It is very common nowadays to sell online, today we will give you some tips on how to start an online boutique. Those who already run an online boutique should also stay to find out what to do to make an online boutique make more and more money every month (we know that many boutiques have completely opposite tendencies). You will also learn from this article what tools will make your life easier and make you scale your online business soon. Quite often, the success of a business does not just depend on the product you have, but on how you run the business and what tools you have to do so. Many people get dissatisfied with their business after time because they don’t see results . Today you will learn how to start an online boutique and run it successfully.

First and foremost, if you think of business only in terms of social media – you’re done. Why? It’s simple. Social media are not at all free sites where you can do business and sell. Every action you take is an action for the benefit of these companies, and they – earn money from advertising. In this type of scheme, you can see actions such as ‘cutting down reaches’, slowly – but continuously. As a result, we work more and more, and the effects are…. well, weaker and weaker. Because of this, many people are getting burnt out. Starting an online boutique with social media is also not the best idea. Today it’s all about freshness, and what’s freshness about putting a camera in a room, buying a few dresses and trying to sell them to an audience on the other side?

Did we say no to live streaming?
Absolutely not. We said no such thing.

However, we are pointing out here that at a time when we are constantly getting another link to a person who sells clothes online, we are unlikely to be successful and the opposite is true. Social media should also be seen as a kind of business support. They are not sales platforms, they do not provide an invoice for the customer, they do not have a payment system, so all the post-purchase operations between us and the customer consume a lot of time. Checking transfers, sizing, registering. Finally, at the end of this transaction, anyone has the customer’s email or phone number, or even do…. it’s somewhere in the history of social conversations that is never returned to.

If we decide to promote our brand by creating regular live events, it is worth making sure we have a good impression. Here, a simple plaque with our logo and a clothes rack is not enough – that will be seen everywhere. It’s worth considering a format that will be interesting, that will keep people entertained on social media – after all, that’s where they expect it. A person in a positive mood is more willing to buy. How our live looks also has an impact. Let’s not focus here on copying others, let’s create something unique, with style, something good to look at. It’s even worth spending a few days building up the scenery and lighting – the better the scenery, the more professional we look during a live show, and the more professional we look, the more people will trust us and want to buy something from us.

Social media should also be a place where we attract customers and ultimately – move them to our shop, get them used to visiting the shop, buying there, checking if there are promotions. And live performances like this are great for that.

“Ladies, every Wednesday we will draw free shopping vouchers from among all those who have subscribed to our newsletter. The draw is always at 6 p.m. You are very welcome.”

By creating even such a promotion, it is very easy to obtain many email addresses and telephone numbers for our customers. When we have a new stock delivered, we can always inform our customers about it (then the customers buy the stock before the live starts), and at the live we only sell what is left. This way we don’t waste our time, because a lot of things will be happening alongside – we do the advertising and invite the customer into our shop. In this case, an online boutique.

So we get to the stage where the best option is to start our business with an online shop. We know that it is expensive – but an online shop – is transferable, this means that if something goes wrong, you can put the shop up for sale and generally find someone who wants to pull the business, or buy the shop to further promote e.g. an already operating online boutique. The benefits of running your own online shop are indeed many, and we will try to name a few here. Of course, in order for these benefits to apply, it is important to choose the right software on which to operate our online shop. It is also important to remember to surround ourselves with specialists who know what they are doing and will help us promote such an online shop. Here we go.

#1 An online shop offers many more possibilities than a typical boutique. First of all, we can put products into the shop that we don’t have in our stock. There are a lot of clothing wholesalers, where we get pictures, sizes and prices – we set the margin, add the products, and only when someone buys them in our shop – we order the products with shipment directly to our customer. A big benefit – we don’t freeze money, and at the same time we have a much bigger assortment.

#2 Automation, we know – it sounds confusing, but it’s not. An online shop is like a mini-computer that stores all the information about transactions and customers. It generates reports for us, so we can see the sales curve and quickly determine whether our earnings are going up or down. With precisely displayed data, it is easier to make marketing decisions.

