Who is Charlotte Tilbury?
Owner & Brand
Charlotte Tilbury is a British makeup artist, founder and creative director of the beauty and skincare brand Charlotte Tilbury Beauty. Tilbury is a well known figure in fashion and beauty industry. She launched her brand in 2013, since then with more than 200 products sold in 39 countries, the brand achieved phenomenal growth.
Tilbury's worked with A-list celebrities like Kate Moss and Amal Clooney, while her name appeared in publications like Vogue UK, US, Vanity Fair, Allure, and GQ.
Because of the rich and engaging content it is offering and the strong brand presence they are holding, I decided to do a qualitative content audit to analyze the quality and effectiveness of CharlotteTilbury.com's content.
Role: Content Strategist
Tools: Google Sheets, Numbers
Duration: 6 Weeks
Project Process
Research
I have started the research process by educating myself about both the owner and the brand. I've read articles, blogs and forum entries, and Glassdoor reviews. I started following their social media accounts, watched the makeup tutorial videos they launched on different platforms. Basically, I collected and examined all piece of information that could be found online to see how connected those channels to each other.
I collected my research data under 4 sections:
•Company Info
•Content Audit
•Voice & Tone
•Competitive Analysis
All the research I had done by that moment went under the "Company Info" section.
Audit
Then I shifted the research's focus to the e-commerce website. While looking at it, I had some questions in my mind:
• What's the story behind the content?
• What's the brand mission statement?
• What messages are they conveying through their content and are they consistent through the whole page?
• Who's the target audience?
• How are the voice and the tone of the messages?
• What are the content components and how do they function?
•Is the content accessible?
I audited 34 pages (including 3 mobile pages) and came out with 5 findings.
Selections from the Content Audit Spreadsheet
Findings
1. Pop-up Pages Cover the Main Content and Ruin the User Experience
The pop-up pages or the interstitials are the most hated web experience. They interrupt users from seeing the desired content. Most of the time they ask for e-mails or promote a product which make people to leave the page faster–if they can find the close button.
The pop-up covers the homepage content once the website opens.
Once you open CharlotteTilbury.com, a big pop-up blocks the entire homepage interrupting the viewer from reaching it. If a user has no idea about the brand's inventory or hasn't convinced about it yet, there is no point of aggressively wanting something from them without actually showing the value of the site's content.
Here, this pop-up is behaving like a stranger who pops in your way in the middle of your walk and proposes marriage. That's why many people wouldn't want to commit to this without knowing whether they love the brand and the products. Even though CharlotteTilbury's pop-ups aren't as bad as La Mer's, they are still a problem.
2. The Makeup Tutorial Videos Are Not Accessible
The web accessibility is a hot topic nowadays. Many designers start their design process keeping the accessibility standards in mind. The number of federal lawsuits filed against inaccessible website are increasing, while the many designers are advised to keep the accessibility standards in mind.
One of those standards FCC mandates for is closed captioning of online video which is a problem for the site.
The Makeup Tutorials on the Website & Youtube
The makeup tutorial videos that appear on the product pages do not have closed captions and transcript options. Even though the brand is based in the UK, as long as they sell in the US, the law applies to them as well.
3. Too Many Filtering Options Cause Cognitive Overload
Product reviews are incredibly helpful to users when making purchase decisions. Providing customer reviews give people additional insight into products, often answering questions they had. On this product page though, the site has given too many ways of displaying the same type of information.
The Site Gives 4 Different Ways of Displaying Reviews.
The more options a user has, the more time she will take to make a decision. Those duplicate links generates unnecessary cognitive strain and confuse the user.
4. A Highly Advertised Feature of the Website Has No Function Other Than A Content Filler
The products cannot be filtered by skin types on the website, but “The Foundation Finder” that is displayed under the “Makeup” category “claims” to filter the foundations according to customer’s skin type.
The "Foundation Finder"
There Are Only 2 Different Types of Foundation "Choose a skin type that matches yours"
says the Foundation Finder
The problem is that there are only 2 different types of foundation the brand is featuring, a light-formula foundation and a long-lasting thicker one. The both types featuring a variety of shades but they don’t differ in their formulas. So there are not many products to begin with.
I tested the “Foundation Finder”, picked 2 different skin types but the same skin tone at two separate pages. The generator suggested exactly the same product in the end for the both flows. This “filtering the foundation according to your skin type” feature should be discarded since it does do what it claims to do.
5.The Brand Embraces Diversity in Their Ads
Even though diversity in beauty and fashion industry is a big battle, things are changing slowly but surely. Euro-centric beauty norms (young & fair skinned) started to leave their place to more ethnically and age diverse beauty standards.
The brand is successfully featuring models with different ages & skin colors in their ads.
" I want to make every woman the most beautiful version of themselves." says Tilbury. The content of the site proves many times that the company is actively living through their mission statement.
Reflections
Before this project, I didn't know how crucial it is to treat a site's content with strategic consideration. While auditing the site, I realized how much thought and effort had been put together to create CharlotteTilbury.com.
I learnt that good content builds trust in brands, engages audience, and it isn't possible to create a good user experience with bad content.
