Online shopping has skyrocketed in popularity over the past several years—especially in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic hit and many more people began shopping online in order to avoid leaving their homes for safety-related reasons. In fact, e-commerce in the United States increased by 44% in 2020 alone.
Shopping for lingerie online is especially popular right now. In fact, lingerie is currently considered to be one of the fastest-growing e-commerce categories. In 2018 alone, online lingerie sales increased by more than 20% and the lingerie e-commerce industry has only continued to grow exponentially along with e-commerce in general over the past few years.
Shopping online for lingerie can be great, but navigating the online lingerie industry can also be difficult. If you’re interested in shopping for lingerie from the comfort of your own home, keep reading for 3 tips on how to shop for lingerie online and get the results you want from your purchases.
1. Know Your Measurements
Knowing your own body measurements is key to successfully shopping for lingerie online. If you don’t know your measurements, you’ll have to guess which size might fit you—which can lead to disastrous results.
All you need to take your correct body measurements is a soft tape measure. If you’re not sure how to measure your body accurately to determine which lingerie size you should purchase, check online. There are plenty of intuitive instructions and charts online that can help you make sure you’re measuring your body in a way that yields the most accurate measurements for you.
2. Look at the Size Charts
In addition to knowing your own body measurements, it is important to look at the size chart for each lingerie piece you are considering buying to determine the size with which your measurements align. Don’t just assume you’re a certain size because you wear that size in other lingerie pieces. Sizing for each lingerie retailer is slightly—or majorly—different, so relying on estimations alone could make you end up with lingerie that doesn’t fit you. If a lingerie website does not have sizing charts listed on their website, it’s best to move on to another retailer.
3. Check the Return Policy
It is important to check the return policy of an online lingerie retailer before buying any lingerie from that retailer. Buying from an online lingerie retailer that does not allow returns or exchanges is a major risk to take. If you buy from a no-returns retailer and the pieces you order don’t fit you, you’ll be out of luck. It is a good idea to buy only from lingerie retailers that have flexible return and exchange policies.
4. Buy More Than One Size
If the online lingerie retailer from which you’re buying your lingerie has a flexible return policy that allows you to return or exchange items you have already purchased, it is often a good idea to buy more than one size for each piece you buy. Even if you have taken your body measurements accurately and followed the size chart on the lingerie retailer’s website, the lingerie size you think will fit you might not fit you
the way you expected. Buying a piece in your estimated size along with the same piece in a size larger or a size smaller allows you to try on multiple sizes to determine which one fits your body best. Then, you can just return the size that doesn’t fit you.
5. Shop Small
There are many benefits to buying lingerie from smaller rather than larger lingerie retailers. Since they operate on a smaller scale and are more dependent on each individual customer who makes a purchase from them, smaller boutique online lingerie retailers tend to make offering better customer service a higher priority. The lingerie they sell is also more unique and is usually of higher quality than lingerie pieces from larger retailers.
Many boutique lingerie retailers—such as luxury online-based lingerie retailer HauteFlair—also operate on an online-only basis. Because they don’t have brick-and-mortar storefronts that are bringing in income, these boutique retailers are more dedicated to their online sales and ensuring that their website is up-to-date and user-friendly. They are even able to sell higher-quality lingerie for cheaper prices because they pay less in overhead costs than they would if they had to rent a physical storefront. Plus, buying from smaller lingerie retailers allows you to support small businesses—which is always a good thing.