Footwear industry is one of the very few industries that remain unfazed by the fluctuating economic trends. To testify this statement, stats conducted by a leading organization revealed that “Footwear industry generates yearly revenue of $15bn.” Hence starting an online shoe store business can turn out to be a very lucrative venture.
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Why is it essential to create an online shoe store?
With the advent of smart phone technology, there has been a landslide increase in the number of digital buyers.
“As on 2015 end, the number of online shoppers is expected to touch 1300mn.”
That doesn’t mean it is the end of the world for brick and mortars. However, it clearly indicates that one gets a competitive edge by opening an eCommerce store.
How resourceful has online medium been to global shoe brands?
Seeing the surge in online shopping, global sports brands such as Nike, Adidas, Reebok and many more, have started leveraging the online platform to rev up their sales. And, yeah it proved to be a wise move.
Nike that has is its website and mobile apps for shoppers witnessed a 70% hike in their sales.
Adidas, in 2015, was able to generate $651 million through online, which was supposed to be 80% increase in their sales.
The above stats testify the importance of opening an online shoe boutique. But mere selling of brand shoes and voracious promotions are just not enough; you need to develop an online shoe store that is superior in terms of quality and engaging enough to convince the end users to stay.
How to build a top class online shoe store?
When you desire to create an online retail shoe store that is top notch in quality; you need to concentrate on every minute aspect of your shoe development site. Let us explore them further:
Deploy The Right Platform To Develop Your Shoe Website
Open-source eCommerce platforms simplify your job in building an online shoe store. Visitors tend to get intrigued only when there is a vast collection of shoes. To handle diverse products, your site should be sturdy and have admin-centric backend options. For that you need to deploy a robust and admin-friendly eCommerce platform like Magento for creating your online shoe store.
Opt For Minimal Ui To Build Your Online Shoe Store
If you observe the UI of successful shopping websites, you can find one thing in common and that is minimalist design. Your store’s design should be pleasing and inviting. More importantly, end-users should find it comfortable while operating your site.
- The background color for you site is very important. It is advisable to choose white color or lighter shades for the background.
- If you happen to announce offers on shoes, have a separate banner to inform your visitors about the same.
- Give adequate spacing to all your footwear items and enable the zoom-in/out options, so that customers can inspect the footwear clearly
- Do not add too many shoe categories as it could end up confusing the shoppers.
Focus On Aspects That Spike Up Your Shoe Site’s Conversions
Design only invites the users, but there is a lot more that needs to be done to make a user stay in your site. Let us see what they are:
Optimize Your Online Shoe Site’s Performance
On an average, shoppers expect a website to load under 5 seconds. Hence it is essential to optimize your shoe website on a regular basis. Heavy image files are the prime reasons for performance deterioration.
So you can make use of advance speed optimization techniques like sprite image to reduce the image size. There are many such techniques that can be made use of, to improve your online shoe site’s loading speed. If you are not familiar with speed optimization procedure, you can seek the help of professional eCommerce development companies.
Incorporate Shopper-Centric Functionalities
Security: When shoppers give their card details, they will be very specific to know what is done to secure their credentials. Hence use SSL for processing all financial transactions and that can keep them rest assured.
Simple Registration: It will be demanding for customers to furnish all their information while registering. Hence append the social login feature to your site; it enables them to register and log-in to your shoe site using their social networking accounts.
Crisp checkouts: It becomes a laborious process for customers to enter their address details, credit/debit card details and so on. Hence make your checkouts crisp. Firms like Amazon, store customers address details and credit card details. As a result, customers get to pay by a single-click. Incorporate such features and at the same time take adequate security measures.
Advanced Search options: The reason why customers prefer online shopping is that it less time consuming. When you have a pile of products listed in your online shoe boutique, it will be tedious for the shoppers to find what they exactly want. Hence include search filters to your shoe site as it can fetch products based on the criteria set by the customers (e.g. price, recent arrivals).
Employ durable servers: Heavy traffic leads to server downtime and that can bring disrepute to your brand. But erratic traffic and eCommerce sites go hand in hand. Hence the server you employ should be resilient to withstand heavy traffic. When it comes to reliability, cloud servers are the ideal ones. They can adapt themselves to handle unprecedented traffic, and also they are comparatively cheaper.
Nowadays all major eCommerce stores deploy cloud servers. Amazon cloud is a very popular cloud server that is being used by many leading eCommerce sites. So you can use AWS and prevent your site from downtime issues.
Build Mobile Apps & Connect To A Wider Audience
According to Forbes, “The growth of mobile user base has been a staggering 75% year-over-year.”
Hence it is highly recommended to build a mobile app for your online shoe store. Building mobile apps tend to be cost-effective compared to websites. That is reason why popular marketplaces such as Flipkart, Myntra and many more, are switching over to apps.
In order to make your business more customer-friendly, you should incorporate an on demand delivery tracking feature into it. It is one of the prime functionalities that customers would love to have as it bestows them the opportunity to track their orders by themselves.
Further to being cost-effective, mobile apps make interactions with shoppers more engaging through features such as push notifications, discount coupons and so on. Developing mobile shopping app isn’t rocket science; there are many readymade mobile app solutions that let you create apps that are tailor-made to suit your online shoe site.
When you are set to open an online shoe store, keep in mind the aforementioned aspects. In case you are not sure of handling the technical stuff related to developing an online shoe store, then you can always get in touch with professional eCommerce development companies. That said; we are here to help you.
Your blog has highlighted about the importance of creating an online shoe store? Do you mean to say brick and mortars will become irrelevant in the future?
That cannot happen in the near future. But you really cannot say. If there is advancement in the augmented reality technology, things could go the online way. That is why I have highlighted the importance of opening an online shoe boutique.
Your blog has highlighted about the importance of creating an online shoe store? Do you mean to say brick and mortars will become irrelevant in the future?
That cannot happen in the near future. But you really cannot say. If there is advancement in the augmented reality technology, things could go the online way. That is why I have highlighted the importance of opening an online shoe boutique.
Interesting information. With respect to design, I very much agree with you. Because I have personally seen people starting online shoe store with dark backgrounds. As a shopper I find it very distracting.
Thank you. If you observe the websites of Adidas, Nike, you can find only white backgrounds. It will be sane to take a leaf out of their book while opening an online shoe website.
I opened an on online shoe website 1 year ago. There are 100 varieties of shoes displayed in my website. As a result of too many images in my site, my site’s speed has decelerated. What should I do?
You need to keep tab on your site’s performance once in 6 months. Well you having started your online shoe business a year ago it is imperative to optimize your site’s performance. Content looks to me the main reason for performance. I would suggest you to use sprite image technique and also merge the CSS and JS files in your site. In case you need any assistance please drop a mail to bd@contus.in .
I am starting an online shoes boutique very soon. Will signing in using social credentials really improve customer experience in my store?
Definitley Shaun. Social signing is quick and hassle free. Your users won’t have the trouble of entering repetitive information. I will recommend it as a must-have while starting an online shoes boutique. Get in touch with us at bd@contus.in for all support.
Is it possible to build an online shoes store where customers’ bank and credit card details are completely secure?
Brendon, there are plenty of features like SSL certificates and verisign approvals that make online shopping safe and secure like any offline banking transaction. In fact, these facilities have become a standard feature to build an online shoes store. Hence, yes. It is possible to secure the financial privacy of customers by all means in any online store.