In today’s post, I’m going to show you exactly how to optimize your eCommerce skincare website.
So if you want to:
- Learn about eCommerce optimization and why its important
- Increase your skincare site’s conversion rate
- Grow your eCommerce business
- Study 14 high-impact optimization techniques
Then you’ll love this new guide.
Let’s get started.
What Is Optimization?
Ecommerce optimization is when you critically examine every aspect of your website and then experiment with changes that could increase conversions and sales.
Optimization aims to earn more value from each visitor who already visits your website. For example, if you have 1,000 website visitors a day with a 5% conversion rate, you would have 50 purchases per day.
If you optimized your eCommerce skincare site and achieved a 15% conversion rate, you would now have 150 purchases per day. Without even touching your advertisements, this hypothetical situation would increase your conversion rate by 300%. In turn, your revenue would also increase by about around 300%.
Isn’t optimization powerful?
It’s all about building and designing a website that fully persuades and induces customers to make a purchase. This is accomplished through beautiful graphics, in-depth information, social proof, and much more.
I’ll show you 14 ways to optimize your eCommerce skincare website further below.
Is Optimization Important? (YES)
Conversions are the most important metric for all eCommerce businesses. Without sales, you won’t be able to sustain your operating costs and expenses. Therefore, conversion optimization is crucial to your skincare site’s long-term success.
However, optimization isn’t a task you complete once and never think about again. Optimization is a consistent process of testing different offers and adding more content to your website. Your website will never be “perfect“, so there is always room for improvement.
Remember, optimization deals with converting visitors into customers more often. You’ll need to have a good understanding of your customer base in order to provide the best optimizations.
It’s no secret that there are rising costs and competition in digital marketing. Because of this, you may have realized higher costs per purchase. Optimization is a technique to combat the rising cost of digital marketing.
Now it’s time to jump into the 14 strategies I have for optimizing your eCommerce beauty site.
14 Optimization Techniques For eCommerce Skincare Websites
Here are 14 ways you can optimize your beauty product website today. Each technique is accompanied by an example from an established skincare brand. I included the examples so you can take inspiration and design your own content.
Let’s jump in!
1. Provide Subscription Options
In a world where individuals are used to paying subscriptions for Netflix, Spotify, and everything else, you must take advantage of this phenomenon with subscription packages of your own.
What’s a subscription?
A subscription is when a customer automatically purchases your skincare products on a cyclical basis.
For example, let’s say a customer absolutely loves your face moisturizer.
Instead of forcing the customer to come back to your website to repurchase the product when it runs out, a subscription acts as an automatic payment, so the customer receives the product every month. However, the time period between purchases should be up to the customer.
Let’s look at an example.
Product Subscription
Here’s an example of a product subscription from Sio Beauty of a forehead wrinkle treatment patch.
As you can see, the customer can choose between purchasing the item as a ‘One-time purchase‘ or to ‘Subscribe & Save‘.
If the customer chooses to subscribe, they save up to 20% off their order and receive free shipping on each shipment. Furthermore, there is no annual commitment, and the customer can cancel their subscription at any time.
There is also an option to choose when the product should be delivered: 15 days, 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days.
I recommend creating a subscription option for your best-selling products. Take inspiration from the example above and design an equally beautiful subscription form on your product page that offers a great user experience.
Brand Subscription
With each subscription, Sio beauty also offers a variety of other benefits.
Here is what they offer:
With the Subscribe and Save package, customers receive a $5 gift card for every third order. Customers can also choose to skip a shipment or swap products.
Sio Beauty included these additional benefits because they understand how important subscriptions are. Let’s talk about why subscriptions are vital to your skincare website.
Why Are Product Subscriptions Important?
Product subscriptions allow you to earn recurring revenue. In turn, recurring revenue offers:
- Consitent and predictable profits
- A stronger relationship between your skincare brand and your customers
- Less time needed acquiring new customers
The subscription business model is the perfect way to optimize your skincare website if you already have a few hot products that customers keep coming back for.
2. Attention Grabbing Banner Image
Another way to optimize your eCommerce website is to use an attention-grabbing banner image. The banner image is the first thing visitors see when they enter your website. This means that the image plays a major role in the visitor’s decision to leave or stay on the website.
Here is an example from Sephora:
Sephora showcases four different moisturizers for four different skin types. This is an ingenious technique to engage their visitors and recommend the perfect product for them.
This banner is personal, well-designed, and helpful. Most visitors shopping at Sephora will want a moisturizer since moisturizers are pivotal in any skincare routine.
As such, Sephora chose to advertise moisturizers on the banner image. This banner is also personalized because most beauty product shoppers know their skin type. Whether it’s combo, dry, oily, or normal, people are always on the search for the perfect moisturizer.
Here’s a similar example from Kiehl’s.
Kiehl’s is one of the most trusted skincare brands in the world. Their banner showcases three different products with three different use cases.
