How to sell shoes online

The eCommerce business niche is constantly growing. More precisely, selling shoes online is one of the most common types of eCommerce businesses. This is a very attractive field due to the different opportunities in the footwear market and the variety of options, such as shoes designed for specific sports and activities and everyday wellness.

While the competition exists, you can easily thrive as a new seller. All you have to do is focus on quality and unique offerings. So, let’s delve deeper into my guide on how to sell shoes online.

Understand the market

Understanding the online shoe market is crucial, as you need to be aware of all the current trends in the footwear industry. To understand the market, you need to conduct in-depth market research. You need to know your target audience. Focus on their gender, age, and preferences.

As a result, you’ll be able to highlight their needs and preferences, offering the best shoe types for them. Once you understand the market and your target audience, you’ll be able to tackle their issues and satisfy their needs without any hassle.

Nowadays, shoes for sustainability and comfort are some of the most common ones. Also, niche shoe categories are very trendy, such as designer or athletic. Once you know the latest trends, it will be much easier for you to narrow down the type of shoes you’ll sell.

Choose your selling platform

Choosing your selling platform is a crucial part of your business. That’s why I recommend you check out some of the best website builders for maintaining a small business or picking the right marketplace. That said, let’s check out some of the best options.

Website builders

Website builders significantly simplify your selling process. In fact, you can build the perfect website from scratch and optimize it without having any technical knowledge. However, there are some cons to this approach, such as limited technical customization, restricted features, or a limited number of pages.

Luckily, you can avoid these issues by choosing a reliable website builder. For example, Wix is one of the best eCommerce website builders for selling shoes.

Thanks to its user-friendly interface, you can create an incredible eCommerce website for selling your shoes without having any coding experience. Aside from this, it also includes custom domains, hosting, design flexibility, and marketing tools.

One of the things I like is that Wix supports the dropshipping model. You can select the items you’d like to sell to your customers, and they’ll be shipped directly. You can also pick the category in which you’d like the shoes to appear and add them to your website.

When it comes to the design, you can add elements that will improve your online store and make it user-friendly. These include sections, a shopping cart, containers, a product gallery, and contact forms. In other words, you can tailor your website according to your needs.

Adding your products is also a breeze. Once you select the shoes you’d like to appear on your website, you can add a short description, enter their name, and even add a ribbon, such as “New Arrival.”

Once you list all of your available shoes, Wix provides you with a detailed overview, where you can change the stock status and price. As a result, you can easily make any changes without an issue.

One of the best things about Wix is that it has robust AI capabilities. In fact, you can make your online shoe store responsive on various platforms, such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and PCs. This means that you can apply the same design across different devices with a single click.

Last but not least, Wix has built-in SEO, allowing you to optimize your website and improve its rankings on search engines like Google. This is one of the best features, as it helps you improve it so you can easily attract more traffic.

Marketplaces

Other options for selling shoes online are marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Poshmark, and StockX. Many small businesses go for this selling approach, as it helps them reach a broader audience. However, such marketplaces have transaction fees that may lower your profits, especially if you’re just starting.

Before we go into more detail, let’s briefly compare some of the best marketplaces:

• Amazon. Amazon is one of the most well-known marketplaces for businesses that has a broad audience. It offers a seamless shopping experience intertwined with many advertising options that increase product visibility.
• eBay. This is one of the most prominent online selling platforms, offering a wide selection of shoes in almost every category. It comes with auctions and fixed-price listings. Based on its capabilities, eBay is suitable for a business with a more significant user base.
• Poshmark. Regardless of whether you’re reselling or selling your own shoe brand, you can use Poshmark. This platform lets you place your new or gently used shoes and sell even more extensive collections with various shoe options.
• StockX. If your business focus is sneakers, then you can consider using StockX. You can resell them and allow buyers and sellers to place bids and asks. However, there are also fixed prices, just like eBay.

Marketplace	Best for	Focus	Fees
Amazon	Any shoe type	A wide range of shoe options	Selling plan fees start at $0.99 per item + $0.30 referral fee
eBay	New, gently used, rare, and unique pieces	A wider variety of shoe brands and types	250 free listings per month + 10-15% final value fee
Poshmark	Gently used or new shoes	Wide variety of shoes	$2.5 commission fees for sales below $15 or 20% for sales of $15 and above
StockX	Reselling unworn sneakers, including popular and limited-edition releases	Sneakers	3% payment processing fee + transaction fee (7-9%)

Social media platforms

Social media is becoming one of the most popular selling approaches. This is one of the easiest ways to sell your shoes, but it’s time-consuming, and it limits your customer base to people who have a specific social media platform. Let’s briefly go over the options you can use as a selling platform:

• Instagram. Instagram is popular among younger generations. Therefore, you can easily prepare entertaining content, such as posts on your shoes, stories, and live videos.
• Facebook Marketplace. When it comes to Facebook, you should use it if your audience is a bit older. Facebook Marketplace also allows you to sell new and used products locally.

