E-commerce has completely changed the landscape for D2C businesses, providing consumers with the opportunity to purchase goods from the comfort of their own home and any device with an internet connection.
There are, however, some notable limitations – such as the inability to physically experience a product in advance of a purchase.
Certain sectors feel the impact of these limitations more than others. A notable example here is the cosmetics sector (projected to value at around US$ 758.4 billion by 2025) where aspects such as color, tone, and texture of the product in question are all essential contributing factors to the purchase decision.
DTC brands across all sectors tend to excel at providing an elevated digital showroom experience when it comes to positioning their products online. In this article, we’ll explore three DTC cosmetic brands that deliver an excellent product experience via their digital showrooms, and examine the strategy that helps make them so successful here.
The brands featured in this article are paving the way for others in the DTC space, providing an innovative product experience that any brand can take valuable lessons from.
Glossier
Consumers know the Glossier brand as being high quality, affordable, highly desirable, and always on-trend. Their ranges are limited and their niche audience is well defined. Glossier doesn’t sell products through retailers, however, their IRL stores and pop-ups provide consumers with a highly curated and interactive retail experience.
Glossier’s digital showroom highlights the brand’s core values with consistent styling that conveys its core positioning – offering sleek, fashionable, and highly functional products.
To overcome the fact that consumers cannot physically experience or test their products, Glossier uses engaging and interactive site elements such as hover-over animated gif effects. This helps consumers gain an instant impression of product use and suitability.
Their product pages present carefully curated information, to assist buyers in their purchase decision. Expandable sections mean that this high level of detail is informative without being overwhelming.
Below every product description, consumer reviews provide excellent social proof, helping to solidify the quality of each product. Product listings also offer “Good To Know” sections, with social icons which present suitability attributes to assist with purchase decisions.
Glossier conveys all of its product information in a clear, accessible, and well-ordered hierarchy, effortlessly guiding buyers through the purchasing process. The management of additional product metadata, tags, and digital assets is exemplary.
Beauty Pie
Beauty Pie operates a unique business model, offering consumers white-labeled luxe goods at a discount when they sign up for a monthly membership. The brand is known for its great value and solid community, which collates opinions and feedback from existing members.
Their digital showroom simplifies the customer journey using hero image badges (the image that pulls through to the category pages) such as “back in stock” and a logo of awards won or shortlisted for. The use of star ratings which pull through to category pages adds to the already smooth and effortless customer purchase journey.
The product pages of Beauty Pie include beauty industry trust badges such as Cruelty-Free/Clean Beauty to solidify the reputability of their products, and again, by using reviews and social proof to back each product. Finally, product pages showcase additional recommended products, based on what the visitor is showing an interest in.
Wander Beauty
Consumers choose Wander Beauty for products that are tested well and designed for life. The brand is best known for its hard-working travel-inspired skincare and cosmetics products. They’ve branched out into sales through other retailers such as Sephora and Net A Porter, presenting a need to keep close brand control across multiple channels.
The digital showroom of Wander Beauty ticks all of the right boxes to supercharge the consumer buying decision, with lifestyle and close-up photography that offers hover-over reveals on the home and category pages.
Specific products are linked to Shoppable videos providing helpful product tips and tricks, results, and more. They utilize user-generated content so buyers can see the products in use by real customers, making them more relatable. They use a great range of product imagery consisting of product shots, in-use shots, and close-ups on all product pages for an immersive customer experience.
Takeaway Lessons For Your Brand’s Digital Showroom
Expectations for immersive customer experiences within online retail are accelerating. Informed purchase decisions are essential (creating higher levels of customer satisfaction and improving your bottom line, with fewer returns and more repeat custom.)
It’s increasingly important to ensure that your category and product pages provide the same kind of rich, engaging, and informative experience that the brands we’ve highlighted in this article achieve.
To offer this level of finesse and detail, exemplary management of product information and digital assets is essential. Effectus Content Platform’s leading PIM and DAM solutions make this achievable, efficient, and highly effective.
