by Reed Hartman
September 12th, 2024
As ecommerce continues to take the world by storm, many verticals are looking to online channels to bolster their books — including brands in the health and beauty space. In fact, health and beauty sales are expected to generate $646 billion in revenue in 2024 alone.
If you’re a health and beauty brand looking to improve online sales, what can you do to outshine the competition? Read on to learn more about industry trends, get real-world success storeys from BigCommerce health and beauty customers, and see what kinds of tools BigCommerce offers to help health and beauty ecommerce brands succeed in selling more online.
Health and beauty trends to consider
As the ecommerce market for health, beauty, and skincare brands continues to expand, it’s important to note some industry-specific trends, as well as trends that are impacting the ecommerce industry as a whole.
Website experience matters.
Whether you’re a digital native or an Internet noob, you want to have a clear, concise experience when purchasing online. Although industries and demographics look for different things, what a “good” user experience looks like remains mostly similar across ecommerce.
Easy navigation
Online shoppers don’t want to hunt through your site navigation just to find a single product. Make it as easy as possible for your customers to discover, search for, and purchase products by optimising site navigation and search.
Clear product descriptions
A great way to improve on-site search is by optimising your product descriptions. Many tools exist to help brands create optimised descriptions, like Bloomreach or Algolia. These tools use AI to help update product descriptions as user intent and search data changes. This means a constantly-optimised experience for customers, no matter where they’re shopping.
For online beauty brands, this could look as simple as categorising products in different ways, like by skin tone, skin type, or specific need. These types of product organisations can also improve inclusivity within your brand. This can also help brands when designating product recommendations for an opportunity to upsell or cross-sell products.
These kinds of organisational efficiencies can also help brands make the shopping experience more interactive. By implementing tools like augmented reality (similar to virtual try on for fashion retail brands), companies can allow customers to virtually test skincare products to see if they match skin tones, to see which lip gloss is glossier, or meet other needs. This feature is especially useful in the beauty market, but can be used across industries.
Frictionless checkout
Did you know that 22% of health and beauty customers will abandon their carts if checkout is too complicated? A complicated checkout process can take many forms — too many clicks, too many form fills, or stops before that final “Buy” button — but a frictionless checkout experience looks similar across the board: one page, easy to navigate, concise, and with plenty of payment options.
Post-purchase optimisation
Optimising the post-purchase experience is just as important as the buyer side of the funnel. Keeping a customer happy after they make their purchase can lead to repeat business and referral customers.
First, update your return policy and make it as customer-friendly as possible — as 18% of customers abandoned their carts because they weren’t satisfied with the returns policy. You can do this in a number of ways. If you’re a brand that operates both online and retail, you can implement a buy online, pickup in-store (Click and Collect) or buy online, return in-store (BORIS) policy. This cuts down on time and costs for both shipping and returns. Getting customers in the door also gives your brand an opportunity to upsell or cross-sell related new products.
When it comes to shipping, ensure your product gets to your customers quickly and efficiently. Use a trusted ecommerce shipping service like ShipStation or ShipperHQ to give your customers accurate, up-to-date shipping and tracking information.
Next, keep your brand front of mind by setting up an automated email nurture after your customer makes a purchase. Sending review emails, suggested products, and loyalty programme signup emails (more on that later) can help improve customer experience and get your brand more business.
AI is changing the industry.
Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) software, and generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini are changing the way that brands work, from manufacturing to shipping and everything in between. Health and beauty brands can use these tools to help improve processes and drive sales, especially when it comes to ecommerce.
Product imagery
Many tools now allow brands to take existing imagery and alter it to serve new purposes. Tools like Adobe or Canva can take products or models and place them into new locations or backgrounds, making it easier for brands to get more bang for their buck from potentially costly photo shoots.
Product descriptions
With search optimisation and user intent changing daily, it can be a hassle to keep up with changing keywords and phrases. AI tools like BigCommerce’s Big AI Copywriter can help brands stay ahead of trends by updating product descriptions, names, and taxonomies.
Loyalty programs drive sales.
Loyalty programs are a great way to keep customers engaged after a purchase. Asking prospects to create an account can often drive away potential sales (26% of sales, to be exact), but incentivising customers with a loyalty programme or discounts can benefit both brands and customers alike.
Once you have a customer’s contact information, you can send email or SMS messages telling them about sales or new beauty product launches similar to what they’ve purchased before. To keep them engaged, you can also send out discount codes, birthday messages, or other incentives from time to time. You can even automate these messages to make this as light a lift as possible for your marketing team.
Customers care about sustainable products and packaging.
Sustainability is front of mind for a vast majority of consumers, especially in younger generations. A 2023 study by PDI Technologies showed that 91% of Gen Z consumers prefer to shop from sustainable brands. And, with 32% of Gen Z shoppers making an online purchase daily, it’s important for brands to keep sustainability front of mind, too.
If you’re already using sustainable practises in your manufacturing, products, shipping, or packaging, use that point as a marketing opportunity. Younger generations will reward you for it.
Examples of health and beauty ecommerce websites
These health and beauty brands are using BigCommerce to create dazzling customer experiences when selling online. Cheque out their case studies to read the full storey.
Jentri Quinn Makeup & Skin.
Case Study: Jentri Quinn Makeup & Skin
Jentri Quinn Makeup & Skin specialises in skincare for women over 40. The brand grew out of Cotone Clothing and Beauty Bar, and has found tremendous success on BigCommerce, using our native omnichannel features, and posting tutorials on social media sites like TikTok. They also anticipate expanding the business from solely direct-to-consumer (DTC) to also selling wholesale business-to-business (B2B).
