Creating an online shoe store

Selling shoes over the Internet is one of the most promising areas today. This was influenced by a number of factors, ranging from the digitalization of the market in general in Ukraine to the situation with the pandemic. But besides the increase in online purchases, there were other changes in user behavior:

 • people began to save money, even on such goods as clothes and shoes - this means that today one of the business strategies can be selling inexpensive mid-quality shoes;

 • social networks have become more trustworthy, therefore they are becoming an additional source of sales;

 • users often make purchases directly from the Google Shopping block without even going to the first sites of the search results - connecting the online store to the Merchant Center can be a good alternative before the web resource is promoted in SEO.

In our article “How to Build an Online Store in 2021 and Not Go Down” we have collected useful tips considering the changes in the ecommerce market.

Before selling shoes online, you need to choose your niche. This will help you stand out from the competition and better promote low-frequency queries.

Choosing a direction / niche

You can open an online shoe store for one specific target audience, for example, only for teenagers; women involved in sports; for children of preschool or school age; men. This approach will allow you to carve your own niche and separate from the huge impersonal stores that sell everything.

You can create an online shoe store with goods made of genuine leather or with orthopedic shoes. Many are season-specific and sell ugg boots or Timberland-style boots. The target audience will be smaller, but the conversions may be higher due to the narrow direction.

Today, a popular type of strategy is to open numerous online stores with cheap shoes. This type of strategy is aimed at low margins and high turnover. Little attention is paid to site design and other details, the main goal is to open as many online outlets as possible.

To understand what a Ukrainian buyer wants today, you should study the queries of Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner. This will help you quickly determine your niche and business strategy. Thanks to these tools, you can also identify in which regions the increased demand, this will help when launching targeting.

The ideal option before opening an online shoe store would be to consult with the owner of an already running business. This should not be neglected, since no one will tell about this business better than a person who has already gone through the opening and launching stage.

Choosing a sales model

To determine the target audience when creating an online shoe store, you need to choose a sales model. It can be b2b, b2c, dropshipping. If you plan on making shoes, you can also opt for the d2c (Direct To Consumer) model. Today, this model is actively used on the social network Instagram, when a manufacturer sells shoes directly to a client.

Each business model has its own advantages and disadvantages and, of course, risks. With a limited start-up capital, the least risky option would be to work in dropshipping, when the purchase of goods is not required.

When choosing a b2b model, the target audience of your business will be other companies. This is important at the stage of developing a catalog, collecting a semantic core, and later on launching an advertising campaign.

Supplier search

Selling shoes on the Internet will be successful if you choose reliable suppliers at the initial stage. The search can take a long time, you should prepare for this, but choosing a good base minimizes the risks of returns and unsuccessful deals.

You can start the search from the social network Instagram or Facebook. There is a simple explanation for this - targeted advertising aimed at you. As soon as social networks “determine” your interest, you will automatically come across the necessary accounts (namely, providers) in the feed more often. This can save you a lot of search time.

Another search method could be Google search engine. You can add the word "dropshipping" to your keyword.

What language to create a website in

On April 25, 2019, the Law on the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language was adopted. Within a year and a half, all Internet resources of Ukraine, including e-commerce, must provide information in Ukrainian. The Russian language can be used in the Russian version of the site, as an additional one.

In CMS SoloMono, you can create several language versions of the site. In the administrative panel, a content manager can load several text options at once along with meta tags. This gives an additional advantage in SEO promotion, since the website can be promoted for key queries in several languages.

Choosing a CMS for selling shoes on the Internet

When choosing an engine for an online store, it is better to focus on several criteria:

 • Is the CMS mobile-responsive (in 2021, more than half of all online purchases will be made from mobile devices);

 • will the site load quickly with tens of thousands of products, voluminous videos, photos and text content;

 • is it possible to connect several payment systems to the CMS;

 • is it possible to connect several delivery services;

 • how well the eCommerce platform is SEO-friendly.

On the page advantages of the SoloMono platform, you can see all the characteristics and test the CMS for free.

What should be the design of an online shoe store

The design of almost any online store in 2021 should be minimalistic. Nothing should distract the customer's attention from the product. We remind of this every time, as this is a really important point that marketers and ux designers talk about.

Examples of minimalistic design of an online shoe store

How to develop a catalog for an online shoe store

To understand this, it is enough to simply study 4-5 competitors who occupy leading positions in the Google search engine. Consider your niche and match your competitors with the right keywords.

Filling the online store with goods

Before you officially open an online shoe store, it must be filled with goods as much as possible. This can be done by importing an excel file, integrating with 1C or importing from Prom.ua.

It will take some time to fill in the excel file, but after the work done, you can fill the catalog with goods in one go. Pricing and availability information needs to be updated periodically, especially if you are a dropshipping business. For permanent work on the site, you may need the help of a content manager.

In CMS SoloMono it is possible to assign several administrators for the site and assign different rights. Each administrator can log in using his username and password. It is very convenient when a whole team of specialists is working on a web resource.

Detailed information on importing goods is presented on the SoloMono Instructions page.

What should be in the product card

The card can contain information about the material, size table, model characteristics. The main fear of the buyer is that the shoes will not fit in size (the fear is quite reasonable), so the task of the online store owner is to eliminate this fear.

