3 Website Strategies to Build Beauty Brand Customer Loyalty

With ecommerce beauty sales expected to reach $358.4 billion by 2026, there is a ton of opportunity for beauty brands of all sizes to grow over the next few years. But with a rapidly expanding industry comes stiff competition, which means you’ll need to leverage new strategies to come out on top in the beauty market.

With 57% of shoppers spending more on brands they are loyal to, one place you should focus your efforts is building customer loyalty, customers’ tendency to consistently choose your brand over your competitors. When built effectively, customer loyalty goes beyond repeat purchases—it’s a strong emotional connection and allegiance to your brand.

Although there are tons of ways to build customer loyalty, in this post we’re boiling it down to three strategies specifically tailored to the beauty industry. Keep reading for three beauty brand website strategies, plus real-world examples that will help you boost customer loyalty in 2024 and beyond.

Offer Waitlists

Customer loyalty efforts should start even before a shopper makes a purchase. One way to do that is by offering waitlists for out-of-stock items on your beauty brand’s website. Those who join the waitlist will receive a notification (usually via SMS or email) letting them know they can make a purchase. By providing waitlisted shoppers with restock updates, you can build a positive customer experience with consumers before they become paying customers, a key step in building customer loyalty. Additionally, offering a waitlist can help your team forecast revenue once an item is back in stock—win-win!

Rhode’s Lip Case, a phone case designed to carry one of the brand’s Peptide Lip Treatments or Tints, sold out in just 25 minutes! To capitalize on the virality of the product, Rhode opened up a waitlist for the phone case for those who weren’t able to snag one the first time around.

Build a Compelling Loyalty Program

Operating akin to a membership club, loyalty programs are a great way to cultivate and sustain customer loyalty. With a typical loyalty program, customers accrue points or rewards with each purchase they make. Loyalty members can redeem these accumulated points for various benefits such as discounts on future purchases, complimentary products, or other exclusive offerings. Essentially, the program serves as a mechanism to incentivize repeat business while expressing appreciation for customer loyalty.

Cosmetics retailer, Sephora, is well-known for its comprehensive loyalty program. Its Beauty Insider program rewards members with points for purchases, which can be exchanged for beauty products. Members are stratified into three loyalty program tiers based on how much they spend with Sephora, encouraging them to make repeat purchases.

Invest in Website Personalization

According to McKinsey, 71% of shoppers expect brands to deliver personalized experiences, and those that do see better long-term customer retention. With facts and figures like this shaping the world of ecommerce, it’s clear that personalization is a key factor in building a lasting relationship with customers. 

One great place to focus your website personalization efforts is on tailored product recommendations. Personalized recommendations create a more customized shopping experience, helping visitors find products they're interested in more quickly and easily which can lead to higher satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Fenty Beauty offers “hand-picked” product recommendations at the bottom of each of its product detail pages (PDP), to boost average order value (AOV) and create a differentiated customer experience.

Brands with Shopify storefronts can leverage Intellimize to easily add product recommendations to their sites using our one-click playbooks!We hope these three strategies give you the inspiration you need to focus on building customer loyalty through your website.

‍