Australia's top online fashion retailers

By David Simmons

15 February 2019

Australia's top online fashion retailers

As demonstrated by Australia's top fashion retailers online is the future of our retail sector.

By taking on new technologies, offering customers easy to use payment solutions, and making shopping as accessible as possible, Australian fashion retailers are rethinking what it means to be a store in 2019.

In 2018 a number of Australia's old guard of fashion retail met their demise.

Once iconic brands like Ed Harry, Napoleon Perdis, and Roger David were unable to keep up with the new kids on the block and have had to shut up shop.

The sudden shift to online and the emergence of Amazon in Australia was a king hit for many older players that perhaps expected their household name to be enough to keep them in the ring.

However, the number one Australian fashion retailer, The Iconic, is a purely online play, and is blasting the old guards like Myer out of the water.

Offering same-day delivery in certain postcodes, new modes of payment, and an irresistible and ever-expanding range of brands, The Iconic rightfully takes its crown as the best in Oz.

Interestingly, despite serious media criticism and vicious shareholders, Myer maintains its position in the top though it will be interesting to see where it places in 2020.

The list, compiled by Practicology, ranked these retailers on their ability to provide certain benchmarks that they say all brands should be working towards.

These include payment methods, click-and-collect, phone customer service, and search engine optimisation.

Payment Methods

Every single one of the retailers in Practicology's study offered Afterpay which suggests the buy-now pay-later service is an integral part of doing business in retail in 2019.

Of the retailers reviewed 44 per cent offered same-day or next-day delivery in Metro areas including The Iconic, Showpo and Myer.

Click-and-collect

Parcelpoint is slowly becoming an important part of online retail, with 48 per cent of the retailers offering this click-and-collect service.

Live chat is slowly being brought on by retailers, with 24 per cent of businesses surveyed offering this.

Phone customer service

Only 32 per cent of retailers provided a satisfactory response to a phone inquiry according to Practicology, with 24 per cent giving a message asking customers to leave a voice message or email them instead.

Search engine optimisation

The only Australian retailer to land on the first page of Google search results for at least 40 per cent of its organic keywords was The Iconic, meaning the rest of the retailers on this list have a bit of work to do in this area.