Top Beauty & Cosmetics Shopify Successful Stories Overview

Success Stories of Shopify Beauty Websites

There are plenty of beauty websites in the ecommerce space, and Shopify is their prime platform. Its flexible site development and design tools allows brands to highlight their identity and attract customers with well-optimized storefronts.

This article will give you ideas on how to build a beauty Shopify store that serves unique features, impresses customers with good UI, and reaches the top of the market. We’ll base all of this on our own experience with practical examples. Over the last decade, DigitalSuits has helped multiple businesses develop their Shopify stores and find new clients. Today may just be your turn.

The market for Shopify beauty stores and beyond

As with any market, the beauty space in ecommerce is constantly changing. Right now, trends are showing a strong interest in the Asian part of the market, which highlights brands selling cosmetics from the region. However, cosmetics from countries like South Korea or Japan aren’t the only factors driving change in the market.

Research also suggests that Gen Z provides new demands for brands, mostly focused on sustainability and ethics. Surveys have shown that nearly half of this generation do extensive research into a brand before they buy. That leaves businesses trying to adapt with brand “stories” and eco-friendly campaigns.

However, don’t think that interest in “green” businesses is limited to Gen Z customers. Research shows that 93% of polled millennials wanted to buy sustainable goods, followed closely by 88% of Gen X. The trend may have started with Gen Z, but it has grown beyond that generation to encompass all of ecommerce.

It’s also important to understand that cosmetics and beauty ecommerce websites aren’t just competing with other small businesses and brands. Amazon has the US market in a vice grip, and it’s important to understand why customers choose other stores over it. It’s hard to compete with this e-commerce giant in terms of convenience or low prices, after all.

Instead, brands are opting to offer something entirely different. Shopify itself predicted this with its list of trends for 2023. It highlights the rising importance of personalization, making customers feel like you’re hearing their needs and providing products specifically for them. Similarly, AI is still making waves, as it helps provide faster customer support and personalize the shopping experience.

Other technologies that can help attract customer attention are AR and VR—augmented and virtual realities. These let people “try on” a product while browsing Shopify beauty websites and testing out lipstick and eyeshadow shades.

Real examples of Shopify cosmetics stores and their successes

Now that we’ve covered the market and what matters in it, it’s time to move on to real-world examples. DigitalSuits has a rather expensive portfolio when it comes to Shopify development, including the beauty industry. We’ll show a few of our most popular beauty websites and describe how our team approached these projects.

This way, you can find inspiration and ideas from already successful brands. Once you’re ready to launch or reinvent your own website, contact us for a consultation. We’ll be able to get the project going in no time at all. For now, though, let’s discuss our cases.

Namza

This Shopify makeup store caters to the male audience, offering sustainable products for facial care. While we’ve worked with this client before, they requested a particular approach. The brand wanted a striking website design and a headless approach based specifically on Shopify and Instant Commerce.

Our starting point was simple: outlining design ideas and agreeing on them with the client. As they requested a particular focus on the visuals, our team wanted to match their expectations. First, we made sure to keep the color scheme in line with the company’s own branding. Then, the designers refined the site’s UI elements to avoid being too busy, opting for a minimalistic and clean look.

We crafted this beauty Shopify store’s front end with simplicity in mind, streamlining navigation and emphasizing the sustainability section. Placing it right next to the core elements of the site highlights the brand’s values and gives clients a peek at the company’s “personality.” As a result, the design works by giving customers simple choices. Some can shop for what they want; others can first educate themselves a bit about the brand.

All of this wasn’t easy to make, as Instant Commerce's default sets did not support the client’s desired look. The DigitalSuits team contacted IC and worked closely with them to add support for the features we needed. As a result of this collaboration, the platform received tailored customization that met our client’s needs.

By going headless, we doubled the site's loading speed and provided consistent experiences across various devices. We also used Shopify Plus for the backend to guarantee scalability and provide the client with automation options.

GoodHabit

This is possibly among the top 10 beauty and makeup websites out there, a new project from the already popular Scentbird. They launched this skincare store with a bold new direction: combatting the effect of blue light from gadgets on human skin. That kind of innovative idea required a skilled team and that’s exactly why DigitalSuits came on board.

We began by drawing up a use case diagram to analyze how the customers would experience the site. Since the business model here includes subscription-based memberships, every product must adapt based on a user’s status. Our team used Liquid and JavaScript to create a second layer for the site, which activates when a member browses it.

That layer automatically applies discounts, which are available to all paying members. It’s an essential part of the site, as over 80% of all users opted to buy a membership. However, we weren’t just focused on making the site member-friendly. DigitalSuits centered the overall vision for the design around a positive, colorful, and simple UI that aims to make shopping quick and pleasant.

Building the store from zero gave our designers a lot of freedom to experiment while our developers crafted custom Shopify apps to enhance the user experience. Our main goal was to balance feature richness with simplicity.

