Tarte Cosmetics

Tarte is a leading beauty brand that prides itself in using all natural ingredients. They are looking to elevate their current design, and move to a different web platform to better support their growth.

The Problem

The Tarte brand is growing quickly on social media channels, and needs to elevate their website to support this growth. They are looking to improve the overall customer experience with a platform migration, draw in a younger audience, increase conversion, and elevate their look to compete with other top beauty brands.

The Goal

Create an elevated experience for tartecosmetics.com that will improve their customer’s path to purchase when entering through social channels, creating a seamless shopping experience.

Discover

To start, our team needed to get some clarity around the user’s needs, pain points, and the current landscape of the beauty industry.

We conducted extensive competitor research to better understand the best practices and design patterns Tarte was looking to implement. Using the information we gathered, we held workshops with the Tarte team to help us identify challenges and aspirations.

We also conducted workshops and sent out online surveys to gain a stronger sense of who our users are and how they shop for cosmetics, so we can better advocate for their needs. We found that...

90%

of beauty customers look for reviews when shopping for products online

1 in 2

customers agree that they get overwhelmed when shopping for beauty products in store due to the amount of options

85%

of beauty customers say assurance of quality is most important to them when shopping for products

Ideate

After getting a better understanding of how a user discovers and shops for beauty products, what the Tarte team was looking to improve, and what their competitors are doing, it was time to start exploring some design solutions.

Key Findings:

Increase focus on social media content integration and customer referral programs to bolster consumer confidence and drive more product sales.
Many of their users are coming in from social channels or to repurchase products. In this case, users are likely being linked directly to a product or product listing page. It should be as easy as possible for them to find what they need, and check out.
Prioritize ease of use, transparency, communication, and supporting content.

Challenges
While we were working through our redesign, the Tarte team was A/B testing and implementing new features every 2 weeks or so. We had to create a flexible process to make sure we were adapting to consistently changing needs.

Since the team was already A/B testing new concepts, we were able to bring more innovative ideas to Tarte. We had to work quickly and collaboratively - but this resulted in more experimentation and implementation.

Making Online Shade Selection Easier
Knowing that shoppers tend to get overwhelmed when there’s too many options and want a personalized experience, we wanted to figure out the best way to showcase a product with multiple variants.

Take the Shape Tape Concealer - one of Tarte’s most popular products. This concealer has over 40 shades and comes in two different sizes. To make it easy to navigate through the shade selector, we identified 3 skin tone categories to help users narrow down their options. From there, they can either select their shade or virtually try it on, just like they would if they were shopping in stores.