Online Boutiques: Playbook for Live Selling

💡 Are you looking for ways to maximize your Live Selling revenue?
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We're hosting a free webinar titled "Secret Hacks to Grow Your Boutique from $0 to $100K+ With Live Selling in 3 Months" on 28th June 2022 at 11 AM CDT, where we have Ethan Kramer, the CEO of EK Creative, drop some tips and hacks on using the power of live selling to grow your boutique! Click here to save your seat now!

“Every day is a fashion show, and the world is your ramp.”

Fashion moves pretty fast.

No, we are not talking about the snazzy models waltzing down the ramp.

We are talking about the new trends in the fashion industry that keep cropping up like mushrooms on a rainy day.

Brands that have not evolved with these trends have perished over time.

Wet Seal, Arden B, American Apparel, and The Limited are some of the notable names in the fashion industry who are no longer with us to tell their story.

These stories remind us of the popular lines from Miss Congeniality –

Winners wear a crown, losers wear a frown.

Unless you want to wear a frown and want to compete in such a hyper-dynamic market, you need to embrace the latest methods to sell.

Enter live selling – the recent and most sophisticated channel to propel the fashion world ahead.

Why Selling Clothes Through Live Selling is a Good Idea?

Live selling works splendidly for the fashion industry because it is a very subjective and peer-influenced market. By watching other people actively participate in the sales process, customers are more likely to be convinced themselves.

Live selling also takes the idea of limited availability sales and deftly blends it with the online space. When a limited quantity is communicated and participants are able to see other shoppers taking action online, a sense of urgency is built that motivates participants to make a purchase as fast as possible.

Fashion is also a volume-driven industry. The more people you reach instantly, the more you can sell. In a world where trends last only a few months, you need to sell off the stock as early as possible. The best way to do this is to reach multiple participants in one shot through a live stream.

How to Sell Clothes Through Live Selling?

Live selling helps to sway hesitant customers towards purchasing your products as it gives them a visual experience that a regular eCommerce store can’t. However, to succeed at live selling, you need to follow certain steps to synthesize a fruitful experience for all the stakeholders. Here are they –

Pick the Right Place

The location you choose to conduct your live selling makes a significant impact on how successful your initiative turns out to be. If you’re streaming directly from your store, your customers will get a chance to view other products and virtually visit your store. Some bold brands even choose an outdoor location to showcase their apparel. This mainly works for those brands that sell eco-friendly clothes or recycled clothes.

Each place has its own advantages and disadvantages and is purely dependent on your convenience, what your brand stands for, and the type of clothes you’re selling.

For instance, Elladees conducted a live selling event directly from their boutique outlet. Through this, there were able to show their vast collection of clothes indirectly to the viewers. In all probability, the customers’ eyes would have wandered to every nook and corner of the shop, looking for more products to purchase later.

Pick the Right Products

Picking the right products doesn’t necessarily mean the most attractive products. In fact, it could be just the opposite. For example, if you have slow-moving products and you want to reduce the inventory space, try using a live sale to dispose of those apparel. Try to create an artificial demand for those products by offering them at a limited time frame and repeatedly reminding the customers that the product is going off stock very soon.

Take the case of the brand Sweet M.  They smartly embed the comment featuring the ‘sold’ word at a prominent place of their video. This shows that the product is selling hot, inducing FOMO in the viewers’ minds.

Pick the Right Equipment

Different locations warrant different equipment. If you’re going live inside your store, you will require a high-quality camera and more powerful lighting equipment as compared to going into a large park during the day. On the flip side, when you take your sale to the outdoors, you might want to invest in a portable internet connection that will let you stream high-quality video with minimal stutters.

Build an App to Support your Live Sale

Create a robust app that will help customers visit your store even after the live sale.  The app should be intuitive and have an easy-to-use storefront to let them seamlessly place an order.

If you do not want to go through the hassles of developing a mobile app for your brand, try Vajro’s powerful app builder to instantly manufacture an app for yourself. Craft a rich experience for your customers that they will adore, making them your loyal partners.

Pick the Right Channel

Different channels work well for different products. When selling clothes, platforms like Facebook and Instagram are perfect for going live since they already have the necessary tools built into the platform. These are also the platforms where you can see the relevant customers who fall under your brand’s ICP (Ideal Customer Profile).

It makes complete sense for a brand like Cactus Creek to run their live sale on Instagram. Reason – they sell products to young women, Millenials, and Gen Z. These are the people you can find typically find on Instagram.

On the other hand, Miss Hann chose to sell their clothes and bags through Facebook Live mainly because they wanted to clear out a large inventory on one go. It would take a long time to showcase such a mammoth collection of SKUs. Her best bet was to use Facebook, as it is ideal for longer live streams as compared to Instagram.

If you are an existing Vajro customer, you do not have to worry about which social media platform to choose for your live sale. An app built on Vajro lets you start the live sale right from its interface. The best part is that customers can directly add a product to the cart and complete the order without the need to switch applications.

Choose the Right Time

If you are on the verge of choosing a time for your sale, ensure that it successfully answers the following questions –

• Are you choosing a time when your customers are more likely to be awake and online?
• Are you choosing a time that’s convenient for your users?
• Will they be at work during this time?
• Are your customers in the same time zone as you?
• Are you selecting a time that’s appropriate for the products you’re selling?

When you get answers to all the questions, you can eliminate a fair number of time slots easily. Remember – Picking a proper time is incredibly important for a live sale. A wrong decision can completely derail the goal of the activity.

Oneshop had a live selling event for sleepwear, but they chose to go live during South Asian daytime since most of their entire customer base was from that region. They never tried to set a time to cater to their followers in the US or Europe. They very well knew that they weren’t going to get many sales from those regions.

Notify Your Customers About Your Sale

If you don’t let your customers know there’s going to be a sale, be ready for plenty of no-shows. Notifying your customers helps them plan ahead. If they’re interested, they will attend your live sale event, if not they might even recommend their friends or family to participate.

Push notification is an easy and quick way to reach customers who already have your app installed on their phones. You can try sending a notification like:

“Radit’s Spring Mega Sale is going live in 15 minutes! Lay your hands on the best deals before the stocks are wiped off”

With Vajro, sending a push notification doesn’t take any time. You can send or schedule push notifications directly from your Vajro app. Add images, gifs, and videos (only for iOS) to make your notification more alluring to the customers.

Engage With Your Audience

A live sale is an event that gives you endless powers to engage with your customers. Ask questions or conduct a live poll on the sale. Give discount codes for answering questions or sharing your link with friends and family. This can drastically improve engagement rates and help in customer retention.

The Ruffled Robin uses their live sale event to not just sell their merchandise but also to engage with their audience and build brand awareness. They regularly conduct surveys to ask participants their choice on a survey question like the below –

Bottom Line

Live selling in the fashion industry was a big hit during the pandemic times because it gave the customers the closest experience of visiting a physical store. It enabled them to understand the apparel better, engage with the brand, and finally make an informed decision to purchase the dress.

But before you start engaging with your customers through live selling, you need a kickass app to support it when the sale ends. Apps built with Vajro take it one step ahead by letting you perform all the actions right within the platform. So if your brand needs a versatile app to make your live sales a grand success, reach out to us at support@vajro.com.