How to Build a Website for a Clothing Line
A well-designed website can tell you a lot about a fashion brand. Websites give clothing brands the chance to showcase who they are through strong copy and stunning visuals. They help brands reach new customers, streamlining their marketing efforts across search, social, and email. And perhaps most importantly, websites help fashion brands sell their clothing by showcasing what’s available, communicating with fulfillment centers (if necessary), and handling payments directly on-site.
Websites are useful for clothing brands of all sizes. Whether your client is an independent designer, a brick-and-mortar boutique, an online vintage store, or a large-scale clothing company, a website can help them attract customers, share their story, and drive sales. By leveraging the right web design tools, you can deliver a powerful digital experience for your clients and their customers.
Design a clear and memorable website
A great fashion website does two things at once: it gives customers all the information they need, and it creates a lasting impression of the brand with strong copy, beautiful imagery, and thoughtful design choices.
Start by making your client’s website as user-friendly as possible. Ensure customers know where to click to buy clothing or learn more about the brand. Then, build an FAQ page that features key information, like return policies, size charts, and shipping turnaround times.
Go beyond the template and create a website that communicates who your client is. Craft copy that tells the story of your client and their fashion brand and feature imagery that showcases the clothing customers can buy. Help your client establish their brand identity with a web design style guide, then use colors, fonts, and design details to match it. A well-designed website does the same thing as a great brick-and-mortar store: it gives customers a feel for the brand the moment they venture inside.
As always, you’ll want to ensure your website looks great on different devices. If you follow Squarespace’s responsive design and m-commerce best practices, the platform will do most of the resizing and rearranging for you.
Pro tip: If you're not a seasoned copywriter but need compelling placeholder text to get started, try using Squarespace AI. This tool generates high-quality content that your client can use or refine before launching their website.
Set up an online store
Help your client drive clothing sales by setting up an online store. You can start by customizing one of Squarespace’s commerce-focused templates, build your own template with Squarespace Blueprint AI, or create the site from scratch. Then, start listing clothing. Enrich each product page by adding eye-catching imagery, engaging videos, and well-written product descriptions. You can make the store more user-friendly by grouping products into categories and listing related items on each product page.
On the back-end, your client can use Squarespace to keep track of inventory. Set them up with limited availability labels and low-stock notifications so they know when inventory is running low. Help them manage their calendar with scheduled sales and releases. Work with them to set up shipping and pick-up options, and enable payment integrations, so customers can pay online before picking up their orders.
If your client doesn’t have a warehouse or shipping team, you can connect them to one of Squarespace’s fulfillment partners. These third-party services include standard fulfillment centers, drop shipping platforms, and print-on-demand services (which are great if your client wants to create custom merchandise).
Finally, save your client time by setting up automatic tax rates. Squarespace’s TaxJar extension automatically calculates sales tax on domestic orders, so your client doesn’t have to deal with manual tax calculations (unless they ship internationally).
Optimize the site for search
Set your client up to attract new customers by optimizing their site for search. Since Squarespace has built-in SEO integrations, the platform handles many of the standard best practices for you. It ensures your site is mobile-optimized, automatically creates and updates your site map, and structures page data so it’s easy for search engines to read. You can further expand your client’s reach with added optimizations:
Leverage Squarespace’s native tools by filling out built-in SEO fields
Ensure each page has an SEO title and an SEO description
Add alt text to every image. Include search keywords in URLs
Redirect broken links
Hide duplicate or unused pages
Incorporate keywords across the website, and add internal links where you can
Review additional tips for boosting SEO.
Set up integrated email campaigns
Email marketing is a great way for your client to reach new and existing customers—people who are already interested in the brand. By setting up Squarespace Email Campaigns, you can help your client send and manage emails more efficiently.
Help your client build a mailing list, and encourage sign-ups by adding a newsletter block to their website. You can also set up sender details, so recipients know exactly where the email is coming from. Once these bases are covered, your client can build on-brand emails, schedule automated campaigns, and track the success of different efforts with built-in analytics tools. And if your client currently uses a different email marketing service, they can import their contacts into Squarespace to keep all their data in one place.
Learn more about starting an email campaign for your client.
Enable social media sharing
Help your client expand their audience by connecting their social media accounts to their website. Add social icons that help customers find and follow your client on different platforms, and add blocks that pull content directly from your client’s social media profiles.
Offer clients extra value by building them a Bio Site. Bio Sites are one-page websites that keep your client’s most important links in one place. Plus, Bio Sites are mobile-first, so they’re great for social media sharing and housing multiple links in their bio.
First, choose a template that captures your client’s brand. Then, customize it with stunning imagery and snappy copy. Link to your client’s social media profiles, online store, and newsletter sign-up page. You can also leverage the page to advertise sales, promotions, and new releases.
This Bio Site will serve as a hub for your client’s marketing efforts, so they can link to it on their social media profiles (and anywhere else a “link in bio” is appropriate). They can also make use of Squarespace’s built-in analytics to track—and optimize—the Bio Site’s reach over time.
Learn more about expanding a brand through a link in bio solution.
Build an online store for fashion clients
Fashion is a competitive industry, but you can help your clients tell their story and develop an online presence by creating a beautiful, user-friendly digital storefront on Squarespace.
Additional resources for building ecommerce sites:
*This article was originally published on April 6, 2023. It has since been updated.
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