The Problem
The original Honest Beauty website had a few key design issues that kept it from maximizing its potential. The oversized hero banner consumed the entire browser window in width and height, and also increased the page load time. There was no dedicated area to highlight new or existing products in a shop-able way, and key selling and marketing points, like the Trial kit, blog and the brand story were pushed to the bottom, and also oversized.
The Solution
To start, a promo banner was added and the navigation was cleaned up. The main hero banner was shortened to show the newly added, featured products below it. The carousel below the hero made it easy to highlight all of the new products at one, without cluttering the design on the homepage.
Over time data showed that the featured product, which is highlighted in the center of New Arrivals in an interesting and artful way, guaranteed that the item would see a boost in sales and oftentimes sold out. Many slow-selling items were placed in the "featured circle," resulting in an increase in sales.
The free trial and subscription messages were moved to the top, and copy was added below each image block to provide more context, and a shop-able bestsellers carousel showcases the brands award-winning products.
Our Story, blog posts and DIY sections were added along with detailed excerpts and links. This provided new SEO opportunities, while building customer engagement with the brand's original content. The shop-able Instagram feed also added a new and more social way to engage in shopping.
New Opportunities
The new and flexible site design made it easy to refresh the site with new products and campaigns. The Honest Beauty Haircare line was launched site wide on Ulta.com and honestbeauty.com with the refreshed layout that made it easier to browse launches with multiple items.
Transparency into each ingredient was crucial to the Honest customer. Therefore, it was important that every new product campaign spoke in depth about ingredients and formulas. The new site design provided several opportunities to feature important, text heavy information that was crucial to the Honest customer.
