Shopping for clothes online comes with its share of benefits and shortcomings. The biggest pros for purchasing online is that there’s no need to leave the comfort of your home, no hassle and frustration of staying in line and you can shop at your convenience. However, for the convenience there’s one major drawback that most people face, the clothes may arrive a size or a couple of sizes too big or too small or with a wrong fabric or colour and you may not be able to return them. Use the following tips to avoid any surprises or frustrations when shopping for clothes online.
Read customer reviews
Customer reviews both for the clothing store that you’re buying from and for the exact clothing items that you’re purchasing can help give you a rough idea of if you’re making the right choice. Be wary of sites or items that have received no review at all, even bad ones because that may only mean two things; either the item has not been purchased by many people, or the site admin has deleted the reviews. When shopping for clothes online Bad reviews generally mean most people have had an unpleasant experience with the online clothing store or cloth, and you should therefore not expect any better.
Be updated on your measurements
When shopping for clothes online, you don’t have the advantage of trying out the clothes first. It will, therefore, help to have an up-to-date proper measurement especially of your bust, hip or waist. This will help get you the right size, whether it’s a medium or small because sometimes a size small in one store will be a size medium in another store. You can cross-check your size with the sizing chart. This will save you the heartache of getting a wrong size. Also, in some clothing sites with models, the size of the cloth that the model is wearing is normally given. So if the model is your size you can order the same size.
Pay attention to the return policy
Even after you follow every single precaution when buying online you may still get disappointed with the product you receive. Perhaps the colour you thought cool in the pictures is not so cool after all in real life, or maybe it’ just the right colour but a different hue which is not what you expected. If the return policy says to return within three days, delaying with the cloth may mean you forfeit your money and get stuck with the cloth you don’t like.
Research on the right fabric
Even when you’re an ardent fan of online clothes shopping it still helps to know or be friendly with the neighbour tailor. To begin with, they can help educate you on the different types of fabric and even give you advice on the best fabric for different clothing pieces. Because from the online pictures you cannot really feel the fabric, it helps to have knowledge of different fabric pieces so that you enquire about the type of fabric before you make your purchase. Also, your skin may be sensitive to some types of fabric, say polyester and it will, therefore, be a waste of time and money when you shop online and receive the cloth in a fabric that you can’t use.
Be Flexible
Not only can colours and hues change from batch to batch, sometimes how a colour appears on screen is not the same way that it will look like in reality. It helps to be flexible with such details as colour. Also, note the brands that deliver something close to what you like so that you always go for the same brands.
