SWOT Analysis For Online Clothing Store: Test

SWOT analysis is a strategy tool for assessing a company’s resources and capabilities and external marketing situation. Basically, the term is an acronym of the brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This technique is widely used by marketing managers around the Globe, no matter what field they work in. However, the fashion industry, like others, has its specifics. In today’s post, we are trying to help you conduct a SWOT analysis of an online clothing store which can improve your brand growth strategy.

The process of SWOT analysis for a clothing store

Before you answer the common and straightforward questions, you need to prepare the key data on your fashion business situation. To simplify this procedure, make a separate file with fields for the indicators needed, and point the following questions as S, W, O or T  in your test. Thus, you will have an expanded picture and ready hints for filling out the SWOT analysis table.

Please note that the final SWOT analysis data won’t include all the points — you will need to extract the most significant ones.

How to measure brand Strength and Weaknesses?

The SWOT analysis is a time-consuming process, but along with that, incredibly useful for your marketing strategy. Here, you can see the approach we suggest when answering each of the further questions on the example of Customer Loyalty. 

How To Identify Customer Loyalty for A Clothing Store?

‍

Almost every brand includes customer loyalty in their final SWOT findings. To understand if this is your strength or weakness, please check at least 5 KPIs: 

• CRR (Customer retention rate)

The following formula can measure the percentage of customers you have retained over standard 8 months

‍

The CPR benchmark in the fashion industry is 26%

‍

• CCR (Customer Churn Rate)

To find out the percentage of customers who stopped making a purchase on your website, use the following formula:

The CCR benchmark is 5-7% annually.

‍

• CLV (Customer Lifetime Value)

To calculate the total value you expect from a single customer account, use the following formula:

• RPR (Repeat Purchase Rate)

To measure the percentage of your current customers who have shopped more than once per year, use the following formula:

RPR =( Number of Customers Who Bought More Than Once Per A Year)Total Number Of Customers Per Year

The RPR benchmark is fluctuating between 20% and 40%. 

‍

• NPS (Net Promoter Score)

To identify the level of your customer loyalty and satisfaction, you need to provide a survey within a focus group of your clients. Questions in the poll should consist the 0-10 scale where 0-6 range is the unsatisfied level (Detractors), 7-8 is the passive level of satisfaction (Passives), and 9-10 is the totally satisfying level (Promoters). To calculate the NPS score of your clothing brand, use the following formula:

‍

NPS benchmark for the Apparel & Fashion industry is 43%

‍

Consequently, you will have hard, reliable data and comparable conclusions for your SWOT analysis and internal use as well. 

‍

SWOT Test (Clothing Stores)

‍

Answering these questions, you conduct an internal analysis of your fashion store. However, you need to examine the external factors which can affect your business as well. Some of these are included in the test and others are individual for each ecommerce project. Among the points you can highlight the Treats of your SWOT analysis, there are changes in the fashion industry market, new competitors, raw material cost, and so on.

1. Experience.How long has your brand been in the apparel & fashion market? Longer than competitors?

2. Team. What is your team size? Is your employee turnover high or low? Do you have an influential corporate culture? Does every staff member understand the brand’s goals and follow them? Are your managers tactical?

3. Manufacture. Does your fashion brand have its production? Is it located in the UK or elsewhere?

4. Suppliers. How many suppliers do you have? Are they reliable? Is your supply chain long or properly configured?

5. Fashion Buyer. Do you have a buyer who selects items which would be in stock in your fashion store? Do they have good taste? Can they negotiate with the clothing suppliers?

6. Omnichannel Retail Solution. Do you have a website and brick-and-mortar store? Do you sell on marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Gumtree, Etsy etc.)?How many stores are located in the UK?

7. Stock. What do you do with items from last year’s collections? Do you recycle them?

8. Brand name and motto. Are your clothing store name and motto easy to remember? Do you follow the top-of-mind awareness concept?

9. Brand identity design. Do you have a brand identity? Do you follow the core principles at every stage of store presentation and promotion (from office and offline store interior, labels design, staff uniform to the website design, marketing emails and ad creatives)?

10. Strong Communication Strategy. Have you built a strategy of communication with your customers? Do you follow it? Do you have an overall tone of voice?

11. Prices. Are your prices competitive? What makes them lower or higher than competitors’? What is your pricing strategy?

12. Rivals. Who are your main competitors? What are their strengths?

13. Unique design. Do you have in-house fashion designers or collaborate with freelancers? Is your clothing design based on fashion trends or vice versa, you follow your unique, recognisable style? How you can describe it?

14. Quality fabrics. Do you produce your garments from natural fabrics and materials? Or maybe you offer waterproof, windproof or other tech cloth?

15. Unique selling proposition. What is the USP of your online clothing store?

16. Wide range of products. What is your average number of SKUs? How many categories are on your online store website? Do you offer clothing only, or shoes and accessories as well? How many times per year your clothing range update?

