From a regular beauty web design to multichannel beauty brand
Starting from October, come the most crucial periods determining the sales for the upcoming holiday season for beauty brands. In 2013, online revenues of high-end beauty products accounted for 6.2 percent of the beauty market in the UK, with 50 percent of the sales taking place between November to December, according to L2’s Digital IQ Index. The same time last year, around 61 percent of UK consumers found gift inspiration from Amazon, while 50 percent from Google.co.uk, signifying the impact of strong digital presence for beauty brands.
What do digitally-savvy beauty brands do to stand out?
Today prestigious beauty brands have proven strategies to create conversation online and compel audiences to take actions. Yet, UK’s beauty market tends to lag behind other non-food categories online.
Surely in-store experiences will continue to be relevant for cosmetic and fragrance products. Nevertheless, brands cannot ignore the impact of digital on brand awareness and so on.
Ten key trends in beauty brands digital marketing
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The use of visual storytelling
Many consumers want to know the motives behind the beauty brands. Can they really understand my needs, problems and desires? How does their company philosophy benefit me at all? As online customers are becoming increasingly accustomised with the “noise” in the market, it is imperative that brands communicate their unique heritages succinctly and effectively without losing their attention.
Having said that, smart beauty brands don’t always reveal everything. They leave some room for consumers to explore, imagine and complete the “untold” pieces.
Creme De La Mer uses a short video and beautiful imagery to effectively convey their brand heritage, natural ingredients and product benefits while allowing the visitors to dig deeper into their story.
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Lifestyle-focused content to engage users
As we’ve already mentioned previously, an online beauty startup Birchbox excels at lifestyle-focused, magazine-like content on their eCommerce site. With a particular focus on health and beauty, their site is both entertaining and educative with useful how-to tips to fun videos. Even non-subscribers including myself would want to keep going back to the site as a source of inspiration. Almost every beauty brand of today need to take a similar approach: incorporate all-encompassing lifestyle content throughout the online store.
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Online reviews for higher ranking
Google is more likely to show search results based on what it think is best for the user. Google knows that users/consumers often compare prices and qualities when searching on the Internet. Naturally, Google will always rank those with reviews and testimonials higher up in the results to facilitate the users’ shopping experience. So, as a key part of your SEO strategy, it is essential that you get product reviews shown on your site to boost your digital presence.
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Create a community and learn from them
When online chat and reviews are not enough, Sephora’s eCommerce offers alternative to make sure their customers feel they are in good hands. Users can find a thread that is of their interest, and then comment and reply to other users. Users often ask more specific questions that they cannot find through online reviews, or when they feel online chats are slightly less personal.
We also think that this is a great tool to have a better understanding of your community, and get further data to improve the user experience.
The next post we will discuss the role of user generated content & mobile eCommerce in digital beauty brands.
What do you think?
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