These Are the Most Important Trends in Fashion E-Commerce

Shopping goes digital! For the e-commerce sector, Fashion is undisputedly the largest and most important market sector. The trends and requirements for it grow and grow - every day. With some well-known brands, Germany is one of the fastest growing fashion markets worldwide, increasingly moving its customer base from offline to the online world.

If you're also active in fashion e-commerce, then you're probably regularly facing the question of what really appeals to your customers. A good overview here is provided by the Fashion Study by the shipping software Sendcloud, which we'll give you a small preview of in this article. In total, over 8,000 online customers were surveyed about their online shopping behavior.

This has resulted in some important insights that we now want to show you in more detail. They should support you in growing your e-commerce in the fashion sector. 

These are the key findings from the Sendcloud fashion study

The Sendcloud Fashion Study summarizes some important findings for the fashion sector. For the evaluation, we focused specifically on the shipping area and now supply you with relevant aspects for you and your work:

Shipping & Tracking

For the goods to arrive at the online users within a short time, the shipping is an important prerequisite in the field of fashion e-commerce. According to the fashion study, for almost 60 percent of the surveyed buyers, flexible delivery options are an important factor in their shopping experience. They want to decide for themselves how to receive their selected items.

This also goes hand in hand with the major trend of multi-carrier shipping. This means that an online shopping platform offers shipping via several parcel service providers - Zalando is a prominent example of this. The company already offers multi-carrier shipping with GLS, DHL, and DPD - this saves costs and boosts sales.

By the way, high shipping costs are with almost 70 percent of the surveyed study participants, the most frequently mentioned exclusion criteria for online purchases. Much rather, online shoppers would add another product to their shopping cart in order to save on shipping costs or possibly avoid them altogether.

An important learning for you is therefore that on your online platform you offer your customers various shipping methods and combine these with different parcel services. Thus, you not only satisfy your customers, but also increase flexibility.

Returns

From the perspective of an online retailer, returns are among the most labor-intensive processes in the field of fashion e-commerce. But no need to be deterred! It is much more worth taking a look at the results of the fashion study and learning from the findings.

These are the most frequently mentioned reasons, why online buyers send back their goods:

• Received the wrong product or the wrong size.
• Disappointed with the products due to false product description.
• Received damaged or defective products.
• Delays or problems with delivery.

And with these tips you can reduce the returns in your online shop:

• Add customer reviews and clear product photos and descriptions.
• Provide detailed information about the product characteristics.
• Ensure that the correct products are selected and packed in suitable boxes.
• Optimize shipping process through appropriate shipping companies to anticipate timely delivery.

The more detailed your product description is, the less likely your customers are to return it (Source: Sendcloud).

With this in mind, carefully examine once again what return conditions you place on your customers and how you implement them. Your customers will thank you, as according to the Sendcloud fashion study, more than half of online buyers check the return conditions before a purchase.

Sustainability

In addition to shipping and return, one topic in particular concerns buyers when shopping online: sustainability. Almost 80 percent of participants in the fashion study believe that online retailers often use too much packaging material for shipping their orders.

Environmental awareness has grown even more since the pandemic, and therefore this is an important factor in fashion e-commerce. Now is the time for you to deal with sustainable services.

So you can also protect the planet better:

• Use reusable or biodegradable materials
• Provide green shipping methods to contribute to reducing global CO2 emissions

Other options, which are also already offered by other major online shopping platforms, include delivery by cargo bikes or practical tools for measuring and reducing emissions.

All current trends and further important knowledge can be found in Sendcloud's fashion study, which you can download.

How to Implement the Findings for Your Fashion E-Commerce

At first glance, there are some points you should consider in the field of fashion e-commerce. But you are not alone, because some software solutions are waiting for you when it comes to shipping that support you in optimizing. One of these platforms is Sendcloud.

This is a European All-in-one shipping platform for online shops for shipping optimization. The shipping platform connects your own shop with more than 130 parcel services and shop systems. In this way, you can automate the entire shipping process, from label creation, tracking, picking and returns processing.

We show you how Sendcloud can specifically support you in the areas already mentioned above.

Shipping & Tracking

To allow your customers to precisely track their delivery, Sendcloud offers personalized tracking mails. With these, you keep your customers updated about their orders while simultaneously improving customer loyalty.

The e-commerce software also responds to the demand for flexible shipping options. Your customers can choose between various shipping options in the checkout process since the most popular, cheapest, and fastest package services and their shipping methods are connected in the software. Existing shipping contracts can also be tied into the software.

Offer your customers various shipping options in the checkout process (Source: Sendcloud).

Returns

So that you can also be flexible in the return process towards your customers, Sendcloud offers flexible options for returns, like it does for shipping. Through Sendcloud's returns portal, your customers have easy and uncomplicated processing of returns at their disposal, with the choice between different return options and return refunds.

A door to optimization also opens for you, as in the Analytics Dashboard of the software you can track all reasons for returns precisely and make note of them.

Customers can directly digitally record their returns and indicate (Source:Sendcloud).

Sustainability

The topic of sustainability is also at the forefront for Sendcloud. The software is connected to several climate-neutral shipping services and methods. This automatically provides environmentally friendly shipping options for you and your customers.

More shipping software on OMR Reviews

On our software review platform OMR Reviews, you will find, besides Sendcloud, several other shipping softwares, which will support you, among other things, in the logistics of your shipping.

These include for example

• shipcloud
• JTL
• LetMeShip
• Alaiko
• byrd

Take a look at the individual tool reviews to give yourself a better overview when choosing the right shipping software.

Conclusion: The Future of Fashion E-Commerce

Step by step all countries are returning to the new normal. This is also visible in fashion e-commerce. The probability is very high here that online users will adopt the hybrid form of shopping in the long term.

According to the Sendcloud fashion studio, surveyed online buyers focus particularly on flexible shipping and return options. You should be prepared for this demand and seek support from suitable shipping software.

To survive in this highly competitive environment, it is worthwhile to invest in a sustainability strategy, which will determine the future of fashion brands.

If you take into account these trends and study results, you will have a lot of room in the fashion market and can benefit sustainably from your success.