Although Kiehl’s didn’t use skin types like Sephora, they describe what the product does, which is effective as well. A common theme we’re seeing is that large brands focus on advertising their moisturizers. This could be helpful for you to know if you sell moisturizers on your own eCommerce skincare site.
Based on these examples, I recommend you showcase your most widely used products on your banner image and explain either what the product does or who it’s suited for.
3. Product Page Optimizations
Next, let’s take a look at a few well-optimized product pages. Product pages are where curious website visitors can conduct more research about your product. If you don’t include essential information about your product, skeptical visitors will leave your site.
So, it’s important to add as much helpful content as you possibly can to your product pages.
Product Details
Here is what a well-designed product description looks like for eCommerce skincare websites.
The four vital sections to include are:
- Details – a brief description of the product and its purpose
- How it works – how the product interacts with your skin
- How to use – how to properly use the product
- Ingredients – the product’s ingredients
Including all four of these product details sections will answer most of the potential questions a visitor may have about the product.
Videos
If you want to bring even more life to your product page, you can include a video.
Here is an example from 47 Skin:
This video showcases a happy customer using the face mask. The customer explains what the product does and shows you how to use it properly.
There is another video right under the mask demo:
The second video showcases a doctor explaining how 47 Skin’s unique ingredient, ‘Silver Chitoderm’, works and why it’s good for your skin.
Don’t be afraid to get creative and add your own videos to your product pages. Perhaps you get frequent emails from customers asking the same question about a product. You can make a video answering the question and place it on the product page.
4. Create An FAQ Section
As eCommerce store owners, our websites have more friction and pain points than other industries. Since we’re dealing with physical products, our visitors have an unlimited amount of potential questions they want to ask.
For this reason, I recommend creating an entire FAQ page to answer common questions.
This is an example from 47 Skin:
This is just a snippet of 47 Skin’s FAQ page. The FAQ page actually has 25 questions and answers. But as you can see, 47 Skin answers common questions a new visitor might have about their products.
I mentioned earlier how online shoppers are savvier and more research-driven than before. A helpful FAQ page can eliminate a lot of anxiety from these types of shoppers and give them the confidence to make a purchase.
Because one thing is true. The more unanswered questions a visitor has about your product or brand, the less likely they are to make a purchase. Furthermore, most visitors are unwilling to send an email with the question unless they are very interested in your products.
5. Giveaways and Samples
What’s one thing that’s universally true? People LOVE free stuff!
As such, another way to optimize your eCommerce skincare website is to offer free gifts and samples with each purchase.
This is a strategy Kiehl’s uses which has helped them grow into a globally recognized brand.
Free samples and gifts serve two purposes.
The first purpose is to give the customer that feeling of getting something for free. The second purpose is to give the customer a product they haven’t tried before. If the customer tries the sample and loves it, they will probably come back to purchase an entire bottle.
By giving away samples and gifts, you also encourage future purchases from the same customers.
Isn’t that clever?
Let’s take a look at some examples.
Giveaway Thresholds
Kiehl’s gives away up to five deluxe gifts with every purchase. Deluxe gifts are essentially bigger samples, which is amazing considering how expensive skincare products are.
However, Kiehl’s doesn’t give out gifts with every purchase. The customer needs to hit a certain threshold in order to receive the gifts.
Including an order threshold is an optimization technique that increases your average order value. I discuss AOV in part one and part two of my eCommerce average order value series.
Increasing your average order value is my favorite technique for growing my eCommerce businesses.
Free Samples With Every Purchase
Whether the customer hits the deluxe gifts threshold or not, they will receive three free samples of their choosing. This means that every order comes with three free samples no matter what.
This is what it looks like on Kiehl’s shopping bag page.
6. Showcase Impactful Social Proof
I cover social proof extensively in part one and part two of my eCommerce social proof series. Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people imitate the action of others. For example, if a friend told you that the new Spiderman movie was amazing, you’re more inclined to go watch it.
Let’s look at a few examples of social proof you can include on your eCommerce skincare site.
Media Mentions
If a notable media outlet mentioned your brand, I recommend showing your visitors.
Here is an example of how this is accomplished.
47 Skin showcases how Stylist, GQ, and Vogue mentioned the brand. This instantly boosts the reputation of your brand to new visitors.
Customer Testimonials
Another way to build social proof is to include customer testimonials on your homepage.
Take a look at how 47 Skin does it:
As you can see, 47 Skin chose a handful of notable reviews to include on the homepage. These reviews showcase how much other customers enjoyed the products.
Here is another example from Lumin, a men’s skincare company:
This section is located at the bottom of their homepage and goes through individual reviews.
Customer Reviews
A must-have on each of your product pages is a customer reviews section. This is where customers leave feedback on the product. It’s also where new visitors learn more about the product.
