Online Beauty Retail 2018

Beauty is a category that I love, I am heavily invested as a consumer and also as a professional. I love buying and testing products but also find the industry/market very interesting due to the volatile and complex nature of it. There is no product that will work for everyone making it hard for brands to decide their products and target audience. Especially now they have the online market to navigate through, which is especially tricky with a product like skincare and makeup that most people prefer to try. However, due to out busy lives consumers are demanding a better and more functional online space to make shopping for these products easier, features such as:

1. Ingredients

People now want to know what is going on there face in a world where natural and more healthy options are becoming increasingly important to people. They want to have the faith what they are putting on their face is good and won't just blindly trust the brand anymore.

2.Beauty for All

After Rihanna released her Fenty Foundation and her extensive shade range people now want a wider range of shades from all beauty brands. They want to be able to walk into a store and find their perfect shade without mixing others - in other words they want the hassle taken out of picking their foundation shade.

On this topic people also want to see the products on a variety of skin tones, for example, highlighters are a common one as they never look the same on different skin tones. They want to know what the product is going to look like before buying, mindless buying is becoming less common in a society where there is more financial insecurity possible and common.

3. Replenishment Options

Consumers now also want the ease when re-ordering and replenishing their products, they don't want the hassle of going on and reordering every-time they want more of it. So companies like Tarte offer a replenishment service in which they send the product when the consumer needs more automatically without the customer needing to log on to the website. This service fits in with our need for ease in our busy lives and has been a success so far.

4. Product Photography

In a ever visual and aesthetic world, how products are presented to us are becoming ever important. We want to see the product photographed beautifully showing us the true potential of what we are about to spend our money on. Brands like Urban Outfitters and Glossier are leading the way with aesthetics to die for in my opinion and really presenting a unique aesthetic that everyone can appreciate.