Body fashion players know how to perform online

Within the fashion industry, retailers in body fashion perform best of all sub-industries. For instance, it has the lowest bounce rate (30.4%) as well as the lowest delivery and return costs, € 4.18 and € 4.86 respectively. In addition, body fashion has the highest percentage of repeat buyers as more than half of the customers (53.7%) return for at least a second purchase. In comparison, in men fashion, this rate amounts to nearly 30%.

This is all evident from the Ecommerce Benchmark & Fashion study, which the Ecommerce Foundation conducted among around 250 retailers from seven countries, in cooperation with Ecommerce Europe. For this report, the non-profit foundation examined data entered by retailers from the fashion industry on www.ecommercebenchmark.org<.

Another key conclusion is that men’s fashion is the lowest scoring sub-industry in a number of the key performance indicators (KPIs) that were covered in the study. “Our research also shows that men shop in a targeted way online,” says Eveline Poerink, Project Manager at the Ecommerce Foundation. “They know what they want and do not click through a lot of pages before buying their clothes. This behavior also clarifies the fact that there are a lot less returns in men’s fashion than in any other fashion sub-industry.”

Danish fashion retailers at the top

The Ecommerce Benchmark & Fashion Study also showed that Danish fashion retailers score best in most KPIs. For instance, only 25.5% of the shopping baskets is abandoned, less than half the rate of the highest-scoring country, which is the United Kingdom with 57%.

Another interesting result of the study is that Italy, the country that is famous for its fashion brands, is not scoring very well compared to other countries. Among other things, their average delivery costs (€ 8.22) and average return costs (€ 10.31) per package are clearly above the average in these categories. This can be explained by the fact that Italy is still an emerging e-commerce market, which means that online retailers are still exploring their possibilities regarding e-commerce. Denmark, on the other hand, has already a mature e-commerce market.

Larger companies perform better

It turns out that larger companies, with more than 1,000 FTEs, perform best in many key areas. For example, at 29.3% their bounce rate is considerably lower than that of retailers with less than 10 employees (41.9%). This is an important indicator for the success of an online shop. “You would be amazed at the number of retailers who invest in driving traffic to their sites but don’t make a similar investment in their landing pages,” says Martin Newman, CEO of multichannel and e-commerce consultancy firm Practicology and the Ecommerce Benchmark’s partner in the UK. “A high bounce rate is a symptom of a disconnection between your customer acquisition activity and the content and usability of your landing pages. Ideally always consider both together.”

In addition, they are able to send out a complete order in 98.6% of the cases. This does not come as a surprise as bigger companies are better able to hold a larger stock, enabling them to gather all required items more frequently.

Omnichannel vs. pure players

With regard to omnichannel and pure players, there is not much to divide them in general. They each perform better in several KPIs, but the differences are small. An exception to this is the area of product content costs; pure players spent nearly twice as much as omnichannel players with regard to costs incurred in order to sell products online (6% of turnover vs. 3.6%).

Another interesting KPI in this regard is the Net Promoter Score. This gives an indication of how much a customer is willing to promote a shop among friends and family, with a score between -80 and 80. It turns out that customers are more willing to recommend omnichannel players (29) than pure players (18).

Download the report

For more information about the 21 KPIs in the fashion industry, you can download the free Ecommerce Benchmark & Fashion Report through www.ecommercebenchmark.org. Here you can also find more information about the Ecommerce Benchmark in general. In addition, you can immediately compare your company with others within your specific industry by completing the free Ecommerce Benchmark yourself.