TIMING: The Key To Boost Fashion Ecommerce Sales
We all have heard the phrase “Time is Money”. Time is actually not money. Let me explain that. We can get to earn money back at any time. Can we get “Today” back?
Time therefore is infinitely more valuable than money. What that infers is “Timing” is supercritical.
These are the times every leader, promoter, or founder is concerned about demand generation. Every business is looking at how to Boost Fashion eCommerce Sales.
One of the areas where you do not find many books is on “Timing”.
While there are so many books written about the impact of what decisions we make, how we make decisions, why we make decisions, there is almost none on the impact of “When” we make decisions
When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, by Daniel H Pink
is a great book on the science of when we make decisions and how it impacts outcomes significantly (click on the book name to buy). While the bookshelves are flooded with How-to, this book is about When-To.
Building timing in your fashion business is being “real-time relevant” to the consumers.
How do you stay real-time relevant?
Being Real-Time Relevant
To boost fashion eCommerce sales is about building kinetic energy. We saw that in our previous edit, “Efficient or Effective Fashion“
Being real-time relevant is not just a reaction, it in fact needs protection. Just to give an example, 5 years back, eCommerce was getting established. All signals of internet users and smartphone reach were growing exponentially. Those who read the signals started to consider this channel as one of the strategic ones and started focussing. Those who pro-acted then are reaping the benefits now during covid times.
Like Walter Gretzky once said, “Skate to where the puck is going to be not where it is now”.
Every channel has its own nuances. If you consider eCommerce as one of the channels and handle it with resources and attention of what is left over, the business outcomes won’t be optimal.
The real potential of the channel lies in being relevant in the market you operate.
One of the fundamentals of the channel is low resistance/friction for consumers to switch across products or brands. What this means is your proposition needs to be relevant at that time. Also, the principle of “what is seen is what is looked at, what is looked is the one which will sell”.
This brings us to the importance of creating visibility and staying relevant.
5 Ways To Be Real-Time Relevant
It is an extremely competitive space and one needs to bring science in all the following areas to be at one’s potential. Also, this is not a one-time effort (Saying that we have listed online and wait for things to happen won’t work).
- Product: Consumers buy products – you need to be relevant all the time. It may look like common sense. It is uncommon. Staying relevant calls for dynamic intelligence of what works and what does not. In fashion and lifestyle, it is not about local intelligence, global intelligence matters.
- Price: Strategic understanding of the market you operate, positioning, and then dynamic tactical approach to pricing is key to stay real-time relevant
- Promotion: There is enough science in getting optimal ROI (return on investment) for your promotion spend. It is also required to break inertia and build kinetic energy.
- Content: This is your salesperson online. It is just about good-looking content and imagery. There is a science of what consumers are looking for. The content needs to be real-time relevant in that context. Having content that is not consumer-driven is like having products hidden in a physical store when consumers enter.
- Partnership: To boost fashion eCommerce sales, you need to win with the retailer and the consumer. Strategic selection of the partner and aligning is also critical.
To improve anything, one needs to measure. On a 1-10 scale, it is important to assess where do you stand on all the above areas. Assess yourself on intelligence and action.
In our study with various brands and retailers, while there are lots of actions that happen, real intelligence and scientific actions is an are with huge scope to improve. What this leaves us with a huge opportunity to maximise revenue potential of your brand.
We have been working on this over the last four years. Our customers have been able to grow their business exponentially in quantity and quality (watch one of our customer videos here). For eg., there is a single product that sells USD 1 Million/year (app. INR 7 Cr) in one eCommerce platform and growing.
Enabling this need for maximizing eCommerce potential for brands, we announced recently an assisted service called Stylumia AXEL. You can check our launch video and transcript here.
