With the growth of e-commerce, so many shopping discovery search engines have come up offering fashion clothing and accessories but all of them don’t offer one-stop-solution to browse millions of products from top brands of the world at best prices. Lyst, Thefind, Stylight , Shopstyle are few of the popular websites of this category.
If you want to know more about shopping websites that feature products of other makers/sellers and make money by selling millions of products everyday, you are at right place. But before eCommerce website features, let’s discuss the revenue model to understand how such websites make money.
Such websites allow visitors to search and browse fashion clothing, home, and beauty accessories without any obligation to create an account. Shoppers are redirected to actual website hosting the product so the entire purchase and payment process is handled by the respective website.
So, from where do they earn money?
After carefully studying the website, our analysts came to the conclusion that online fashion and clothing brands earn its revenue from lead generation method. Their search feature is based on affiliate marketing model and the websites get a smart commission whenever a sale happens from the site’s affiliate link.
Apart from affiliate marketing, advertisements of featured stores is another source of income to them. The featured stores pay the advertising fee which adds up to the revenue of the website.
The first page of a website can make or break a user’s interest and hence it should be beautifully designed with all the required information and navigation links. Let’s discuss the various functionalities and navigation links to be provided on homepage for a better understanding:
The Sign-Up/Sign-In process of ShopStyle should be impressive. Commonly the signups of popular eCommerce fashion brands have:
– No dedicated page for Sign-In or Sign-Up.
– Option to Sign-Up or Login through Facebook or Google account.
– Short form with just email id, username and password.
– Use of pop-up functionality.
Businesses having presence in many countries, need to offer option to visitors to choose their country so that the stores of that particular country can be displayed. Main countries are USA, France, UK, Denmark, Japan, Australia and Canada.
Top navigation includes following links:
– Women: Displays all women stuff including clothing and accesories.
– Bags: A special section for women handbags.
– Shoes: A special section for women footwear.
– Beauty: This section displays beauty and makeup products for women.
– Jewelry: Special section for women jewelry. Also contains watches.
– Men: Displays all men‟s stuff including clothes, shoes, accessories etc.
– Kids: A special sections for baby and kids clothing.
– Home: Displays home products including furniture, decoration etc.
– Offers: Special section listing all the stores where discount offers can be availed. It has been explained under unique features section later in the post.
– Sale: This section lists all the products which are at a discounted price.
– Editor’s Pick: This section lists the shops.
Business Analysts at FATbit recommend a more defined and easy to use navigation. Don’t forget to read our recommendations at the end of the post for a building a better clone than existing ones .
The footer section should include following:
– Links to main pages
– Brand Directory in alphabetical order.
– Social Media icons.
FATbit has a new footer design in mind which has been discussed in the ‘Improvements for Clone’ section.
Planning to launch a shopping search engine?
Also Read: Must-have Script Features for an Online Fashion Store
Since the revenue is based on affiliate business model, the core functionality of these websites is based on search feature. Let’s understand the working of the search bar along with other unique features which must be present in your clone script too.
You can list various departments as a dropdown on the search bar. This is an excellent feature with which a user can choose the department where he wants to search.
– There are mainly 4 departments on most of discovery shopping platforms i.e. women, men, kids and home.
– After choosing a department, the search feature will find products only in that department.
We would highly recommend you to use this kind of search bar for your online fashion shopping website if you want the search functionality be as good as the top brands like Shopstyle, TheFind, etc.
We performed various searches under different departments and found excellent functionality of search feature is a major reason for the success of these platforms. The main features are: –
– Related suggestions appear on the top.
– Instant results with auto fill options.
– Department search works flawlessly.
– Department can be changed even after results are displayed.
PRO TIP: Make sure that you have strong search features in your online fashion shopping clone website.
Make all search results appear according to the relevance of searched term by default. Users should be able to sort on the basis of lowest price, highest price, most popular, most favorite and newest.
Add advanced options to filter the results according to the preference, using which a user can:
– Filter by Category
– Filter by Brand name
– Filter by price
– Filter by color options
– Ongoing Sales and Deals
– Filter by store name.
Apart from the advanced search features, trending topics are important elements of home page. You can list them on the homepage under the search bar. These trending topics are online stores, which are searched the most or are popular at a specific time.
By clicking on any of these trending stores, a user is taken to the product page of that particular brand.
