The online retailers setting the trend in women’s fashion
Each month, we run the scoring for a league table in a particular industry, leveraging our ASK BOSCO® Index to evaluate the performance of various retailers in both organic and paid search. This month, we focused on the market for women’s fashion.
What does the online women’s fashion sector currently look like?
It’s been a difficult year for the fashion industry. The rising cost of living in the UK and the after-effects of Covid-19 plus the Russian-Ukraine war have seriously influenced not only fashion consumers but also the people making, selling, and distributing the clothes. With prices increasing and less money available for extra spending, people have naturally cut back on buying non-essential items like fashion, causing a decline in fashion sales as a whole.
That said, despite the overall decline in sales across the fashion sector, online fashion shoppers are still showing a strong willingness to spend compared to those in other industries. According to a recent Retail X report, 52% of fashion consumers shop online more than once a week. As fashion consumers are often younger and have more disposable income, retailers’ online sales channels must be well-optimized to cater to this demographic. Younger shoppers are turning more towards social media platforms to buy clothes. Instagram and TikTok particularly rely on influencers to turn their posts into sales.
In order to keep costs down, fashion retailers are also relying on technology and AI to increase sales and personalisation has been a big trend this year for ecommerce brands, using AI to tailor product recommendations to individual customers’ preferences, such as the ‘recommended by you’ features based on browsing and purchase history
What is the ASK BOSCO® Index?
Do you want to know how your brand compares to the competition online? The ASK BOSCO® Index is the perfect tool for measuring your digital presence and assessing the effectiveness of your investments in organic and paid media channels.
Unlike other metrics that only consider your marketing budget, the ASK BOSCO® Index takes into account your potential in both paid and organic search. It provides an accurate overview of your online performance based on your previous digital interactions by analyzing data from trusted third-party sources.
What is a good ASK BOSCO® Index score? It ranges from 0 to 1000, with the average score for brands and retailers being around 575. The higher your score, the better your online performance as a retailer. Think of it as the credit score of digital marketing.
Here’s how we scored the brands
We scored twenty leading UK women’s fashion retailers for the month of November. Here’s how the top five ranked on the ASK BOSCO® Index league table. Download the league table below to see the full results and see who the remaining fifteen women’s fashion retailers are.
What do these scores mean?
Shein sits proudly at the top of the table with the highest ASK BOSCO® score – a mighty 745. Shein has seen rapid growth due to their successes with paid search being a strong investment for the brand along with viral and influencer marketing campaigns featuring giveaways and challenges to generate engagement. However, despite their immense success, there are some controversies surrounding the quality and origin of their inexpensive clothing and accessories. However, currently, this bad publicity does not mean low monetization efficiency for the brand.
Close on the leaderboard is Mango, a global fashion company with its roots in Barcelona. With a target audience primarily comprising young women aged twenty to thirty-five, Mango emphasizes fashion trends and its primary drivers are paid search and direct -although they have seen a slight decline in organic search over recent months. One area in which Mango outshines Shein is their commitment to sustainability over fast fashion.
Closely following behind Shein and Mango on the ASK BOSCO® league table is Marks & Spencer who sees a lot of their website traffic coming via direct search and organic search. Also in the top 5 is Yours Clothing, the plus-size fashion retailer that was recently named by Retail Week as the no. 1 ‘Fastest Growing Fashion Retailer’ in the UK. Yours Clothing has successfully leveraged all aspects of digital marketing including a good mix of paid and organic traffic that includes a strong base of affiliate marketing campaigns.
If you’d like to know more about the ASK BOSCO® index and find out where your brand sits on our league table rankings, simply get in touch with us at team@askbosco.com – we’d love to hear from you.
