Beauty Bay launched as a fragrance retailer in 1999 before expanding into skincare and cosmetics. Today, the Manchester-based company positions itself as a retailer for the beauty-obsessed, serving a core customer base of 18 to 25-year-olds with more than 10,000 products on its site and weekly new launches.
Beauty Bay launched its own beauty brand, By Beauty Bay, in 2018. The high-quality, affordable and cruelty-free skincare and make-up range is now Beauty Bay’s top-selling brand.
Beauty Bay’s target customers are intense social media users and also use social proof extensively in their decision-making. “Influencers are massively important to us,” says Sanni Miettinen, senior eCommerce manager at Beauty Bay. “Our customer spends lots of their time on social channels such as TikTok and Instagram, and we act like their big sister, giving them help and advice,” she says.
Beauty Bay wanted to build on the influence that social proof has on its customer base by using it to better support them, increase trust in the Beauty Bay brand, and increase conversion.
Taggstar and Beauty Bay initially worked together on a proof-of-concept trial of social proof messaging in Autumn of 2023, which delivered positive revenue and increases in conversion. The retailer embraced Taggstar’s policy of working closely with its customers to deliver continuous improvement and social proof messaging optimisation and launched its latest test earlier this year. The new PLP design and placement experiment ran across its US, Canada, Argentinian, UK, EU, French and German websites between May and June.
“It’s also really important for a brand like ours to have that additional element of social proof, and the fact that our customers appreciate its value is proved by the results we’ve already seen. I’d encourage other retailers to explore its benefits too.”
Although the initial POC had proved successful in driving conversion and sales the results witnessed by the recent PLP design and placement experiment were even more compelling. Over the 53 days of the experiment, Beauty Bay witnessed a conversion rate uplift of 8.54% thanks to social proof messaging from Taggstar. This generated a revenue uplift of £71,285.
Beauty Bay and Taggstar will continue to work on their shared roadmap for future social proof messaging development. This includes introducing Black Friday designs for peak and potentially shortening time windows for social proof messaging. The retailer is also looking to integrate social proof messaging with stock availability to provide a clearer indication of when to buy trending products to ensure customers don’t miss out.
Sanni Miettinen, senior eCommerce manager at Beauty Bay, said: “We’re really impressed with the results and also by how easy and rewarding it is to work in partnership with Taggstar. Although sometimes the tests can be complicated, Taggstar makes them easy to understand and present back to the board. Any changes we request are made really quickly, and we’ve established a clear roadmap for future development of our social proof messaging strategy.”
“For Beauty Bay, social proof messaging has been a great success based on the conversion rate improvements it’s generated. It’s something we are still exploring, but we are seeing huge benefits. It’s also really important for a brand like ours to have that additional element of social proof, and the fact that our customers appreciate its value is proved by the results we’ve already seen. I’d encourage other retailers to explore its benefits, too.”
Marjorie Leonidas, CEO at Taggstar, said: “Our customers are always impressed with the original conversion rate uplifts that our social proof messaging delivers, but the further uplift seen with the latest experiment is proof of how important continuous optimisation is for brands and retailers who want to get the most out of their social proof messaging strategy.”
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