#3 Invoicing / shipping – we no longer have to do this manually. A well-configured shop will order the courier itself, so our role is limited only to printing the invoice and shipping label and attaching it to the package. It is also a very convenient option for customers – our customer has their own account, where they can access order history, invoices and additional tools that we provide to the customer (affiliate programme or loyalty programme).

#4 The marketing tools we mentioned above. No social media platform provides them, in an online shop, we can run an affiliate programme, where we will reward our customers for bringing new customers to our shop, and a loyalty programme, where the customer can receive points for every purchase.

#5 When running an online shop, we can prepare a separate promotional subpage for each occasion. Black Friday, Valentine’s Day or Women’s Day – this can be an interesting experience for the customers of our shop. Many well-known brands are taking advantage of the benefits of landing pages.

#6 An online shop instils good habits, both for us and our customers. Having a shop is always our shop, where we direct and serve the customer. A customer who has to send us an address, a bank transfer – may be tired of this. Using an online shop, is convenient, and we can give the customer the option of convenient payments by card / bank transfer / paypal or even cryptocurrencies.

How to make your brand stand out?

As well as the products we buy and resell, it is also worth investing in our own products, which will include your brand logo. Just a few years ago, creating a clothing brand involved huge expenses and the risk of failure. Today, companies such as Wear.Lu offer to produce clothing with your logo on it, starting from just one item. This means you can create a virtual collection of clothes, and Wear.Lu will deliver it to you when your customer places an order. Even 1pc, in your packaging, with your logo – just as if it was produced in your factory. The advantage of Wear.Lu is that they offer only the highest quality clothing, your customers will definitely appreciate

If you decide to take this step, it is a good idea to equip yourself with strings and clothing labels to attach to your clothes. You can design your own garments, or you can have a friend graphic designer do it for you, or you can outsource it to specialists at the Lu clothing company. Your own product opens up entirely new possibilities. Why? With a branded product, from now on you can reach out to other boutiques and offer them a commission, from the sale of your product. And the world does not end with online boutiques. Using an affiliate programme, for example, you can establish very interesting partnerships with influencers or youtubers.

Time matters

With social media, the content you add there is only visible for a short while. With our own online shop, it works a little differently, because the validity is not lost. What’s more, by posting our offer on social media and promoting our online boutique on a regular basis, it’s not just the main page that will go up in search engine results, but all the sub-pages of the website. In short, by dropping a post on social media – if it doesn’t have an effect right away – it never will. In the case of an online shop, it could be that the product we add starts selling when we least expect it. The best part is that it can all happen without us having to do anything, just – we wake up, find that while we were sleeping, someone has bought our product – convenient, isn’t it?

This is why the smart thing to do is to first launch an online shop, add a product to it, then promote that product. In this way, we do things in the right order. The links we leave on the web position our shop in the search engines, while at the same time creating an ‘on-going’ advertisement that someone may be interested in.

Of course, it is impossible to describe all the stages of promoting and launching a boutique in one article, so if there is interest, we will continue this series of posts. At the beginning, it is worth remembering the visual identity, we mentioned it, but for many people “a logo is a logo”. Here, it is not worth saving money, it is better to spend more money and get a professional logo, because it really very often has a huge impact on – what kind of customer will come to us. The logo should, of course, be designed for the product we are going to sell, and if we don’t really know which way the boutique is going to go, let’s go for something more universal. The same goes for the name, which should be easy and short. Easy and short is not ‘lala boutique’ or ‘somethingtam boutique’…. let’s try to be unique.

We hope that we have helped you at least a little in understanding how to start selling online. If you are looking for someone who can implement an online shop for your boutique, we encourage you to take advantage of the services at Altuena Marketing & Seo. As well as being able to build a unique online shop for you, we will guide you step-by-step through the world of the internet and online marketing in an effort to make your online shop generate the revenue you dream of. With the right partner, anything is possible – let’s create something together. We look forward to meeting you.