THE BODY SHOP: We have a profitable retail website
Business Objectives & KPIs
The arrangement of The Body Shop website shows that the priority of it is to sell products. The Body Shop website is like an online shopping website with additional features. It can increase sales not only online but also in retail stores. For the customers who prefer trying the products before purchasing, the website also provides the search engine for The Body Shop retail stores. Therefore, the customers can try the products first, and decide to buy in-store or online. To measure how effective the website is, they can review traffic reports and analyze the sales on the website and compare it with retail stores. To get deeper insight, The Body Shop can run a survey of customers’ buying experience through the website, and understand whether or not the website has positive influence on sales.
Target Market
Like other retailers’ website, the primary function of The Body Shop’s website is selling products. The Body Shop’s target audience is 20–55 year-old women. This segment of customers is familiar with Internet and like online shopping, so I would say that the website is a crucial mediator and selling channel between the customers and the brand. The instantaneousness and omnipresence of online communication allow The Body Shop to have campaign or promotion anytime. Under the page of every product, there are customers’ reviews for it. For the potential customers or the customers who need advice before purchasing, this feature is an excellent indicator. The membership system (Love your body club) on The Body Shop website is an advantage to them as well. After being the member of the club, the customers will get exclusive offers and regularly receive latest information from The Body Shop either by email or text.
Overall, The Body Shop website covers what their target audiences’ needs, and even provides more than their needs. However, for the customer like me, it was not until I did this assignment and had insight into the website, that I know all of these features. The Body Shop should put emphasis on introducing these features to their customers. For example, they can send an introduction email about every features on the website or have a brief guide for the customer who first uses the website.
Usability
In the article: 10 Usability Lessons from Don’t Make Me Think, the author defines usability as making sure something works well, and that a person of average ability or experience can use it for its intended purpose without getting hopelessly frustrated.
The Body Shop website is will organized. First, the URL is clear. The address for the index “https://www.thebodyshop.com/en-us” is short and clear, and every subpage follows this pattern. For example, the address for skin care page is “https://www.thebodyshop.com/en-us/skin-care”. Second, the design of the website is concise and user-friendly. The customers can find what they are looking for without much thinking. Third, The Body Shop uses responsive website, so the customers can have enjoyable experience of browsing the website on difference devices. Besides, they have a feature called “live chat”. This feature is similar to customer service line but in a text mode. If the customers have any questions, they can have a conversation with online agents and get response immediately. In my opinion, this feature can resolve the crowded waiting customers on the customer service phone line.
Normally, the website have a section listed customers’ frequently asked questions. On The Body Shop website, they name this section as “customer care”. Based on the article, retailer should keep everything on the website consist with customers’ habit and the button should be able to explain itself. Therefore, I would recommend The Body Shop to change the term to a more familiar one so that customers can understand it with instinct and find things easily.
Search Engine Optimization
I browse the website in Google Cache, and there is no obvious emphasis on a specific word or phrase. However, two words do appear frequently, “body” and “gifts”. When people search “The Body Shop”, “body lotion”, “body care” or “Skin care gift sets”, the website will show on the list. I believe the campaign they recently hold on their website is part of the search engine optimization. They put one paragraph to introduce the campaign, and they repeatedly mention “against animal testing” in the paragraph. They also put “Cruelty Free International”, their campaign partner, in this paragraph. Cruelty Free International is an organization devoted to animal protection and worked to end all animal experiments. These two keywords “against animal testing” and “Cruelty Free International” are related to The Body Shop’s brand value. Their target audiences are the people who care about environment and would be willing to use environmental-friendly beauty products. In this scenario, when their potential customers are looking for a new beauty product brand, they would probably type in “against animal testing cosmetics”. Then they can see The Body Shop website on the first page.
However, when they search “no animal testing cosmetics”, “environmentally friendly cosmetics” or “natural skin care brand”, The Body Shop is not on the list. I would recommend that they should also target these phrases because they would probably be the words that the customers would type in the search engine.
Analytics
Generally, The Body Shop groups products by categories (ex. Skin care, body, fragrance, ……) and product lines (ex. Hemp, honey bronze, tea tree, ……). They also set up a group called “expert advice”. In this section, they recommend products for customers according to their lifestyle and personality. I think this is a powerful feature that The Body Shop can monitor the traffic on different lifestyle and personality. After collecting the data, they can know what groups of customers would be the majority, and further develop more products for these groups.
Also, The Body Shop should monitor customer reviews under the products. They can take these positive or negative comments as suggestions and improve their products. In addition, when they find a loyal customer is disappointed at the product, they can immediately give her compensation and keep her loyalty.