“With BigCommerce, I know I can create a specific group of wholesale customers that can have their own login, their own pricing, their own everything. They can just be on autopilot,” said Alex de Mola, owner of Cotone Clothing and Beauty Bar.
Victoria Health.
With over 3,500 products live on its site and a loyal newsletter following that exceeds 350,000 readers, Victoria Health has grown to become the United Kingdom’s (UK) premier online retailer for natural health and personal care products. They integrate their BigCommerce store with a number of tech partnerships and integrations that allow them to streamline marketing and customer outreach.
“We trust that BigCommerce is focused on developing its services and platform to ensure we have access to the tools needed to meet customers’ expectations,” said Lara Sinclair, Chief Operating Officer at Victoria Health.
Bulk Nutrients.
Ben Crowley began his supplement business, Bioflex, in 2008, and sells his products on two separate sites. Southern Nutrition is the B2B arm of the business, while Bulk Nutrients takes care of DTC sales. “Bulk Nutrients is where we really leveraged BigCommerce to go gangbusters. It accounts for almost all of our revenue,” said Webmaster Jarod Pulo of Bulk Nutrients.
Between June 2015 and June 2022, Bulk Nutrients saw a conversion rate increase of 52%, and saw a 326% increase in users.
MitoQ.
MitoQ is a revolutionary health supplement that ships to over 140 countries across the globe. They use BigCommerce to create a stunning ecommerce experience that highlights their product, its results, and become a world-wide success.
“BigCommerce’s level of flexibility is phenomenal. I'm 100% sure we could not have had this type of flexibility if we'd chosen another ecommerce provider. From a relationship perspective, I think there's something to be said about the quality of the people in the organisation,” said Shaun Price, Head of Customer Acquisition at MitoQ. “Service-wise, BigCommerce is second to none to be honest. We create tickets with BigCommerce, they're answered and done and I can't believe how quick it is. The bar for service is really high. So whatever you all are doing, you're doing it right.”
How BigCommerce helps health and beauty companies sell more online
There are a variety of ecommerce platforms your brand can choose from when it comes to creating its ecommerce storefront. Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify Plus are all platforms that have their pros and cons. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t tell you more about how BigCommerce can help turn your site into a conversion machine.
Create beautiful websites with ease.
While some other platforms may require teams of developers to create beautiful websites — or lock you into standard design templates — BigCommerce allows you to create beautiful websites with ease using Stencil, our custom page builder.
If you want even more control over your features, functionality, and visual style, go composable and use Catalyst, our new visual editor powered by Makeswift.
Easy integrations with no vendor lock-in.
With BigCommerce’s open API, brands can integrate almost any technology into their website’s back-end quickly and easily. Our fully customisable checkout allows you to create an experience unique to your brand, while you can optimise and customise every aspect of your website experience for both the customer and your team.
Integrate accounting and tax software, search engine optimisation (SEO) tools, analytics software, and more, all with just a few clicks. Cheque out a full list of BigCommerce integrations and tech partners here.
Sell across more channels.
A unified selling strategy for health and beauty brands means selling through more than just a retail store or website. Health and beauty retailers with a real eye for success see the strategic value in selling across multiple channels, from in-store to online, social channels to search.
BigCommerce offers native integrations with some of the world’s largest marketplaces, social channels, and search engines, allowing brands to easily sync catalogues, managing products, inventory, and more.
BigCommerce also offers offline solutions, too. Brands can build a customised experience that blends online and in-store with our Click and Collect functionality. Our platform APIs provide the foundational building blocks that give you the freedom to create a unique pickup experience that fits your brand, and your shoppers.
For brands who sell across more channels, have large catalogues, multiple inventory locations, or want to take advantage of the latest tech like instant commerce, Feedonomics may be the answer. Feedonomics is a feed management solution that integrates with over 300 channels worldwide, allowing brands to manage all their different sales channels through one convenient back-end.
AI features to improve operations and help you scale.
BigCommerce is committed to using the latest and greatest technology to not only grow our business, but to help your business grow, too.
We’ve partnered with some of the world’s biggest brands using AI and ML to bring this exciting new technology to your fingertips. Tools like Klevu, SearchSpring, and Bloomreach help with product discovery and on-site search. Google’s Gemeni powers our BigAI Copywriter, which allows brands to craft compelling, SEO-optimised product descriptions in your brand voice and tone. And Feedonomics’ generative AI tools can help your business make the most out of taxonomy mapping for search, product categorisation, and feed optimisation.
The final word
Health, beauty, and cosmetics brands selling cosmetics products, haircare, skincare products or more can face a lot of competition when it comes to selling online. While your products may be unique, your website experience needs to match, and even exceed, customer expectations in order to convert.
Brands like Jentri Quinn, Victoria Health, and Bulk Nutrients provide these kinds of experience by harnessing BigCommerce’s impressive native features, like one-page checkout, our suite of native omnichannel integrations, and AI tools that help bring the latest and greatest technology to their online store.
Follow their lead and you, too, can see impressive results.
FAQ about health and beauty ecommerce
Reed Hartman
Reed Hartman is a Content Marketing Manager at BigCommerce, where he uses his years of research, writing and marketing experience to help inform and educate business owners on all things ecommerce.