Top Beauty Cosmetic Brand Website — COLOURPOP UX Analysis

Hi everyone, welcome back to Huating’s Marketing Channel.

COLOURPOP is a beauty brand that specializes in high-quality, affordable beauty products for millennials, with fast updates, large SKUs, and many collaborations. Its consumer base is mainly women aged 18–34. Through Similarweb, from June to August this year, 78.44% of the people who entered the COLOURPOP brand website were through Mobile Web, 21.56% through Desktop.

This blog will analyze the UX of these two channels. Below I’m going to take a look at the website from the user’s perspective!

Desktop

PageSpeed Insights shows that the site doesn’t load that fast. From my own experience of using the site, the site is about as fast as any other site.

When you enter the site, the first thing you see is a discount carousel. Compared to other sites that give discounts directly, this design is more engaging and makes you want to participate to see how much discount you will get.I guess everyone can get the maximum discount because I tried it several times and it was always 15%.

Then, what comes to your eyes is a dreamy style website with a purple color tone, dotted with bubbles, flashing light and shadow, stars, and other elements, effectively conveying the Colourpop brand personality — — maiden, spirited, and lively. There are also some animations, their changes can make the website more interesting.

Scroll down to show the new products and product categories. Users can either look for the products they want through the menu at the top or the catalog on the left, or they can look at the images of new products, selling fast products, and product categories below to find out what they want to buy. Users can find the products they are interested in in all three ways, so no matter what the user’s habits are, this site is adapted to them.

When I look at the menu bar above, I can quickly understand what kind of products will be presented to me by looking at the text and pictures, which shows that the menu is written and categorized in a logical and efficient way.

Below that are pictures including the link to the Instagram account and email subscription bot. Willing users can quickly connect with the brand. Simply click on the image to be redirected to the corresponding post page of Colourpop’s Instagram account; enter your e-mail address to subscribe.

Below that is the brand description. I think this adds memory points and creates an emotional connection. Users will remember that the brand is from California or that it is 100% cruelty-free, and wallet-friendly.

Leaving the homepage and clicking into a product category, we can see that Colorpop has beautiful product images. Especially, the first image of each product reflects the texture of that product, which is a specialty of the brand. For other beauty cosmetic brands, the first chapter pictures are product display photos, usage pictures, etc.. They usually do not show the product texture so uniformly. Another feature is that the pictures of each series of products are in a unified style, so that users know at a glance that these products belong to the same series and the other products belong to another series. It is easier for users to select products to a certain extent.

Overall, the structure of the web page makes logical sense. Users browse the products, add them to the bag, and check out…… the whole process is very smooth.

Mobile Web

When using a mobile device to access this website, the menu at the top is gone. The words on the top change up and down to accommodate mobile devices (they change left and right on the desktop).

But what I don’t think is good enough is that the “♥selling fast” in each picture looks distorted. And scrolling down, the product keeps loading and it’s hard to stay in the email subscription section. What’s more, the branding page is missing. If the user’s purpose is email subscription, it’s hard to do it on the mobile web. Products that keep loading can be annoying.

Also, Colourpop doesn’t use technologies like AI or Chatbots, and the user experience would be much better if there was customer service that could communicate with users in real time.

I think the site has done a great job as a beauty brand, but there is still some room for improvement.

Looking forward to seeing you guys next week!