommerce fashion website that looks great and has impeccable user-friendly navigation.
A repertoire of eCommerce plugins to craft your online fashion store success stories:
With many effective eCommerce plugins in the business, WordPress allows you to make easy updates to your online fashion store. Apart from other popular eCommerce plugins like Ecwid eCommerce Shopping Cart, WP eCommerce,Easy Digital Downloads, etc.
WooCommerce is one of the most credible, popular eCommerce plugins that have added wind to set the sails of several successful online fashion stores worldwide. With 82 million+ downloads and 5 million+ active installations, WooCommerce is one of the most acclaimed WordPress eCommerce plugins!
Coming to WordPress, powers 43% of all eCommerce platforms online. Its ease of use and customization makes it highly popular with the developer community as well.
And this is not the end! You can also get a custom theme and plugin, in case you want to create something offbeat and unique.
How WooCommerce Changes the Entire eCommerce Business Space?
WooCommerce is one of the most reliable and widely-used plugins for building an online fashion store. It has helped millions of eCommerce businesses kickstart and boost their sales with a flurry of customization and state-of-the-art features.
Be it secure payment gateways, configurable shipping options, or anything else, you name it, and you will get it on WooCommerce!
Let’s look at the perks that WooCommerce has to offer if you choose WordPress as a website builder and CMS for your online fashion store.
WooCommerce is entirely customizable
Whether you are selling clothes online with a universal target audience, displaying shoes for athletes and gym rats, or zeroing in on fashion accessories, WooCommerce is your best bet!
This platform is completely customizable, and the WooCommerce Marketplace is full of nifty extensions that allow you to modify the feel and functionalities of your e-store.
WooCommerce lets you do business at the fingertips
Want your WordPress e-store to run perfectly on mobile devices? Well, WordPress allows you to have cross-browser/device friendly. WordPress is your go-to solution for making that dream come true.
The WooCommerce mobile app is built to offer you the perks of managing your business on the go. You can monitor orders, shipments, and other essential stats in real-time, set up a merchandise line, and do everything possible on a computer without fixing your coordinates!
Allows you to build, modify, and scale constantly
WooCommerce is one of the most developer-friendly plugins in the entire WordPress ecosystem. Built with a REST API,. WooCommerce is completely scalable and can be integrated into any service. Right from adding your personalized store, /creating your products to extending a store for a client, and more.
WooCommerce simplifies payment and bolsters security
If you want to focus on the core operations of your online fashion business without worrying too much about payments, WooCommerce has the perfect solution for you! WooCommerce Payment is safe and secure. It offers a fully integrated solution that helps you track your revenue, access your earnings, handle monetary disputes, and in-person payments, and monitor various charges and deposits!
Additionally, WooCommerce partners with Stripe. It is a credible extension that allows you to process and handle payments through major international payment gateways, local payment methods, credit, and debit cards. You can take those directly to your WooCommerce store! Stripe is well known for its robust security features that mitigate all fraudulent activities and keep your business and customer interests safe.
WooCommerce is one of the most popular choices for drop-shipping business
When it comes to drop-shipping, WooCommerce offers the utmost flexibility to both budding and experienced marketers. There are tons of drop-shipping plugins tailored for WooCommerce that help you streamline several tasks like order fulfillment, product import, and others.
You can even start an online store without inventory and even accommodate other vendors to sell on your drop-shipping platform!
WooCommerce trumps its competitors and drives ahead at a breakneck pace
Yes, you heard that right! WooCommerce is not just a plugin. According to a report published by BuiltWith, around 3,67,138 websites use WooCommerce as of September 2022. This number roughly corresponds to 68,000 of the top 1 million websites worldwide.
These astonishing figures put other eCommerce solutions in the backseat. Both Magento and Shopify – extremely popular eCommerce platforms rank poorly when it comes to powering the top 1 million eCommerce websites.
While Shopify captures a market share of 19% of the top million websites, Magento lags behind at 10% for the same. This undoubtedly speaks volumes about the supremacy of WooCommerce. Most notable online companies like Clickbank, Awesome Inventions, The Spectator Magazine Shop, Porter and York, The Good Batch, Untold Wish, etc. have their bespoke eCommerce solutions.
WooCommerce has an endless list of add-ons and extensions
It is virtually impossible to count the number of plugins and extensions that can be fully integrated and work effortlessly with WordPress. Yes, you can use many plugins at the same time. You get access to more than 59000 free WordPress plugins along with a host of paid plugins.
There are also special plugins available, made to work with WooCommerce specifically. You can find more than 980 plugins that have WooCommerce mentioned in their title.
There are reputed marketplaces that host hundreds of WooCommerce plugins. This is possible due to the low barrier of entry that WooCommerce provides. Hence, third-party tools and service providers can develop their own plugins that seamlessly integrate with the WooCommerce store.
The WooCommerce PDF Invoices and Packing Slips, the YITH WooCommerce Wishlist, Beeketing for WooCommerce, PickPlugins Product Slider for WooCommerce, Product Notices WooCommerce, etc. are some handy and popular plugins that you would come across while using WooCommerce to build your custom fashion store online.
These plugins and extensions allow you to use every feature, starting from lead generation, social media integration, streamlining payment gateways, enhancing eCommerce SEO, performance optimization, and so on!
WooCommerce enables access to the most attractive themes in the business
The eCommerce fashion industry thrives on the extent of the presentability and functionalities of fashion eCommerce websites. If you want to build the best eCommerce platform for clothing and accessories, you need to keep the usability of the platform in mind, along with its ‘net captivating potential’.
You will readily get your hands on thousands of WordPress themes that include support and styling for WooCommerce.
The WordPress.org theme directory has nearly 1453 WooCommerce themes. What’re you waiting for, get started with building your online fashion store today!
WooCommerce supports you throughout your online business journey
WooCommerce is one of the most popular eCommerce solutions. It boasts a dedicated community that is always striving to keep it that way. WooCommerce has an expert support team that offers in-depth answers to problems you might face while running this self-hosted eCommerce platform.
Being one of the fastest-growing eCommerce communities, WooCommerce also offers more than 80 meetups globally for its users to interact, share knowledge and grow together. Along with this, there is an endless repository of extensive documentation, tutorials, and guides to power your business journey.
Conclusion
People are becoming more aware of sustainable fashion trends and the ill-effects of consumerism while gradually inclining towards purchasing from online brands rather than visiting brick-and-mortar stores.
This creates a massive opportunity for people in the fashion eCommerce business. The domino effect can be felt by website builders and CMS platforms like WordPress.
As of now, WordPress+WooCommerce has reached a tipping point, and with its tremendous ecosystem of plugins, extensions, themes, experts, and hosting providers, the meteoric rise will continue in the foreseeable future.