This can be done in several ways:

1. Order a 360 ͦ photo shoot (you can do it yourself if you have a phone with a high-resolution camera and a special editor program that will help you collect all the photos into a video)

2. Make video reviews in which the product is demonstrated in detail

3. Indicate as many measurements as possible for each shoe model

4. Hire an online consultant who will show the goods in real time. The demand for video consultation emerged during the pandemic. At first, world famous brands began to implement it, and today small stores have also begun to use this practice.

If everything is more or less clear with the first 2 points, then the third point may ask questions: "What measurements should be taken for shoes?" The answer is at least the length of the model along the insole, the maximum is measurements of the instep, fullness, bootleg height, insole width, heel or sole height.

This is how the product card of your online store might look like.

How to create filters

Filters are required to perform the following tasks:

1. Easier and faster product search

2. For seo promotion

In the second case, for each page of the filter, a semantic core is collected and seo texts are written. Filters should be developed by a SEO specialist so that it is convenient for users and useful for SEO optimization.

Example of a filter for an online store of children's shoes

If there are several thousand products in the online store, then creating filters is mandatory. At a minimum, the store should have filters by price, season, type of shoe. The filter can be even more detailed by materials, colors, sizes, brands. You can also create a filter by purpose, for example, sports shoes, for the office, for the street, for home, etc. This option is advisable if there are such key queries and you need to advance on them.

Delivery, payment, return of goods

Delivery of shoes can be arranged in the same way as other goods. In each product card, you can specify the cost of delivery, taking into account the weight of each pair, but this will take a long time, so it is better to simply indicate the minimum and maximum threshold for the cost of delivery.

The more opportunities the buyer has to pay for the goods, the higher the probability of making a purchase. Choosing CMS SoloMono, you can connect the most common payment systems in Ukraine. We talked about this in more detail in our article "What payment systems to connect to your online store".

The site must also specify the conditions for returning the goods. Better to do this on a separate page.

How to sell shoes online. Part II - Promotion

So, the development of an online shoe store is completed, the site is filled with goods, now you can start promoting. We will tell you what actions the site owner can take, without the intervention of SEO specialists (the rest of the work should still be done by professionals).

SEO optimization

1. For each page it is necessary to register unique meta tags. They should also be attractive to users (users click on attractive snippets more often), so use emoticons in the meta description tag (in our editor you can add unicode characters for meta tags and they will display well in SERPs). Attractive snippets on the SERPs increase click-through rates.

2. Use keywords in the title and description tag. Also, the keyword should be in the H1 heading.

3. Texts for all pages must be unique, with organic use of keywords and LSI words.

4. SEO promotion is significantly influenced by the website loading speed and adaptability for mobile versions, therefore, initially it is necessary to choose an engine that matches these parameters.

5. Duplicates have a bad effect on promotion, so it's better to add unique content for each product

6. Write alt and title for photos with keywords

A more detailed list of site ranking factors is described in the article "Checklist for 50 site ranking factors in 2020". The rest of the SEO promotion should be done by a specialist, then the result will be fast and high-quality.

Contextual advertising

Contextual advertising can be useful in the early stages of promotion, as it generates high traffic. But this method can be quite expensive, and in some cases it is better to invest this money in SEO optimization.

Google Shopping Advertising

If your online shoe store hasn't made it to the top of the SERP yet, you can set aside some budget for advertising on Google Shopping. This is the top-most product block on the Google search page. This method will be effective if you have low prices compared to competitors, since in the block you can quickly compare all prices from different stores. Typically, the user searches for the product at the lowest price.

Social media promotion

You can promote on social networks in two ways: by creating a business page, increasing your target audience and sales, or simply by launching an advertisement on social networks with a link to your online store.

The first method is more time-consuming, but at the same time as sales, brand confidence increases. To promote a brand on social networks, an SMM specialist and designer will be needed. For promotion channels, you can take the social networks Instagram, Facebook and the Telegram messenger. These channels are considered among the most productive today.

The second way is aimed at direct sales. You can advertise products on a social network using the Facebook Pixel, for more details about this tool, see the article "Facebook Pixel: What It Is, How To Create And Customize".

Email marketing

To know how to effectively sell shoes online, it's worth learning the intricacies of email marketing. A well-built e-mail marketing strategy can increase sales up to 25-30%, but with the proviso that your brand already has some customer loyalty, i.e. users have already made a purchase and were satisfied. E-mail marketing is poorly tuned to attract new users. This promotion tool helps to achieve several goals:

 • maintain and strengthen communication with old clients;

 • increase sales through promotions and offers;

 • return customers who abandoned their carts;

 • inform clients about new receipts, news, company work schedule for holidays, etc.

In our company, you can not only order the development of an online shoe store, but also order SEO services. If you already have an operating online shoe store, our specialists will carry out the work according to the following scheme:

1. Make an SEO audit of the site

2. Collect the semantic core for the site

3. Will fill the online store with high-quality and unique content

4. Carry out activities to build the link mass of the online store

To increase sales, leave a request for SEO promotion of an online shoe store.

Conclusion

If you didn't know how to start an online store of children's or adult footwear, we hope this article helped you put together your own checklist of specific actions. Well, if you do not want to deal with these issues, but want to calmly deal with business processes, you can always order the development of an online shoe store from our specialists.