8 Top Beauty and Skincare Brands on Shopify

The current volatility of the retail environment is crystalizing the importance of solidifying brand pillars that safeguard businesses and position them for long-term success. It’s brands that portray expertise and innovation that have continued to maintain their competitive edge and navigate the highs and lows of the market successfully versus brands that have only focused on product development and quality. 

Today, we are seeing more brands succeed by picking a lane, fulfilling a demand and differentiating a brand through quality, experience, and authenticity instead of solely focusing on acquiring customers through paid advertising. 

This shift has been more pronounced within the beauty industry which is heading towards a +65 Billion USD valuation in 2023. 

We’ve looked at 8 top beauty and skincare Shopify brands that are meetings customers’ heightened expectations of spot-on personalization, immediate delivery of purchases, and access to services including video styling and virtual showrooms.

What are they doing right?

Kylie Cosmetics:

Today's consumers are easily influenced, which is why they have become less loyal to the brands they have shopped from. This is particularly evident in the beauty industry, where one-third of shoppers say that between 26-50% of their online beauty purchases are products they've never tried before. Social media has played a major role in this trend, and one of the first brands to capitalize on the social commerce trend was Kylie Cosmetics.

With little over 25 million followers on Instagram, Kylie Cosmetics pioneered the art of social selling and continued to connect with its target customers by exploring additional presence on newer platforms such as TikTok. However, while it is no secret that Kylie initially leveraged her fame to hype up her brand and product lines, her approach to online selling is truly remarkable. Recently, Kylie Jenner's namesake makeup line launched and exploded on a single channel: her own Shopify store, on which the brand has kept people hooked by maintaining exclusivity, using countdowns to reveal products, and selling them in limited releases. Not to mention the bundles and sets offerings.

Incorporating "how-to-use" videos featuring Kylie on the product detail pages (PDP) is probably one of the most engaging aspects of Kylie's Shopify storefront. Not only does it give customers a sense of the products they are buying, but it also allows them to engage with the brand and the face behind it - in this case, Kylie.

Fenty Beauty & Fenty Skin

There is something about celebrities and beauty brands that just click, which brings us back to our previous point about easily influenced customers. Fenty, founded by Rihanna, is a makeup brand known for its inclusive range of foundation shades and innovative beauty and skincare products.

Inclusivity is one of the key brand pillars that is thoroughly communicated throughout the customer experience. One key differentiating feature on the Fenty Beauty Shopify Plus storefront is the "Find Your Shade" feature, which uses AI technology to instantly find a foundation shade based on the customer's skin analysis. It gets even better with the "Try Shade On" feature that allows customers to virtually try the foundation as if they were shopping offline.

While these features are very helpful for first-time shoppers, returning customers of Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skincare appreciate the subscription integration, which allows them to replenish their favorite Fenty products based on their chosen frequency. The dedicated "Replen & Save" subscriptions page acts on the convenience expectation for subscriptions and serves as an educational hub about products, processes, and frequently asked questions.

Morphe Cosmetics

Founded in 2008, Morphe quickly gained popularity among professional makeup artists and beauty enthusiasts alike. The brand is known not only for offering a wide range of makeup products and brushes at a competitive price but also for providing a frictionless customer journey that keeps Morphe customers coming back repeatedly.

With the goal of going global, Morphe has harnessed the power of Shopify Markets to expand its presence in the global marketplace, supporting international currencies and languages. Additionally, as part of its community-building efforts, Morphe has integrated a winning referral and rewards program “Morphe Rewards” on its Shopify Plus storefront. With clearly communicated incentives and loyalty tiers, customers are encouraged to refer others, engage with the brand on social media, use brand hashtags, and receive rewards points and savings on their next purchase in return.

ColourPop

Another wallet-friendly Shopify Plus beauty brand is Colourpop. Known for its fun and vibrant product range, the brand has gained significant popularity since its launch in 2014, becoming a go-to brand for younger generations. To keep up the hype and tap into nostalgia, Colourpop frequently releases limited-edition collaborations, which are highlighted on a dedicated "Collabs" landing page, featuring childhood favorites such as Disney, Barbie, Harry Potter, and High School Musical, to name a few.