Develop your business plan

When you start an online shoe store, you must develop a business plan that will be tailored to your model. Basically, this is your guide toward your end goals. Considering this, you must craft it well.

First, you need to include an execution summary. This sums up everything about your business, such as your business model, resources, selling plan, sourcing, key goals, and budget. Next, you need to delve deeper into each element.

You need to set your budget so you can know how to allocate it properly, explain how you’ll source the footwear you’ll sell, break down your fulfillment methods, and identify key goals. Once you have all of this on a piece of paper, you can know precisely which strategies to apply and what to focus on.

Source your shoes

There are multiple ways to source your shoes. More precisely, you can sell shoes from your own closet, thrift stores, or clearance sales. You can also work with wholesalers, dropshipping suppliers, or established brands. The method you choose depends on your business model, which is why you should always have it in mind.

However, regardless of how you decide to source your shoes, you must ensure their authenticity so that you can build a reputation and relationship with your customers. Due to this, you need to carefully analyze your shoe supplier and test the product quality before selling. It’s best to start with smaller stock so you can see how reputable your supplier is.

Create your brand identity

Brand identity refers to all the visible aspects of your shoe business. More precisely, it includes your logo design, aesthetic, and even messaging you use to attract customers. However, branding is much more than this. You need to use your brand identity, give it value, and create a unique image in the minds of your target audience.

One brand that successfully created its brand identity is Skechers. This brand highlights its shoes’ comfort and affordability with celebrity partnerships and effective marketing strategies. Due to this, it’s managed to position itself as a leading footwear brand for lifestyle and performance.

Make your business legitimate

Setting up an online shoe business requires complying with different legislation aspects. So, in order to make your business legitimate, you need to:

• Register your business
• Comply with tax requirements
• Obtain all the necessary operating licenses

By following these three key aspects, you can start selling, and your customers will perceive you as a trustworthy option. However, you need to be aware that each country has its own legal requirements. Therefore, you must research the guidelines for the country where you plan to sell in order to ensure legitimate operations.

Set your pricing strategy

One of the most crucial things when starting an online shoe store is setting the right pricing strategy. This involves considering your costs, profit margin, and competition. That said, you can pick a few different methods.

The most prevalent one is competitive pricing, which is setting your shoe prices after analyzing the competitors. If you’re in a broader shoe niche, you should go with lower prices, but if you’re running a narrower niche, then you can set a bit higher prices.

Cost-plus pricing is another decent strategy. Basically, you should consider your costs and add a specific markup. For example, if it costs you $50 for a pair of shoes, and you add a markup of 50%, then you should sell that pair for $75.

Last but not least, you can offer promotional pricing. This refers to temporarily reducing the price of some shoe models so you can attract more customers.

However, lowering your price doesn’t mean you won’t be profitable. You can still maintain profitable margins and remain attractive to customers by understanding their needs, utilizing value-based pricing strategies, offering high-quality shoes, and providing excellent customer experience.

Market your shoes

Once your shoe store is online, you need to start working on promoting your products. Therefore, you need to implement effective marketing strategies.

One option is to focus on SEO. This means improving your website so it ranks higher on search engines and drives more traffic. For starters, you can achieve this by making your website responsive, implementing suitable keywords, and optimizing your images.

Also, you can go for social media marketing on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, depending on your target audience. Try to create engaging content that will depict your brand messaging. Of course, here, you can include influencer partnerships with individuals that your customers see as role models.

Lastly, you should focus on email marketing. Crafting a powerful email campaign about new arrivals or discounts can bring you a lot of traffic. You can even make unique campaigns for the most loyal customers.

Manage customer service

Having excellent customer service is crucial for building customer loyalty. If you handle inquiries, returns, and refunds professionally, your customers will feel valuable and see that you’re focusing on their experience.

Therefore, I recommend employing 24/7 live chat or chatbots for fast responses, email support, and ticketing services. You can take things further with a help center, tutorial guides, and a FAQ section.

Final thoughts

Selling shoes online is a competitive but rewarding business, especially if you know how to sell them effectively. That’s why it’s essential to be consistent, learn from mistakes, and adapt to market trends. Once you grasp all of these aspects, you’ll be able to cater to your target audience’s needs in the best way.

Even if you don’t see results immediately, I encourage you to stay focused and evolve as trends change. Dedication is the key to success.