This section is created to add a collection of best products in a blog format. Products in a particular post differ in style and price but are based on the latest trends. Similar products from different stores are accumulated in a single post for users to choose the best one.
This is a unique feature which is not commonly found in every e-commerce websites. Add this feature for better engagement.
Add another tab that lists all the popular stuff. To define popularity of a product, display number of views and likes. Make categories under this tab:
‘New arrivals’ tab is for listing all the new items added to various stores. It is a smart feature worth adding to your ecommerce store as people are always interested to check out the latest offerings.
FATbit ecommerce experts recommend this feature for your Clone.
Business analysts of FATbit noticed that on many websites clicking the product image directly takes a user to the actual website which hosts the product. To read more about the product or to see more images of the product, a user has to click on the small icon given below every product.
Info page lists the product details including color and size. Other page were:
– List of similar products below the main product.
– Option to write a review for the product.
– An info section about the brand.
An Add to Favorites option is a must for ecommerce websites using which users can simply create a list of favorite products by clicking the heart icon.
This option is shown as “Add to Wishlist” on many e-commerce websites. Having such a feature surely adds up to user experience and is highly recommended for start-up websites.
Few websites also offer a feature that lets users create different lists where favorite items can be saved. It includes:
– Option to categorize your favorites in different lists.
– Create as many lists as you want.
– Add to Favorites and Create Lists feature is only available to registered users.
Make accessibility easy for all products marked as favorite and created lists. Give option to delete products too. You can add this feature in drop down menu.
Want to develop an ecommerce site with sales focused features?
We have gone through the major features of top shopping search engines and found out that few websites are remarkable good. StyleShop.com for that matter has some other unique and impressive features. Being an entrepreneur, you should not miss out on these excellent features of these websites. Let’s see what these features are:
It is a unique feature, which you will not find on many e-commerce websites. As people are always looking for discounts, adding such features will not only give you loyal customers but also an email list which can be used for marketing purposes. Few functionalities of the sales alert feature are listed below:
– A sales alert to be added for any product.
– Option to add sales alert for all items listed in a search result.
– Sales alerts to be sent to the registered email id.
– Sales alerts to be accessed from the account drop down menu.
– An option to delete the sales alert.
Pro tip – Don’t go for a ShopStyle clone script which misses this unique feature.
Your website should have a dedicated Offers page where all the ongoing offers from numerous brands are listed. Mention the discount coupons are along with the offer.
– Take a user to the sale page of that particular brand when he/she clicks a particular offer.
– Categorize offers as All, Exclusive, Discounts and Shipping.
Add a special sale page which filters results only for those items which are on discount. Adding a sale page is a great idea for any e-commerce website as users are more likely to buy discounted items. Make sure that your clone script has a sales page with smart functionality.
Another unique way of telling people what is trending, you can add a “Top Searches” page.
It will alphabetically list everything that is being searched in the search bar of your website.
International Shipping is another superb feature which lets a user browse products from only those stores which ship to the user’s location.
Give users an option to choose the country from the International Shipping option and have automatic filters to give results for which shipping is available to their country.
This feature is not commonly found on ecommerce stores. So, don’t forget to add it.
Since shopping search engines are based on affiliate marketing model, it allows users to earn money from it.If affiliate model doesn’t fit in your website vision, then, you can add it at a later stage. Affiliate addition will grow total reach of your website to many folds.
Apart from website, develop a mobile app which lets users browse and shop for products on the go.
Adding a fully functionable mobile app can really benefit your business.
A blog is really helpful in connecting with target audience. In your blog, make sure that every post contains direct links and images of products from various stores. This helps a company earn more clicks.
Shopping search engine is a common and simple business model but to turns it into something that can actually make money for stakeholders, you require impressive functionality. This is something most online ventures struggle with.
You can build a very good ecommerce website by implementing few design recommendations listed below.
1) Instead of giving different navigation links for Bags, Shoes, Beauty, Jewelry, etc. show them as a drop down under “Women tab”.
3) The main tabs given below the search bar should be made prominent.
4) Make info icon easily noticeable.
5) Offer ‘Zoom’ option on the product info page.
To become a one stop solution for a user’s online fashion shopping, you need to focus on adding unique features that do wonders not just in a particular country but throughout the world. Creating a marketplace for fashion shopping with an advanced version of Clone script can be the best decision. Make sure you hire a professional team comprising business analysts, developers, designers, testers etc. at an affordable cost to make your website stand out.
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