Deck of Scarlet

Another of our best beauty websites, Deck of Scarlet, is a sustainable cosmetics brand that wanted to migrate to a new website. The move required a secure transfer of all client data and accounts, as the brand wanted to make it as smooth as possible. Our main goal was to ensure that the customers would only notice the positive changes in the site with zero problems.

We had to improve as Shopify doesn’t offer the right functionality to migrate customer profiles. Despite the domain change, we kept the URLs working and had them lead to the new login page. Thanks to a custom database migration process, we also preserved all login credentials and order history. All of that was done within a tight deadline to match the general move to a new store.

This project showcased one of the core tenets of modern ecommerce. All the top beauty websites put customers and their comfort first. Sometimes, this requires secure account migration, and in other cases, new functionality with modern technologies is required. Thankfully, DigitalSuits can deliver both.

Happyglam

Last but not least is Happyglam, a Shopify beauty store for a German nail polish brand. Its sustainable, eco-friendly goods have already spread all around Europe. One reason is the products’ excellent quality, but the impressive website also contributes to their success. However, that wasn’t always the case.

Happyglam’s initial collaboration with a Shopify development team left them unsatisfied, as it didn’t result in optimized UI or site loading. This led them to DigitalSuits and a chance to recalibrate for a site all about beauty and quality, just like their cosmetics. They also had one extra request—internationalizing the site with four languages to cover a bigger market.

Before our developers improved it, the initial version of the website relied on too many external resources. For one, it used a third-party app for the site translation, which slowed down processing and took control of the translation quality from Happyglam’s hands. Instead, our team created separate websites for each language and used a domain switch setup.

That was the first step to optimizing Happyglam’s website and perhaps the easiest one. Our dev team noticed the site used JavaScript with a standard Shopify theme. This slowed down page loading time by a lot. So DigitalSuits got to work and cut out excess code and features. Trimming that “fat” improved load times while opening up space for new features.

As a result of all this work, the refactored code and trimmed UI made the site easy to navigate with no lag or errors. Though it was challenging to go over another team’s code and find ways to untangle it, the result speaks for itself. Happyglam is now selling its products all over Europe, successfully using Shopify to build its brand.

Key strategies of success for the best Shopify beauty stores

The reason our sites are successful doesn’t lie in just technical prowess. For an ecommerce store, a lot hinges on marketing, looks, and targeting. Let’s go over some of the most relevant tactics that help Shopify beauty websites stay popular.

Build your identity

What is your brand selling, aside from products? Is it sustainability or maybe diversity? Perhaps your “je ne sais quoi” is all about unique color palettes. Regardless of what you think makes you stand out, it’s crucial to make your audience see that side of your brand and fall in love with it. It’s impossible to reach the top, as just another brand with lip gloss and nail polish has to have a hook.

Every brand’s primary goal should be expressing its identity through things like logo, landing page, and the material it posts there. A skilled design team can emphasize your strongest side throughout your Shopify store to make it stand out. That way, you’re not just marketing a product; you’re marketing an ethos, a style.

Create good content

Ecommerce businesses know the importance of SEO-friendly website content, but your efforts shouldn’t end there. Creating fun, engaging texts for your social media and product descriptions helps capture the audience. A customer is more likely to buy a lipstick that’s sold with a sense of humor than one that’s simply described as “stunning.”

Similarly, blogs can be a great tool for boosting engagement. Guest articles from make-up influencers or tutorials on the best seasonal looks will keep people reading. Of course, these should also promote your products, creating a virtuous cycle. Reader buys a product, comes back to read about how to use it best, and buys more products.

Engage in new ways

Social media marketing has long stopped being a new fad and is now the norm. Nowadays, what sticks out more is marketing through SMS and newsletters. You can get through to users by mixing in discounts and highly personalized messages.

In fact, personalization will be the name of the game moving forward, all thanks to AI. Customers expect precise recommendations based on their body parameters, skin type, order history, etc. Catering to serve them precisely what they might want is going to win over the audience. All you need now is a team that can implement the right functionality.

Final thoughts

Every cosmetics brand wants to be among the top 10 beauty websites, but getting there requires much effort. While the quality of your product and smart branding helps a lot, having a high-quality site is also crucial. From fast loading to polished UI and UX, a lot rests on the shoulders of your dev team.

Picking the wrong people for the job just to speed things up or cut corners is never a good idea. Meanwhile, choosing a team of veterans who have been providing Shopify development services for years is guaranteed to deliver the quality you seek.

Boosting your Shopify site with custom apps and a theme tailored to your brand is just the beginning. DigitalSuits approaches any beauty store like a Swiss watch: it must run perfectly and in sync with the client’s ideas. That means fast page loading, features that create value rather than visual noise, and a user experience that is all about comfort and ease.

If that kind of quality sounds appealing to you, our values are a match. Let’s see what a team-up like that can bring and start developing your Shopify beauty store now.