Purchasing clothing online can be one of the most hazardous experiences for both supplier and for consumer and the reason for this is perhaps most exemplified by a cinematic legend. Winston Groom's character Forrest Gump once said "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get". Buying clothing online is exactly the same, you really never know what you are going to get. This is particularly true if the buyer has no previous experience or knowledge of the brand they are contemplating buying which can be problematic to say the least.

Why is buying clothing online so troublesome?

fog essentials hoodie of those commodities open to interpretation about sizing and the "fit" of the garment for example in the USA the waist sizes are usually attributed to the waist of the body of the wearer while in the UK the waist size of the clothing refers to the garments dimensions and not the person's body.

You can see where this may cause problems straight away when buying trousers or jeans. One question is the brand American, English or European?

Do consumers bother to ask themselves that question?

Of course not and why would they? Consumers want solutions not obstacles they want their requirements met with as little fuss as possible. Consumers are not concerned with the intricacies of the way clothing is engineered and to what specification.

In Germany large online catalogue brands like Neckermann and Otto have actually built multi-million Euro buildings to handle their customers returned goods. The German culture is to buy three sizes of each clothing product, try them on and keep the best fitting whilst returning the other two products back to the catalogue company. This is cultural and engrained to the point businesses account for this and evolve based upon this methodology.

essentials shirt in the UK have also started practice this measure and utilise on-site warehouses the size of aircraft hangers to store and re-sort the returns back into for sales areas. This has become much more prevalent thanks to the sharp increase in online purchasing.

It could be easy construed that if the large multinational brands in the clothing industry cannot secure higher conversion of sales and less returns. What hope then have the smaller players got to make sure they are not over loaded or worse still their cash flow is impeded?

Speaking from the perspective of a workwear clothing supplier we have often encountered online shoppers who are very quick to send products back which they say don't fit. Taking out the returns for faults from the equation as this would be a separate issue, returns sent back because of the leg length or the waist sizes being "wrong" are very common reasons.

We don't blame the customers as the vast majority are genuinely victim to brands interpretations of sizing and perhaps the large brands have spoiled them a little by allowing returns sent back for any reason. For smaller businesses though this can essentially put the problem and the cost back on to that business. Some people believe this is simply a cost of running an online business but there are ways to minimise the exposure to these costs and problems.

We have all tried on clothing in shops and stores which just didn't quite look right even though they were designated our size. If you cannot physically see the goods and try them on before buying then it's simple logic to expect a greater level of returns and the large brands have written this contingency into their pricing structure to cope with the higher percentages of returns.

The smaller supplier does not have this elasticity in their business model to absorb the costs or increase the margin as they predominantly supplier market priced goods and not "own brand" clothing like the larger players.

Concentrating on the ecommerce websites, how can their service improve to limit the returns due to sizing issues?

The answer is quite simple yet the execution can be extremely complex, time consuming and expensive however if you view it as an investment your clothing business may grow faster and the relevancy of your website will increase many times in the larger search engines rankings.

We live in an age when video and images make up a vast amount of shared information on social feeds around the world for a very good reason, "a picture paints a thousand words" which is an old Chinese proverb but one that is more pertinent today thanks to Social media proliferation.

Utilising images and video clips in your "buyers guide" portion of the website along with descriptive unique text which explains the "fit" of the clothing in very easy straight forward terms should serve to educate those shoppers who want to make sure they have chosen the right clothing.

Just writing a description will work to some extent but if you can produce a video which allows people to see the clothing on another human body it may well give them a clearer understanding and allow them to make a more informed choice.

Every customer who wants a jacket, pair of trousers or T-Shirt has a need, a requirement and the aim should be to fulfil this need and reduce buyer's margin of error based on sizing and representation issues.

One upshot to this approach, as the web becomes more social and search engines actively seek out social indicators to gauge how relevant a website is. Couple this with the fact you produce videos and images which will help consumers buy the right product you may in fact find your customers share these snippets around amongst their social feeds. This will make your site look quite popular while providing them with a much sought after service and in return make the search engines view your site as very relevant.

It therefore doesn't take much thought to start contemplating what content to shoot, produce and also what direction you should go with in terms of sharing. Here is a hint, what do you like to see videos of when you check your Facebook or Google+ page?

As I said it's a simple element however the execution could be problematic due to time restraints, money, skills and the lack of familiarity to editing software but the benefits could be huge both in terms of SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) and converted sales.

You can find video editors who will work for scale but the best will always charge a premium price, the best way would be to look for editing software like Final Cut or Adobe Premiere to create your own content. These programs are expensive but the capability to produce slick, informative well rendered clips is an almost untapped market and one that will add value to your website and to your brand equity.

Of course there will always be the consumers who just buy clothing on spec with little or no research and no matter what resources you make available they will spurn or ignore them. All you can do is provide the most informative and helpful content you can in order to reduce the amount of unnecessary returns for your business. The concept will catch on and if you combine the facilities with a communication mix you can tap a well that should yield some fruitful returns and be so far ahead of the curve.