The cosmetics sector
In the cosmetics sector, selling products online is very different from selling in-store. Buyers of beauty products in stores are used to being able to receive advice, to be able to see the product, touch it, and even test them before purchasing them. Online, all this is not possible, and the customer quickly finds himself with a lack of support and advice.
So what motivates customers to shop online?
According to a Digital Beauty study, the motivations for purchasing cosmetic products online are promotions for 70% of respondents, price comparison for 66% and finally the purchase of usual products (for which we no longer need advice or a tester to decide) at 53%.
But whatever the case, e-commerce is taking up more and more space in consumer habits. Although the health crisis has had an impact, having forced online purchasing due to restrictions, consumers appreciate the advantages of e-commerce such as freedom from opening hours or even the fact of being able to shop from home. So how can we adapt online sales to the cosmetics sector?
What are the challenges of a cosmetics e-commerce site?
Due to its differences with physical sales, the construction of a cosmetics e-commerce site involves several challenges to adapt to consumer expectations and inspire confidence. The main efforts will have to be focused on user experience.
**Some challenges in the sector**:
- Optimal user experience: the customer journey on your site must be carefully worked on. From the home page to the validation of the shopping cart, you must provide your customers with the most fluid and pleasant experience possible. Indeed, the Digital Beauty study showed that many sites experience a high bounce rate, which can be explained in particular by a home page that does not inspire confidence, or an unoptimized customer journey.
- A mobile version: while we note a predominance of mobile traffic on many beauty sites (such as Yves Rocher or L’Occitane), having a mobile version of your website is essential. Even more, this version must be optimized and just as fluid as the desktop version.
- Good catalog management: cosmetics companies generally offer numerous product references, with numerous variants (different formats, different shades). These are sites that must be able to manage large catalogs and their stocks, which are constantly updated.
- Support and advice: if product testing and personalized advice is not completely reproducible on the internet, it is important to find a way to inform users as much as possible about the products on sale. In order to bridge this gap between physical stores and e-commerce, having very detailed product descriptions, offering purchasing guides or even online chat are significant options.
How BigCommerce responds to the challenges of the beauty sector?
You will have understood, cosmetic e-commerce must inspire confidence, and the user experience then becomes a pillar of the success of your online store.
Why choose BigCommerce for your beauty or cosmetics site?
BigCommerce is a very complete Open SaaS e-commerce solution, which offers numerous features and ready-to-use tools to manage such issues.
Personnalisation
BigCommerce offers a lot of possibilities to create a smooth and personalized experience. Thanks to its headless structure, it is possible to develop a front-end decoupled from the back-end with frameworks such as Vue.js, React, Next.js or even certain CMS like WordPress. In addition, its more than 90% open API offers numerous customization possibilities. All of these elements enable the creation of unique customer experiences to meet your customers’ expectations.
Mobile first
BigCommerce also allows you to optimize your users' mobile experience thanks to a certain choice of responsive themes created for mobile. BigCommerce natively integrates Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), so BigCommerce customers can benefit from improving their site's visibility on mobile searches.
Promotion and product recommendations
The interface allows you to personalize the customer experience by allowing the establishment of customer accounts, with targeted promotions, or the recommendation of products based on users' previous purchases.
Product catalog
BigCommerce allows businesses to manage catalogs of more than 600 products (SKUs), with nearly 250 options (formats, colors, shades, etc.). The product catalog also includes personalized fields. Thus, BigCommerce allows you to manage large and complex catalogs.
Omnicanal
Thanks to BigCommerce, you will be able to develop an omnichannel strategy. BigCommerce indeed offers the possibility of developing a strategy on the different offline and online sales channels of your company: e-commerce, social networks, marketplace, physical points of sale.
On social networks, you will be able to synchronize the product catalog with platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, which allows you to gain visibility, advertise and track your impressions. Connecting e-commerce sites to social networks is an important element in the beauty sector.
In summary, it will be possible to offer a consistent customer experience between your different points of contact while optimizing the management of these different channels. This omnichannel approach allows you to synchronize sales across all channels, inventory management and your company's accounting.
To finish
With BigCommerce, you will have the means to create a fluid, pleasant e-commerce site adapted to the cosmetics sector. Adapted to any size of business, BigCommerce will adapt to your needs and follow all stages of your growth. The solution offers many specific features to design a high-performance site and offer a personalized user experience to compensate for the lack of human contact online.
For more information, do not hesitate to contact us!