IA Fashions

The problem

Forty years of trading was the strongest asset the brand had, and the site was not using it.

What I did

• WooCommerce store for a fashion and embroidery-services retailer|Editorial hero imagery paired with a clean product catalogue|Category navigation for Shop, Embroidery Services and Brands|Trust bar: free UK delivery, trusted since 1985, secure payments

The brief

An online store for a UK fashion retailer established in 1908. A long history is an asset most competitors cannot buy, and the site has to use it without becoming a museum.

Heritage as a live asset

Heritage brands online tend to fail in one of two directions. Either the history dominates and the store feels like an archive, or it is reduced to a date in the footer and might as well not exist.

The position taken here is that the history should explain the present rather than replace it. It appears where it does work — the about page, the provenance of specific ranges — and stays out of the way of the shopping. A customer buying a coat wants to see the coat.

The sizing problem

Returns are the defining economic problem of fashion e-commerce, and most returns are sizing. Every avoided return is margin that would otherwise be lost twice, on the outbound and inbound shipping.

Product pages carry real measurements rather than only a size label, with the garment measured flat as well as the body size it fits. Those are different numbers and shoppers who have been caught out before look for both. The model’s height and the size worn are stated, because a photograph without that context tells a customer nothing about how a garment will look on them.

Photography

Multiple angles, fabric detail close enough to judge texture, and consistent lighting across the range. Inconsistent product photography is the clearest signal of an amateur store, and it makes a customer doubt everything else.

Search and filtering

Fashion shoppers filter by size first and by colour second, and the most common frustration is finding a garment they like and then discovering their size is unavailable.

Size filtering therefore applies to stock, not to the size chart. A filter that shows garments that exist in a size but are out of stock in it is worse than no filter at all.

Checkout

Guest checkout enabled. Shipping and returns stated before checkout begins. The returns policy is written plainly and linked from the product page, because in fashion it is part of the purchase decision rather than aftercare.

The build

WooCommerce with variations structured for size and colour, stock tracked at variation level, and measurement data as structured fields rather than as text pasted into descriptions.

What the client can manage

Products, variations, stock, collections and the editorial content. Adding a product means filling in the fields, including the measurements, which the template requires rather than treats as optional.

The stack

• WordPress Development
• WooCommerce Development

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