It seems that most websites for beauty brands more or less look the same. They all primarily use big, bold images of models across their pages. This is industry standard and probably for good reason. You have to show the product in context, and naturally you want it to all look stunning. It’s easy to draw people in with these images, but how do you get them to stay on the website for more than a few seconds?
Of course, having great products helps. But a website’s power has more to do with the actual site and less with the particular brand. Even lesser known companies should be able to provoke interest if they design their site well, right? But it seems that all the old tricks of design and branding don’t always work.
A big goal of beauty websites is to try and forge an emotional connection with your visitors, which makes sense. Beauty is all about how you feel, and you want people to feel great when they come to your online store. The problem is that, once you click deeper on many sites, the emotional hook can only hold up if the site is easy to navigate.
This is the main reason why visitors don’t click around and engage on beauty websites. Even if you’re hooked right away with beautiful images, you don’t stay if the site is hard to search or becomes boring (the only exception is if you’re already visiting a site that you’re familiar with, and seeking a specific product).
But there are exceptions to the rule. Physician’s Formula holds your attention beyond that first bold image. Like many beauty brand sites, the company greets you with an eye-catching display of a model and a product on its homepage. The image is uncluttered and actually dissolves into other, similar images. So right away the experience is different than you’re used to.
To hold people’s interest, the content remains colorful and well-organized as you scroll down. Images are evenly spaced, and each one provides a link to more content.
You find a diversity of content as well. One image promotes a how-to video for one of Physician’s Formula’s eye lash products. Another features a contest, while a third highlights a chic fashion blogger and “PF Star of The Month.”
As you search around, you find that the whole website maintains this theme of colorful organization. SPINX Digital aims to make the layout of the site user-friendly. The clickable tabs on the homepage are sparse and helpful (“Products”, “What’s New”, “Where to Buy”, etc), and once you click, you’re taken to product pages that, like the homepage, are nice to look at and easy to navigate. SPINX’s design seeks to keep the stunning imagery of beauty brands and combine it with an appealing, easy-to-use website.
Click here to see how your brand can implement these practices: www.spinxidigital.com