Brand-on-brand and influencer collaborations are a market-relevant strategy that Colourpop, along with many other brands, takes advantage of in order to reciprocate audience bases and expand exposure, especially as the cost of acquisition considerably increases. Since Colourpop's presence is exclusively online, it is crucial for the brand to build and maintain an engaging brand community in the digital space. By integrating with Yotpo, Colourpop accelerates its growth with reviews, visual marketing, loyalty programs, referrals, SMS marketing, and subscription options.

Pixi

Being mission-driven means more now than ever before. One particular Shopify Plus beauty brand that has maintained its competitive edge throughout the years with a resounding mission of creating beauty products that enhance features instead of covering them up is Pixi.

Heavy on brand-on-influencer collaborations, Pixi is another successful example of a brand that has widened its reach by co-creating its "Pretties" product ranges with big names in the beauty space. The storefront also features a loyalty and rewards program. What's more, Pixi offers virtual personalized beauty consultations to educate visitors on the best choices for them and mimic the offline experience that beauty shoppers often crave.

Alastin Skincare 

ALASTIN Skincare is one of the fastest-growing physician-dispensed skincare brands, with innovative, scientifically proven, and clinically tested products. Innovation also lies within the brand's Shopify Plus storefront where customers can find the right products for them by taking the Personalized Routine Builder Quiz; a great tactic to source first-party data as moving away from third-party data becomes imminent in 2023.

Also, to gain customers' trust and communicate credibility, Alastin's storefront features a dedicated "Award-winning Skincare" collection page highlighting the awards and customer ratings on the PLP.

Speaking of dedicated collection pages, Alastin approached Avex to enhance its subscription model, act on consumers' convenience expectations, and increase subscriber engagement. However, having customers go into the respective product page and manually select the subscription options was not yielding the desired results for the brand. So, on our managed services retainers, we leveraged Alastin's chosen subscription provider, Recharge, to implement a dedicated "Subscribe & Save" collection page that entirely focused on educating users on the perks of subscribing and shortening customers' paths to subscribe.

Glow Recipe

Glow Recipe is a go-to brand for efficacious skincare innovations that deliver clinical results & sensorial self-care moments. The brand has managed to build a community on both its Shopify Storefront and its social media presence. Both of these complemented each other perfectly through onsite integrations such as that on the homepage, which showcases not only Glow Recipe’s products but also allows visitors to shop the products featured in the UGC snaps. 

Similar to many other mentioned brands on this blog, Glow Recipe online experience integrated a handful of features that guide customers towards making an informed purchase and engages a community of brand enthusiasts such as a skincare quiz, rewards program and online gift cards. 

This is all also highlighted within the brand's email communication. Glow Recipe integrates with Klaviyo, a marketing automation platform used primarily for email marketing and SMS marketing, to drive traffic to its most valuable collection pages and deliver on customers’ heightened expectations of a cohesive and personalized customer journey - from start to finish.

Sunday Rain 

With self-case at the heart of their identity, Sunday Rain is a feel-good brand that is 100% vegan. What’s unusual about this brand highlight is that its Shopify storefront is non-transactional. Meaning, the brand sells through big retailers such as Urban Outfitters, Nordstrom, Anthropologie and Asos. 

Does this mean a brand-owned channel is any less important? Certainly not. Sunday Rain strategically utilizes its Shopify storefront as an educational hub where all its products, imagery, and descriptions are highlighted in an informative and on-brand manner. As a cherry on top, the user educational journey is also perfectly supported by customer reviews and personalized product recommendations on the product descriptions pages.

The beauty and skincare industry is constantly evolving with new products, techniques, and consumer preferences. The eCommerce landscape is also constantly changing with increased competition, heightened consumer expectations and evolving purchase behavior. For brands to maintain competitiveness in the online marketplace, it is crucial to stay on-trend, monitor data and customer insight, and think of the product offering and conversion-optimized experiences alike. As a distinguished Shopify Plus Partner Agency, Avex offers a cutting-edge commerce solution that is flexible, customizable, and lightning-fast. Unlike traditional enterprise eCommerce software, Shopify Plus is trusted by the world's fastest-growing and largest brands, ranging from digitally native disruptors to Fortune 500s. With Shopify Plus, brands can leverage advanced features to scale their business online, offline, and everywhere in between.