Clinique x Amazon

This year Clinique was the first among, all Estee Lauder Company brands,

My role was focused on enhancing the user experience through visual design, reinventing our brand heritage, new type guidelines, and photoshoots art direction to ensure that the project's visual elements were cohesive and impactful.

Why:

People often prefer shopping on Amazon over brand-specific websites due to Amazon Prime's fast and free shipping, competitive pricing, extensive customer reviews, and hassle-free return policies.

Our absence on Amazon led to the presence of unauthorized products, which hurt our brand image and resulted in lost sales.

Challenges:

Since Clinique was the first brand to launch on Amazon, we couldn't rely on any knowledge or expertise from our sister brands. The success of this project would determine if other brands would expand to this new e-commerce platform. Despite the pressure and all eyes on Clinique, we embraced the challenge.

With over 200 products in Clinique’s portfolio, we conducted a comprehensive audit of our photography, best-performing products, and overall website aesthetics. We decided to narrow down the number of products to 160, considering some would be reformulated, redesigned, retired, or not available in Canada. Additionally, launching on a new e-commerce platform presented the perfect opportunity to update our brand typography and elevate our photography.

Exploration:

Clinique, a dermatologist-developed brand founded in 1968, has a rich history.
We launched with 117 products, most of which are still available for purchase.

When developing our visuals, cues, and design approach, I delved into our brand’s history and analyzed our competitors. I also sought insights from people outside the beauty and skincare world to understand their
decision-making processes and influences.

We aimed to incorporate storytelling to establish a strong connection with our customers and include educational aspects in our brand store to enhance their understanding of our products and skincare in general.

Storefront concepts

Where we landed & why?

Fluted glass, which we often use in our photoshoots, is tinted with Clinique’s signature green.

Dermatologists’ lab coats were used to underscore our heritage as a dermatologist-developed brand.

We designed the shopping experience around skin concerns to streamline the user journey and highlight our ‘Clinical Solutions’ approach, showcasing Clinique’s dermatologist-developed expertise and decades of research.

Our top-selling products designed to engage both loyal customers who know what they love and newcomers exploring the Clinique brand.

Critical claims to establish our authority and expertise in the field.

This category will shift with the seasons, trends, and customer needs.

We feature our doctors and educators to introduce a personal element and enhance the e-commerce experience.

Norman Orentreich, a pioneering New York dermatologist and biogerontologist, was a foundational figure in the field of cosmetics.

He founded the Clinique skincare line, invented key dermatologic procedures, and was the first president of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery.

A page that introduces our brand’s story, approach, and heritage, and explains why you should choose us over others.

PDP pages, standard & premium

Conclusion:

This project was a huge success for the brand and the company.

Our projected sales exceeded expectations by three times, and we continue to perform exceptionally well even four months post-launch. Successfully launching on a new platform like Amazon has opened new growth avenues for us.

Clinique has now become the best-performing brand among all those owned by Estée Lauder.