Whether you’re an ‘etailer’ who’s purely about the product, or you’re a clinic looking to bolster your revenue or brand awareness with your own range of skincare, an estore takes your offering online and has a whole host of benefits. In this post, we’ll focus on what these are, and share our latest case study.
Online skincare is big business
According to Statista, the market value of skincare products was £2.2bn in 2019. Similarly, this report from the British Beauty Council shares that consumer spending on beauty products and services hit £27.2bn in 2018. Men’s skincare and beauty are also growing year-on-year; for example, Statista anticipates that by 2024, the global male grooming market will be worth around £60bn.
In addition, online shopping is booming. Figures show that last year alone, online sales amounted to over $3tn (~£2tn) globally. If you’ve yet to venture into the world of eCommerce, you could be losing serious money.
Shop anytime, anywhere
Our always-on, digitally-charged world enables us to plug in and purchase when and where we want. E-commerce is the king of convenience, allowing customers to browse, order and schedule delivery on their terms. It’s well-known that people are more likely to buy when they can do so instantly – and your online store can help you continue to be competitive, inviting customers to browse and convert day or night, whether you (or your competition) are open or closed. What’s more, you could tap into customer bases across the country or even on a global scale, transcending location and time zones.
With the pandemic still keeping many wary of venturing out, now is the perfect time to make the move online.
Appeal to more people
Our team always highlights the importance of building trust between your clinic and your clients through a range of treatments and products. Having a site that’s easy to shop – with quality products created by industry experts that fulfil your client’s needs – could entice them to use your other services.
On the flip side, those who aren’t interested in aesthetics treatments at your clinic may still be curious about your online skincare – and as a clinic, you’re uniquely positioned to offer powerful, medical-grade or Dermatologist-led products that can be harder or more inconvenient to source elsewhere.
Leverage your social
Just like you may advertise offers on certain treatments using social, you can do the same with your estore too, bringing in more business and reaching even more people than those who simply book into your clinic. Or, products can be a great way to add to one of your treatment packages.
Social media is also a great way to encourage reviews and ratings of your clinic and your products, building that trust factor. With a bespoke marketing and SEO strategy in place, you can rank higher on Google with an increase in traffic to your website.
Offer personalised skincare
Through the use of clever tools, add-ons and plug-ins, you can offer your client base an online skin consultation, creating a more tailored experience and recommending appropriate products based on factors such as age, skin type or skin concern.
By creating new web pages and blog content, you can also offer further product insights and information, tapping into trends, events and seasonal activity to encourage purchases.
Finally, product recommendations can encourage customers to look at other, similar products that they may overlook on the shop shelf. Online, you can capitalise on your USP of being the expert in the skin.
Gain data insights
Online helps give you ‘actionable insights’. With the right tools, you can use tracking to measure every aspect of a transaction, including how your customer found your website (and whether they were new or repeat), which products they clicked on (giving insights into current trends and popular items), and whether they converted at the end of the process (and if not, ways to encourage this in the future, such as an offer).
This data can help identify which channels work best for bringing in new traffic (and converting), ensuring you manage the demand for skin products and services, and allowing you to adapt your marketing strategy as and when required.
Here’s how it all comes together
Our client asked us to design and build an online skin shop that could bring their extensive product range online. Our fully-responsive, mobile-optimised eCommerce site was built in Woo Commerce (WordPress) to be smart, fast and easy for the client to work on. Here are our favourite features.
Personalised recommendations
Nothing says bespoke like personalised recommendations. Our team created an online questionnaire to discover a customer’s unique skin make-up, ensuring products helped address skin concerns (such as oiliness or ageing) as well as preferred formulations (from lotion to gel). We also included a section for customers to add their skin goals (whether boosting radiance, creating a youthful appearance or creating smoother skin).
Our experts also helped identify related products to use the opportunity to upsell, so customers could create a skincare regime that suits their needs.
New ways to shop
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to purchasing online; every client is different and therefore browses differently. Our experts devised clear ways to shop and navigate the site, whether by brand, skin concern, product, our bespoke skin test tool, or simply new arrivals.
Navigation was an essential element for the client, who asked for a clean and contemporary design which lent itself well to a simple, pared-back approach; we incorporated a subtle fade technique on the drop-down sections of the menu to allow transparency to the underlying website.
Privacy & security
When it comes to browsing and spending online, matters of privacy (especially where data is being collected) and security (protecting details such as payment information or location) are top of the list. We’re highly knowledgeable about multiple methods of payment, from Shopify to Stripe, and will work together with you to ensure you use the right one for your clinic and business. Our experts are also well-versed in all things GDPR to help make your site as ethical as it is effective, and can advise you on the regulations your business needs to follow to be both safe and successful.
The client asked us to incorporate Stripe payment for their estore. This market-leading payment platform accepts payments globally, allowing everything from a fully-customised checkout area to the ability to add coupons and discounts – and it’s all done with comprehensive security that complies with the highest industry standards and offers encryption for extra protection.
Get in touch with our experts today
If you’ve got an estore idea, we can make it happen. Talk to our team today and find out how we can bring your business online – and boost it for the future.
