It’s not a secret that in 2020, most customers who used to buy perfumery and cosmetics in offline shops now went online. The big brands and retailers like ColourPop, Glossier, Sephora, Ulta Beauty, and many others have been represented on the web for a while now. But what about the medium and smaller ones? How can they compete with these giants in 2020?
We have researched the best existing webshops, and today we will share what you should learn from them if you already have your webshop or just planning to develop it.
Website responsiveness is vital for many reasons. First of all, this is influential in terms of search engine ranking, especially for Google search. If you do not have a mobile version of the website, it will rank much lower than if you’ve had one. This makes it difficult for your potential customers to find you. Furthermore, it is needed to ensure the correct display of images and other content on your website.
This one is significant for everything related to the beauty industry as customers often associate the website view with the quality of the product or customer service level.
Homepage of Glossier.com
Imagine descriptions as your sales assistant. If you don’t have a sales representative to answer your shop visitors’ questions, detailed product descriptions are a great option. Everything about your product a customer might ask should be included in the description: materials, colors, weight, length, price, and so on.
Your customers remember 70% of what they see and read. High-resolution product photos and quality web design are the two main points you should focus on if you want to have an eStore that is pleasing to the eye.
There is nothing more influential than the opinion of other independent reviewers. Customer reviews are a good way not only to increase the trust of potential buyers but also a great way to gather any negative feedback so you could take some steps to improve your products. Furthermore, reviews affect the website’s Search Engine Optimization, ensuring a higher ranking in search engines like Google, Bing, etc.
Customer review section on Sephora
This is a must-have for every store — a critical one. The shopping cart allows consumers to select products, manage the selected items, and adjust their choice. The core of an online shop is the cart and its transaction handling. This is the pre-last stage when the user can change their decision according to the purchase. To minimize these losses, the cart functionality should be designed very carefully.
Going online, you will get the chance to get orders from all over the world. Keep in mind that many of them have their preferred payment system. So we recommend clarifying payment options in advance. In most cases, online stores use credit and debit cards, gift vouchers, cash on delivery, PayPal as their primary payment systems, which is very convenient as those options work internationally.
The 2020 crisis significantly affected the market. Competitiveness grows faster than never before. It is hard to retain consumers with basic functionality and products that are not unique. This is where customer service comes into the game. Today the quality of customer service is not less important than the quality of the product. To improve customer service, you should think of how to improve communication and user experience on your website. We discussed these points precisely in one of our previous articles.
As we said before, in 2020, it’s pretty hard to surprise users with the basic functionality. You have to give them something outstanding and valuable. For example, if the customer is unsure which foundation shade to choose, give them a hand! Nobody likes to pay for something, then wait for delivery and find out that it doesn’t fit. Below, you can see an excellent example of the Fenty Beauty shade finder quiz. A user should answer a couple of simple questions, and that’s it!
Fenty face shade finder on fentybeayty.com
The same comes to Soko Glam Skin Concierge – the user answers 19 simple questions, leaves an email address, and then gets recommendations on skincare routine with special offers for suitable products.
Skincare routine builder on sokoglam.com
We’ve been developing a webshop for one of our clients, Parfuemerie.de, which is a large German retailer of perfumery and cosmetics. The client had a goal to increase sales and completely upgrade their webshop. To achieve this, we needed to perform the following tasks:
For the e-commerce platform, we chose Magento 2.1.6 since its capabilities met all the client’s business goals. If you want to learn more about this platform, you are welcome to check our article about it.
Homepage of parfuemerie.de
Which concerns functionality, we have successfully performed all the tasks set by the client. Now the webshop functions perfectly. Visit the parfuemerie.de website to see it yourself! The client and their customers are delighted with the outcome. They even left us a lovely video review you can watch below (originally in German with English subtitles).
To sum up, in 2020 it is not enough just to have your webpage to sell cosmetics. There are a lot of things to keep in mind: design trends, outstanding features for online shops, user experience, customer service, information security, marketing, technical issues, and a lot more.
If you want to develop your shop or want a considerable upgrade of the existing one, we recommend you research the competitors to note interesting ideas for inspiration, or you can contact us for advice and discussion about possible cooperation.
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