Luxury beauty brands must provide an exceptional online shopping experience time after time if they are to succeed in a digital environment, says Nic Aylett
There is an enormous challenge in today’s market in selling luxury health and beauty products online. Not only is it a hugely competitive market, but also the luxury shopping experience is very different from the conventional one. Luxury health and beauty products are sensory in nature and their purchase requires a high appreciation in aesthetics and the human senses.
If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to drive a top of the range sports car, the experience you take away with you is not necessarily the appearance and attention to detail of the car but the adrenaline you get when driving it. The experience comes from the perceptions, emotions, sensations and feelings that are aroused as you’re driving. This is what stays in your memory and it’s the reason you want to experience it again and again.
The same principles apply to the way luxury health and beauty brands are represented online. It’s not just a case of having a website, the most creative design or the most technologically advanced website with rich content. The most important factor is creating an online environment that offers an exceptional experience for every user or consumer when visiting and returning to your website. The most important thing is to arouse the human senses and create a desire to be associated with a brand by making sure every visitor to the website is immersed in an environment that creates the brand’s universe.
With the expansion of the digital world that we experience today, it’s a given that every health and beauty brand has its own website or is active in some form of social media. But this presence online is not enough in itself to guarantee that consumers will maintain interest in a brand or encourage repeat visits, especially when so many brands fall short in translating the true essence of their brand and what it stands for in a digital environment.
The most successful brands use storytelling principles as part of a brand strategy to simply make the journey more efficient and effective. They reveal a mystery behind the brand, touch the senses and speak personally to their customers. It’s these elements that will ultimately set you apart from your competitors, who look a bit like you and sell similar things (products, services) at roughly similar prices.
We have to come to terms with the fact that the internet has been around for some time and consumers are becoming used to the basics and are now demanding more. A consumer’s level of expectation has increased dramatically and they are now likely to lose patience with websites that look tired, are poorly designed and with only basic functionality, and that don’t offer benefits, values or an interactive experience.
Strategic luxury ecommerce development involves many core elements that should all be considered to create a successful virtual environment. These elements are:
• Understand the dynamics of the world of luxury
• Understand the root of the brand, its DNA
• Define the corporate goals and online objectives
• Understand your clients, make sure you know your online and offline audience and your competitors inside out, doing your research is key
• Arouse the human senses, using meaningful strong imagery, animation, video, interaction, full screen, demos, 3D and 360˚ views
• Design with a strong aesthetic appreciation, build an environment that reflects your brand character, communicates your USP, has a consistent tone of voice and reflects your core values
• Personalise and customise your site, capture user data to better understand their needs, likes, wants and purchase patterns to tailor the site to their requirements. One size does not fit all!
• Offer a high level of customer service by providing a selection of contact options – email, skype, social media – but a telephone is one of the best branded devices you could use, by retaining their attention for 5-10 minutes
• Create passionate users by offering regular, unexpected, intermittent surprises, treats and rewards
• Don’t allow the design aesthetic to be affected through poor HTML and backend development. Every aspect of the site needs to be grafted to a standard we expect from the luxury market
• Focus on the user experience and customer journey, providing the user with clear navigation to access the information they may be looking for
• Offer a feature-rich experience to make the user’s life easier and quicker, but one that doesn’t impact on the user experience or journey
• Create exclusive areas, open up new areas of the site to the highest spenders
• Delivery options. Why wait for 2-3 days? You can now get delivery in London within 90 minutes from ordering online
• Research the best CRM (customer relationship management) and CMS (content management system) that is most suited for your business
• Brands in the health and beauty industry have the opportunity to really make an impact online, and if they are slow off the mark then they’re missing a good opportunity to push ahead of their competitors. Luxury health and beauty brands are special so they can’t just replicate what’s been done before – they have to do something that stands out because that’s what separates them from the others.
The more luxury health and beauty brands start doing this, the more consumers will be looking for them online, leading to a wider acceptance of shopping online for premier products and a larger audience.
