Digital and social platforms are some of the strongest resources that fashion brands have available to build their marketing presence. Platforms like Pinterest and Instagram allow you to showcase your brand and create a memorable image. Ones like TikTok and YouTube allow you to advise customers on how to style your label’s pieces and turn them from casual purchases into the foundation of a capsule wardrobe. Each platform out there provides a number of benefits to designers that they can use to amplify the specific goals they set for their businesses. However, for the purposes of this blog, we’ll focus on the advantages of three of the most ubiquitous digital platforms that fashion designers have at their disposal – their website, Instagram, and Pinterest – and give you some very basic tips on how to set up each to further your sales and/or brand awareness business goals.

The Basics of a Strong Fashion Business Website

Your company website is likely the first place your customer will go to find out about your business. Use it to make a strong first impression. It should have smart navigation and should include all links to your social media and multiple calls to action. From a visual standpoint, it should be aesthetically pleasing but not too flashy so that it still looks professional. Your contact information should also be easy to find on any page.

We recommend using tools like Wix, WordPress, or Squarespace to build and manage your website. These tools optimize your site for a mobile experience and include some basic analytics information, which will help you make the most of how both desktop users and the nearly 4 billion people who use smartphones choose to interact with your site.

Maximizing Your Brand’s Use of Instagram

Instagram has grown in popularity as the go-to visual-first platform. Building a strong and professional-looking Instagram presence is essential because it allows you to show off your products and provides you a high-touch avenue to interact with, serve, and sell to customers.

We recommend creating a content calendar to assure that your feed has regular, up-to-date post and story content. It is a good habit to post often and have a good balance of posts that inform, entertain, and engage the audience. Also, make sure that your Instagram, in addition to your content and bio, includes a profile picture with your logo and a call to action with a link that drives customers to your digital store. While Instagram Shop is a tactic many fashion brands have chosen to explore, it is a paid feature. You may choose to take advantage of this, but whether you do or not, statistics show that 72 per cent of Instagram users have made purchases based on the content they first saw on this app.

Lastly, we recommend including relevant contact information and highlights for any notable posts or stories. Doing all of these small tasks will make browsing your Instagram page a more enjoyable experience for your customers and will allow them to easily find the information they seek about your company or specific products.

Using Pinterest to Showcase Designs and Potentially Increase Sales

Pinterest is a great tool for designers to find inspiration from others, but it can also be a platform that they use to showcase their own designs. While potential customers browsing on Pinterest are likely to have a longer lead-to-purchase timeline,fashion is consistently one of the most popular categories on Pinterest and the average user spends roughly 15 minutes on the site, which is higher than a lot of other platforms. Plus, at a whopping 73 per cent ,the percentage of users who make a purchase based on something they first saw on Pinterest sits just above the percentage for customers on Instagram.

Pinterest allows fashion designers to create different categories of images and showcase a high volume of their work in an organised way. This can help make the user experience even easier for potential customers who can use this feature to browse your Pin Boards in the same way they might browse your brick and mortar shop floor. Ultimately, building your online presence is essential to growing and maintaining your fashion business. In terms of how you should divide your time working on these platforms, you should build the website first. Once your website is fully built and operational, only make changes to it as needed. Then, divide your time evenly updating Pinterest and Instagram at a consistent level, whether it is 3 times a week, once a week, or daily. Regardless, you should have a content calendar ready 2 to 4 weeks in advance for these platforms to assure that you always stay on top of your content goals and keep your followers interested.

This article has not been edited by Fibre2Fashion staff and is re-published with permission from makersvalley.com