How online beauty retailers are outpacing the high street
It’s a boom time for the online beauty industry. In 2024, the UK online beauty market generated more than £1.3 billion in revenues, with traditional high street retailers struggling to keep up.
By 2028, it’s forecast that almost a quarter of all health and beauty sales will take place online, leaving a place for familiar brick-and-mortar brands less certain. Beyond shopping convenience, what’s driving this trend? Below, we’ll take a closer look at why online beauty sales are soaring, while high street sales are slumping.
Wider Product Ranges
One of the most obvious advantages of beauty e-commerce is the wider selection that online stores afford. Online shopping destinations like Notino UK trounce the high street competition when it comes to product selection, stocking countless more brands and catering to niche demographics. While the largest high street chains are doing better in this regard, they still come up painfully short when it comes to matching the product range of the average online retailer.
Personalised Experiences for Shoppers
Do you like getting personalised recommendations for new products? Then you probably prefer to shop online. Online retailers know how to leverage customer data effectively, offering recommendations like product suggestions to users in between transactions. Fortunately for the high street retailer, this is one area where they have been able to keep pace, with loyalty card schemes able to retain and utilise valuable customer data for exactly this kind of purpose.
Consumer Insights and Reviews
Nothing beats word-of-mouth marketing. When it comes to perfume and other popular beauty products, you’ve probably leant on the advice of friends and family when singling out your next purchase. However, once you’re in store, there’s very little information to follow when shortlisting potential options. When you shop online, you have the convenience of reviews from other customers to fall back when you’re feeling indecisive. A particularly popular product may come with hundreds of individual reviews, with plenty of thoughtful insights on hand to help you make the right decision.
The Power of Social Media
While the most successful online retailers aren’t exactly strangers to social media, few of them manage to wield it as effectively as online beauty brands. By partnering with social media influencers and capitalising on memes, online brands can more easily showcase their products online, greatly informing consumer choices.
Where the High Street Wins Out
The high street may be struggling to keep up with online retail, but it’s not dead in the water yet. When it comes to the health and beauty sector, the traditional high street wins out in a surprising number of ways. For starters, it’s currently impossible to compete when it comes to the sensory experience. You might be able to buy a great deal on perfume and find out what a thousand other shoppers are saying about a product, but you won’t be able to actually smell it when shopping online.
However, while there will always be a place for the beloved beauty counter, nobody can deny the appeal of online beauty retailers. With lower prices, dynamic brand exercises, and a savvy use of social media, it’s almost certain the online sector will supplant the high street in this colossal retail battle.
