Compare Lush to the Body Shop website (a decent site with lots of best practice features) and one gets a sense of the evolution of web design.
The Body Shop feels like an ecommerce site that happens to be branded as the Body Shop.
Lush feels like…Lush’s website that happens to sell stuff, too. There’s a big difference.
Let’s look at it in more detail.
Gorgeous product display (including GIF headers!)
The most startling difference between Lush and Body Shop is the way products are displayed.
Head over to Body Shop and you can browse collections of bottles and tubs. All bottles and tubs look pretty much the same.
Lush, however, always takes the product out of its container, photographing dollops of it, and using GIFs to show the product in action.
Given these products are so personal (and mysterious) and Lush’s shops are based on sensory experience, this approach to product display online is vital (and a brand differentiator).
Lush also champions ‘naked packaging’, giving the customer the option of taking the product home without packaging, so the website conveys this green message well.
Every Lush product page has a GIF hero image
Lush lotion category page (dollops)
Body Shop lotion category page (bottles)
Persuasive (and trustworthy) ingredients pages
If you were tasked with selling a particular Lush product to a customer in store, it’s likely you’d focus on the benefits of its ingredients.
That’s why it makes complete sense that Lush does this online, not only championing ingredients in product listings, but highlighting them in category page editorial.
Major ingredients have their own pages, which rank very well in search, and there’s editorial around their provenance. You can also browse products that contain a particular ingredient.
You can’t fail to get the impression that all this stuff is accounted for and you’re buying sustainable and non-harmful products.
Exactly in line with the brand, and something which Body Shop used to have a monopoly over.
Lush flags ingredients on its category pages
Lush’s rose wax ingredient page ranking number one in Google
A Lush ingredients page
Editorial on the homepage (softly softly, catchy monkey)
The Lush homepage does feature eight individual products, but crucially it does not invite the user to ‘shop’ a range or simply to view a bunch of products.
Every call to action is framed as a feature and seems editorially driven. Indeed, many of these features do not include products at all.
This is what the homepage should be for. Too many retailers use it as a second bite at the header menu, with yet more links to category pages.
But this is a place for the brand to tell a story, not simply a product range.
Below I have screenshotted the entire Lush homepage and colour coded the features.
- Red: political features that do not feature products.
- Purple: editorial features that do not feature products.
- Blue: product collections with editorial-style lead-in.
Compare a couple of Lush and Body Shop homepage features, below.
One retailer feels like it is trying to educate and entertain the user, the other feels like it just wants you to buy stuff as soon as possible.
Educating the customer shows how passionate a brand is about its products. Lush demonstrates that even taking the direct route, it’s easy to soften the sales pitch – ‘Prepare your cruelty-free winter pout…’, ‘Reasons to smile: sparkling new mouth products’ and so on.
The Body Shop does have educational features (about trends and beauty regimes), but this lives in the header menu (where users go when they’re looking for something specific) and isn’t given more room to breathe and intrigue on the homepage proper.
Examples of Body Shop homepage features that feel rather brazen, focusing on the act of purchasing rather than the reasons for doing so (or even the product itself).
Lush makes more of an effort with homepage features, either with dedicated editorial or refined copywriting.
Educated cross-sell in the (uncluttered) basket
The Lush basket and checkout is beautifully bare but does include an element of cross-sell (and yet more ingredients features).
This cross-sell is smartly done, highlighting a product from the same range as the one I had added to basket, mirroring what would happen if I were buying this product in store.
It’s unfair to keep comparing Lush to Body Shop, whose website is overdue investment, but comparing the baskets of the two sites shows just how much has moved on in ecommerce in the last three years with responsive design.
Lush basket page with cross-sell
Body Shop basket page
Economy of words (no waffling)
Lush uses big chunky typography, a lovely trend in web design that makes a refreshing change from size 10-12 font.
What this means is that Lush doesn’t throw text in willy nilly. The retailer is concise with its calls to action and its product previews.
This reduces clutter on home and category pages, implies complete faith in the product (the image of which can come to the fore), and exudes confidence. I’ve no doubt it also reduces friction throughout the whole customer journey.
Where many online retailers are rushing to include more text, erring on the side of clarity for Google, Lush is making sure the user has a clean experience (no pun intended).
Here are a few examples…
Homepage product previews include title, category and a catchphrase (of sorts) but no waffling description.
Product category pages again let the products do the talking, using only a well-considered tagline as introductory text.
Where words are necessary, product descriptions for example, text is large and clear.
Here are a contrasting example from Body Shop, where text clutters up the experience.
The text on this little feature carousel is extraneous. It’s copywriting for the sake of filling a space below the imagery.
It’s also arguable the photographs are not distinct enough to interest the user (all generic Christmas reds and greens, rather than contrasting or showcasing products).
Conclusion
I think I enjoyed using the Lush website more than I enjoy going into store (certainly at Christmas).
That says all you need to know about how well Lush manages to inject its brand into the purchasing journey online.
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