450 online shoppers

Yuseo, a consulting firm specializing in the ergonomics of interactive systems, asked 480 female Internet users to test 3 of the leading French online retailers of beauty products - Marionnaud, Nocibé and Sephora.

The study was conducted from October 15 to 20, 2010. All participants were regular female Internet users, who already browsed online cosmetics shops. They were asked 60 contextual questions and had to perform 6 tasks each of them previously standardized to be similar for all sites. [1]

Expectations and barriers

Among the main drivers of Internet users to browse online cosmetics retailers are the opportunity to benefit from web-specific promotional offers and the possibility to buy without being "pressured" by shop-assistants. These motivations may be connected to a priori expectations vis-à-vis online cosmetics and fragrances purchases: time saving (not to queue) for 74%, attractive prices for 60%, and home delivery for 57%.

On the other hand, the main expressed barriers vis-à-vis online sales are the impossibility to touch and test products (91%), excessive delivery charges (77%), and the difficulty to visualize the product (77%).

Mixed experience

According to Yuseo, the scores at the end of the test reveal several disappointments that can be related to e-shops weaknesses.

The 450 women web users who participated in the study have retained a half-hearted impression of their experience. While information on products obtain a good rate, the access to the assortment is not always as simple as expected, and some processes sometimes appear unnecessarily complicated. Overall, the attractivity of online retailers , though initially very strong, is impaired.

Good information and product assortment

The product information (colour, composition, product benefits, usage tips, product quantity, ...) and the product offering provided by online retailers seem in line with the expectations and the needs of users.

Product information is an important issue as for 91% of Internet users, the main inconvenience of searching and / or buy cosmetic products online is not being able to touch and test the products.

Customers participating in the study also give good rates to the product offering, and have especially appreciated the wide range of brands available for each product category.

Complex navigation

Women users generally appreciate the simplicity and intuitiveness of the ordering process. “This simplicity is particularly important as for 74% of them, the main advantage of searching and / or buying a cosmetic products online is the saving of time (not to queue). Therefore, it would have been shame to lose this benefit the purchasing the tunnel,” explains the consulting firm.

However, users interviewed by Yuseo generally felt they were required to do a lot of unnecessary actions. “Consequently, the retailers’ image was impacted negatively by the browsing experience. This degradation of the brand’s image can affect the conversion rate of these sites.” Clearly, this means fewer purchases.

"Indeed, a significant proportion of the participants, who were initially positively oriented or undecided about visiting / using these sites, turned to negative opinions in terms of envy for future use after only a dozen minutes browsing the sites (i.e. the time needed to achieve the 6 required tasks).” Actually, the proportion of interested Internet users dropped from 74% before the test to 47% after, and the proportion of hesitant users surged from 5% before to 24% after.

Sephora goes it alone

Among the three online retailers included in the study, Sephora’s online shop stands apart from its two competitors and gets better rates for both the browsing experience and the overall satisfaction of users.

However, the study did not examine the performance of other important stakeholders, including online beauty relailers specialized in direct sales. In particular, one’s can note the absence from the field of the study of Yves Rocher’s online shop that, for the 4th year in a row was recently elected # 1 e-commerce beauty site by Internet users surveyed by the FEVAD (Federation of e-commerce and distance selling).