This past week, the Sharma Brands team launched another record-breaking website on Shopify, and I want to break down some of my favorite parts in today’s newsletter. While I can’t share any stats, I would have to guess this will be a top-five Shopify launch in 2025.
Homepage
Sold Out Messaging. We were highly confident we would have a sold-out website, so in good customer UX practice, we had a version of the site ready to go in case we sold out. That is the theme you currently see on the website. You’ll notice we have sold out messaging, with opt-in to be notified when we are back in stock, in/on/across:
- The email pop-up
- Announcement bar on the very top (with a hyperlink to join the list)
- Hero section of the homepage
- Product badges/labels in the carousel
In addition, on the individual product pages, there is sold out messaging with an option to get on the waitlist.
Navigation Menu. Customers don't know where to start without an easy-to-use navigation menu or bar. You have to assume that someone coming to your website knows nothing about where to start, or what to try. That’s why you want a navigation menu that caters to customers differently.
In this case, we offer customers three paths to products. They can choose individual products, shop by the skin benefit they’re looking for, or shop by their skin concern. You can also decide to Shop All or click one of the editorial-style images.
Under the “Master It” section of the navigation menu, you’ll see we bring photography in to quickly illustrate the three different types of content: Prep Class (skincare), Makeup Class (makeup), and Mikayla’s Tips (Mikayla content). Knowing that our demo here was younger, we wanted to design the UX in a way that’s friendly to how fast kids are used to moving on digital devices.
Hand-drawn Iconography. Part of bringing a creator’s brand to life is knowing how to infuse touches of realness throughout the customer journey. One of the ways we did this was with hand-drawn icons on the top of the website. The search, account, and cart icons were drawn in and digitized. They’re one of my favorite parts of the website.
Product Carousel Hover. You know that I value website real estate like nothing else. I consider anything above the fold to be “Ocean-front real estate,” and I mean it. You always want to maximize the area you have, and one way we did this was with the hover state graphics under the hero section.
If you hover on desktop, you’ll see each product’s image changes to a graphic detailing a clinical trial and its results. The imagery shows the product in action (demonstrability is huge in beauty/personal care), and beautifully overlays text on top.
Shop the Routine. To appeal to our target audience, we created an interactive module where you can hover over each product and see it being applied, as if your computer screen were their mirror. The quick movements, the angle/lens in which the content was shot, and the responsiveness of the website all create higher site engagement and time on site.
Product Pages
Image Gallery. Let’s talk about that ocean front real estate analogy again; the image gallery is where most people waste their site space. Instead of using a variety of imagery, infographics, videos, animations, etc. to explain the products, most brands tend to have boring product images with white backgrounds.
The image gallery on the POV product pages shows the product image, a video with the product texture, and a lifestyle shot being applied. If you scroll down, you see the option to watch five videos showing the product being applied to all different skin types (going back to the name POV).
Clinical Studies. Only a few brands ever put out clinical studies and very rarely is it ever a skincare or makeup brand. When you’re just launching and you don’t have reviews to showcase (because it’s a net-new brand), the next best thing to share is clinical studies.
POV Beauty's clinical studies had phenomenal results, so you’ll notice we publish them all across the website—on the homepage, product page, Formulate It page, and more.
Where it Fits. Since we are selling a skincare routine in a bundle and separately for the individual PDPs, we wanted to make it easy for shoppers to know what step of the routine they’re buying. On the PDP, under the “where it fits in your routine” section, you’ll see a little “YOU ARE HERE” circled. Maybe it’s just me, but it also brings a little nostalgia of a mall map.
We also incorporated the hand-drawn circle around “YOU ARE HERE” for this section.
This section is very easy to understand copy-wise. It follows what I call the soundbite strategy—make something easy for someone to read and understand and then repeat later when asked why they are participating.
Prep Class, Master It & Mikayla’s Tips
These two sections of the website are some of my favorites. Mikayla’s audience, and anyone under the age of 45 for that matter, doesn’t want to read blogs on websites... they want interactive, edutaining (educational + entertaining) content.
The three sections all follow a similar UX:
- Hero section
- Main content (either with various artists or Mikayla)
- Mikayla’s quick tips (which you can check off!)
- Brand explanation
-
Shoppable carousel
- UGC
- Footer
The consistency across the pages lets the consumer focus on the difference in the video content, which plays seamlessly within the browser.
Formulate It
In my opinion, this page is the most thoughtfully designed on the website. At the top, it breaks down all the ingredients used in the POV formulations. The highlight is that it explains everything to a fifth-grade reader and also shows the products each ingredient is found in.
As you scroll down, you can learn about each ingredient. On the left side, you can filter by skin type, skin concern, or benefit. And on the right side, those ingredients will populate as you filter. When you click into the ingredient, you can see what it is, what it’s for, and what POV products that ingredient is found inside.
We reversed it below that. You can scroll the product carousel and see the main active ingredients in each below it.
Overall UX
This site may be one of my favorites in terms of its UX. Navigating and learning about each product feels so easy, which is the ultimate sign of good UX.
The cart, the checkout, the use of above-the-fold on each page (mobile and desktop), the weighting of the font sizes, different fonts, and the overall hierarchy in design—the POV Beauty website is a direct response conversion machine, but it’s so beautiful you can’t tell.
Everything I mentioned above can be reflected on your own website, too. If you implement any of the things I mentioned here, which all contribute to a better conversion rate, reply and let me know or DM me on X!
