Millinery Market – 9 Tips for Increasing Number of Sales
Listed your hats but aren’t getting as many sales or rental bookings as you’d like? Here are 10 tips to help increase your chance of a sale.
1) Take Good Photos
The most important tip is to take lots of high quality photos. More than anything else, customers base their purchase decision off the photos.
Key points to keep in mind:
- Take your photos in landscape (not portrait).
- High resolution, plain background, good lighting.
- Photos from all angles (front, sides, back).
- Photos of it being worn on your head.
- Photos of past customers showing how they styled it.
- IMPORTANT: Choose a nice feature photo with 3:2 aspect ratio.
If you have lots of hat listings, you could even consider taking 3D photos of your hat.
2) Give a Proper Product Description
Not only does it provide details of your hat to a potential customer, but it can also make your listing appear in a keyword search result (e.g. if someone searches ‘vintage’ or ‘pearl’ and those terms are in your product description).
Things you can include in your product description:
- Description of the hat (colour, shape, style, materials, features).
- Who it was made by.
- Condition of the hat (e.g. only worn twice, in excellent condition).
- How it is secured (e.g. comb and elastic).
- If it has placed in any FOTF competitions.
- Positive features (e.g. comfortable, lightweight, makes a statement).
- Any points a customer should know (e.g. looks yellow in photos, but it is more of a chartreuse colour).
- Link to any of your accessory listings that would go well with the hat.
- Details about any defects.
3) Complete your Profile
Some customers may be anxious about hiring or purchasing from someone who has an anonymous looking profile. Can they trust that they’ll send the hat on time, or at all? If you are a milliner, your profile page is a chance for you to describe your skills, experience and awards. This can help reassure the customer that they’ll receive a quality piece of millinery. Show them you are a real person by adding a profile image and description about yourself.
4) Work on Your Review Rating
Reviews and ratings are super important as customers need to trust that you will deliver the hat on time for their race day, and that the delivered hat will match the photos and description on your hat listing. Your review ratings show potential customers that other people who bought from you had a good experience. You should aim to get at least 5 reviews (10 would be even better!) to show you can consistently deliver.
After a completed transaction, don’t be afraid to send a message to the other party asking for feedback. It will show them it’s important to you so they’ll be more likely to leave a review rather than skipping the review. An example message could be: “Hi Jane, I hope you enjoyed wearing my hat. I’ve left you a review, would you mind doing the same when you get a chance :)”
5) List Multiple Hats
Did you know that our top sellers on Millinery Market also have the highest number of hat listings?
Different customers are looking for different things and have different tastes; some might be looking for a specific colour to match their dress, others might be going for a specific look (e.g. vintage, modern). The more hats you have listed, the higher the chance that it will be just what someone is looking for.
6) Be Quick to Respond to Enquiries
Ladies are often looking for a last minute hat, so if they send you a message and you take 2 days to respond, often they will have already purchased with someone else.
Try to keep the communication flowing. If you’re not at home and don’t have the answer to a question, rather than waiting half a day until you have the answer, it’s good to acknowledge their request by saying something like, “I’m not home right now, but will find out later this evening for you.”
You will get an email notification when someone sends you a message, comments on your listing or pre-authorises a transaction, so make sure the emails don’t go to your email junk folder. In your profile settings, you can also add your mobile phone number, which is only visible to Millinery Market admin. It’s a good idea to add your mobile phone number as admin routinely monitor transactions and can send you a text message if you have an order waiting that hasn’t been accepted.
7) Share your Hat Listings on Social Media
In Facebook Groups, often ladies will post a photo of their dress and ask for millinery ideas. Or they may post a photo of a hat and ask if anyone has something similar. If you think your hat would be a good match, you can copy your hat listing URL and paste it as a comment in the Facebook post. If they really like your hat, they may hire or buy from you!
8) Check your Pricing is Competitive
If you have a really nice hat but no one is hiring/buying, it could be that your pricing is higher than what customers are willing to pay. It’s a good idea to browse other similar listings (e.g. similar colour, shape, style) and see what others are charging to make sure your price is competitive. If you’re new to the platform and don’t have any reviews yet, you may also want to consider lowering the price a little until you build up your review rating.
9) Consider your Terms of Sale
Millinery Market lets you choose either Flexible or Strict Sale terms. The Flexible terms let customers return the hat within 7 days if they are not satisfied with their purchase, whereas with Strict terms there is no return or refund available unless the item is faulty.
Some buyers may be hesitant to buy a hat without trying it on if they know the seller doesn’t accept returns. Giving customers a 7 day window where they can try it on and return the hat if they aren’t happy can result in a lot more sales. This is why companies like ASOS offer free returns on all of their products.
Hopefully there’s a couple of tips in here that you hadn’t thought of before that you’d like to try!
>> Back to Knowledge Base Articles