Here is an example of a well-designed product review section that allows users to sort by skin condition.
Ratings and reviews on your products are especially important nowadays. In fact, 91% of online shoppers read reviews, and 84% trust them as if they were from recommended by a friend.
So, a couple of positive reviews can make a big impact on your website’s conversion rate.
7. Create Valuable Blog Content
Although it may not seem like it, creating blog content can dramatically improve your conversion rate. However, your blog content needs to be actionable, useful, and valuable to your audience.
If you can provide amazing content to your visitors, you will be able to build a much stronger relationship with them.
Here’s an example from Kiehl’s:
Kiehl’s blog has seven different sections of content. Each section has dozens of articles discussing various skincare topics and strategies for maintaining flawless skin.
Here are a few examples of the blog posts:
Consumers who shop for skincare products are usually sensitive about how their skin looks. For this reason, these individuals enjoy spending time researching different skincare products and techniques.
This means that a blog post that completely changes the reader’s life can turn them into a lifelong supporter of your business. I recommend writing about topics that you’re both knowledgeable and passionate about.
Remember, people who shop for skincare products simply want to look good and feel confident. If you can help them achieve these goals by educating them, your brand will stand out amongst the fierce competition.
8. Show Off Your Products’ Results
People who buy skincare products are looking for results. As such, you can show them results that your previous customers achieved.
Here is an example from 47 Skin:
47 Skin has an entire page for their ‘Real Results‘. They showcase stories from customers who had amazing success using their products on this page.
Each story includes a detailed write-up as well as week-to-week pictures. Whereas some visitors might be skeptical of customer testimonials without pictures, it’s hard to argue against picture evidence of someone’s skin improving.
There is even a section with more in-depth customer stories near the bottom of the page:
Like I said before, people who buy skincare products want results. Your conversion rate will rise if you can show them evidence of the products accomplishing their job.
9. Display Your Best Selling Skincare Products
Although there are a few ways you can display your best-selling products, I enjoy how Sephora uses a ranking system.
Take a look at the example:
Listing your best-selling products by rank is an excellent way to build curiosity over your products. If a new visitor enters your website, they might think to themselves why a certain product is ranked so high.
Furthermore, your best-selling products are the best-selling products because customers have achieved results with the products. So there is a good chance other visitors will have similar success using the best-selling products.
I recommend including this list on your homepage immediately under the hero banner.
10. Create Bundle Deals
Creating product bundles is another great way of optimizing your eCommerce skincare store. Product bundles are when you add several related items into one set. Then, you give the customer a discount for buying the entire set.
Here is an example from Sephora:
Sephora offers dozens of different value bundle sets to their customers.
Let’s take a closer look at a skincare bundle:
This Kiehl’s bundle includes a facial cleanser, toner, cleansing masque, and moisturizer. These are four key steps in a skincare routine, so this bundle makes it convenient to get the entire routine, rather than buying each product individually.
11. Make a Before and After Slider
Sio Beauty includes a unique mechanic in their before and after slider. You can slide the vertical bar across the image and see what the face looks like before and after using Sio Beauty’s face patch.
Before
The before image showcases some discoloration, wrinkles, and sagging around the eye.
After
The after image shows less discoloration, fewer wrinkles, and healthier looking skin.
This type of interactive tool is engaging while also proving the product’s effectiveness. The image is very high quality, so it’s easy to tell the difference between the before and after picture.
Showing your product’s results is a big theme when it comes to optimizing your eCommerce skincare website.
12. Offer Your Community A Rewards Program
It would be best if you rewarded your diehard fans by offering them a rewards program for their loyalty. Here is how Sio Beauty advertises their rewards program on their homepage.
You can become a member for free and get access to the birthday reward, points earning system, and free shipping.
13. Create a Skincare Quiz
If you want to take your website’s personalization to the next level, I recommend creating a skincare quiz or assessment.
47 Skin has a skincare assessment:
This assessment asks the user a series of questions about:
- Age and gender
- Main skin concern
- Sleep habits
- Current skincare routine
- Regional climate
- Skin type
- and more
At the end of the quiz, you’re recommended a series of products based on your answers.
14. Explain How Your Product Works In Detail
For the self-assertive online shoppers who love researching different products, it’s helpful to include a detailed product explanation.
Here is an example from Sio Beauty:
If the user clicks ‘Learn More’, they are directed to another page with an in-depth explanation and video about how the product works.
The video showcases a doctor who goes into detail about how Sio Beauty’s skin patches heal your skin. Since Sio Beauty’s products are unique, they are willing to go the extra mile to fully educate their visitors on how the product works.
Now It’s Your Turn
I really hope you enjoyed my complete guide to optimizing your eCommerce supplements site.
Now I’d like to hear from you:
Which strategy from today’s guide are you going to try first?
Are you going to create product subscriptions?
Or maybe you want to start writing blog posts.
Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.