17. Broad audience. What is your target audience? Do you follow the mass market principles and elaborate women, men, and kids collections?

18. Narrow audience. Do you work with a very specific audience? What group of customers predominate?

19. Strong local presence. Do you focus on local customers (within one region)? Do local customers take up the largest share of your total fashion website visitors? How many reviews on GMB do you have?

19. Export Abilities. Do you export your fashion products abroad? What are these countries? Where is demand the highest?

20. User-friendly website. Do you have a well-developed website with properly elaborated structure? Is this easy to buy on your website? How many steps must a user go through to make a purchase? How long does it load?

21. Payment methods on the website. What payment system does your fashion store use? Does your website accept multiple payment methods? Can a shopper pay with cash?

22. Mobile App. Have you developed your mobile app? Does it generate enough revenue for your online clothing store?

23. Marketing team. Does your clothing store has on-site marketers (SEM, CPC, Email Marketing, SMM, PR specialists)? How many digital marketing specialists work in your company? Do you collaborate with a digital marketing agency? What are their pros and cons?

24. Omnichannel strategy. Do you follow the omnichannel marketing strategy (both offline and online marketing)?

25. Digital marketing performance. Which marketing channel generates the most revenue and which the most traffic to your fashion estore?

26. SEO positions. What is your local ranking status? Are your ranking positions continually growing? Is your website properly optimised (including the category and filter optimisation)?

27. Customer loyalty. Does your online clothing store has a high level of customer loyalty? What is your NPS score? Do you have any loyalty programs (bonuses, gamification, discount codes)? Via what channel do you boost them? Do returning visitors predominate in the total number of website visitors?

28. Social Media Marketing. Are your social media profiles have a large number of subscribers? Is the reach and user engagement high? What goals does the SMM channel follow? Do you sell your clothing via Facebook marketplace or Instagram Shopping? Which social network boost the most revenue/traffic? What goals have you set? Do you have your own YouTube channel? Is this popular?

29. Contextual advertising. Are your CPC ads by your target keywords high? Do you use Google shopping ads? How often do you change the design of CPC ads creatives? What campaigns are the most effective? Are your

30. Email marketing. Do you use email marketing? Is your customer base segmented? Do you have contact collecting forms on your website? Have you configured a different series of emails such as welcome, transaction and trigger-based, promotional emails, and so forth?

31. PR. Do you run PR campaigns? What are the main channels of PR content distribution?

32. Affiliate programs. Do you use affiliate marketing? Do you collaborate with bloggers? Were your affiliate marketing programs highly successful?

33. Brand Ambassadors. Does your clothing store have brand ambassadors? Who are they?

34. Engaging marketing campaigns. Do you create emotional and memorable ad campaigns?

35. Customer Service. How quickly do your managers respond to customers requests? Is this possible to chat with your managers on Facebook/Instagram or via WhatsApp? Do managers in your call-centre use scripts?

36. Return Policy. Is this easy to return your products? Is this free? Is this a big problem to your fashion business?

37. Shipping & Delivery Policy. Do you have a free shipping order minimum? Can your customers track their orders? What is the average delivery time in your online clothing store?

38. Reputation. Does your online fashion store have enough reviews? Overall, is your reputation tarnished or good? What is the correlation between positive and negative reviews? How do you reply to comments?

39. Positive ROMI. What is your marketing ROI? If the return on investment is 5:1 — this means your marketing efforts are being compensated.

40. Demand planning and forecasting for the retail channel. Is your company subscribed to any trend forecasting agencies such as WGSN? Do you have an in-house demand planner, or do you outsource this task? Do you examine consumer insights?

41. Official Approach. Is your business officially registered? Is everything you comply with legally correct?

42. Taxes and fees. Is it easy to pay all taxes and fees? Do you have any troubles with debts? Are you afraid of possible changes in tax rates? How can this affect your business?

43. The help of stylists. Do you have stylists who help you combine looks for photo sessions and mannequins? Do your managers have stylist skills?

44. Photographers. Who makes photos posted on your product pages? Do you consider them high quality and catchy?

45. Content makers. Do you have on-site copywriters who describe your products? Do they create blog content for SEO purposes?

46. Excellent customer experience. Have you analysed customer experience at all stages of your purchase funnel? What are the advantages (complementary products, free fitting etc.)?

47. Office/store building. Do you rent your office, warehouse or/and offline store buildings? Or you have a private property?

Intellectual properties.

48. Do you have any copyrights, patents etc. ?

49. Fakes and copies. Have you faced any illegal copies of your products? How do you handle this issue?

‍

Final thoughts on SWOT Analysis

We gave you only hints which may help you conduct a complete SWOT analysis of your online clothing store, deeply examine your business performance and identify the potential investment opportunities. At Promodo, we always try to help businesses grow, so you can find useful links to our blog posts and contact our managers to discuss your project and improve your digital marketing indicators.

‍