Skincare & E-commerce: Understanding the Category's Core Pillars to Better Serve Shoppers

Skincare is establishing itself as one of the most innovative categories in beauty. It attracts consumers who are increasingly knowledgeable, increasingly demanding, and increasingly loyal to the brands that know how to support them. For retailers and brands alike, this represents a major opportunity, provided they understand what truly motivates shoppers.

What are the pillars structuring shopper behaviour in the skincare category today? And how can brands and retailers leverage them to improve the online shopping experience? This analysis unpacks three major pillars:

Routine

Efficacy, health & convenience

Clean beauty & safety

1. The routine: a powerful anchor, a loyalty lever to activate

Skincare is not a one-off purchase. It is a daily practice, sometimes deeply ritualised, that creates strong emotional engagement with consumers and represents a loyalty opportunity that is rarely exploited to its full potential in e-commerce.

Gen Z is the most striking example: on average, they regularly use 7.8 skincare products (Appinio x Superga study, 1,000 young women, 2025). A figure that speaks volumes about the level of personal, and financial, investment in this category.

And when a brand succeeds in becoming part of that routine, the reward follows: 67% of consumers say they are loyal to the brands that have won them over (Appinio x Superga study, 1,000 young women, 2025). The skincare routine is therefore far more than a purchasing behaviour: it is a powerful loyalty driver, still largely underactivated on grocery retail websites.

Guiding a shopper through building their routine, understanding their skin type, their skincare steps, the products they already use, remains a complex challenge online. Without human advice, without the ability to test textures, how do you guide the purchase? This is where personalised recommendation solutions become a genuine competitive advantage for retailers and brands.

The Matcha routine cross-selling module, designed specifically for skincare, helps to better guide shoppers and increase the average order value.

2. Efficacy, health & convenience: exigence as the new standard

What are shoppers looking for in their skincare products? Visible, proven results, and formulas they can trust. This has become the new standard, and not just among the most informed consumers.

This need for proof is particularly strong among younger generations: 29% rank visible and proven results as their primary purchase criterion (Appinio x Superga study, 2025), in a context where the facial care offer is becoming increasingly technical: serums, concentrated actives, multi-step protocols.

In response to this growing consumer expertise, more and more brands have embraced personalised skin diagnostics as a way to guide purchases and build lasting trust. Typology, Blissim, and Yves Rocher have already committed to this approach, offering tools that adapt their recommendations to each user's skin profile. An approach that directly answers the question most skincare shoppers ask themselves: which product is really right for my skin?

In parallel, demand for convenience is asserting itself. Shoppers want products that are easy to understand and easy to integrate into their daily routine. In e-commerce, where you can neither touch the product nor ask an in-store expert, the clarity of the product page and the quality of the guidance become decisive factors in the skincare purchase journey.

For brands, this means leading with concrete benefits rather than generic claims. For retailers, it means structuring navigation and recommendations around functional criteria, skin type, concern, key ingredient, rather than around category-first logic alone.

3. Clean beauty & safety: a growing expectation, but an increasingly selective one

Clean beauty is no longer a niche. It has become a baseline expectation in the skincare category, driven by growing consumer awareness of ingredients and their impact on health and the environment.

The figures confirm this at a global level: the Clean Beauty market is expected to grow by +15.2% per year between 2026 and 2034 (InsightAce Analytic). In France, this trend is particularly visible in the Click & Collect channel, where certified organic facial care already accounts for 18% of category revenue, compared to 15% in hypermarkets and supermarkets (CIRCANA – GSA E-Commerce, CAM P11 2025), a clear signal of the outperformance of organic products on digital channels.

But this aspiration towards natural products comes with a growing demand for tangible proof. Shoppers are increasingly sceptical of vague claims. They look for credible certifications, transparency on formulations, and verifiable commitments. For brands that genuinely commit to naturalness, this represents a strong differentiation opportunity, provided they demonstrate it rather than simply promise it.

4. How can you improve the skincare online shopping experience?

These three pillars, routine, efficacy, and clean beauty, share a common characteristic: they all require a level of guidance that skincare e-commerce is still struggling to deliver at scale.

A shopper building their beauty routine needs to be guided step by step. One seeking proof of efficacy needs clear, contextualised information at the right moment in their journey. One who cares about natural ingredients needs intelligent recommendations and educational content, not just a green logo on a product page.

This is precisely what a well-designed skincare product recommendation solution enables: turning an often illegible online category into a genuine advisory experience, where every shopper quickly finds the product that matches their profile, needs, and values.

With Matcha, retailers and brands can offer personalised, dynamic recommendations rooted in real shopper behaviour.

Thanks to the shopper data collected (always anonymously), we know exactly:

• which criteria shoppers select,

• which keywords they type into the search bar,

• which formats they prefer,

• which skin concerns they express...

These exclusive insights allow brands and retailers to sharpen their product strategy, optimise purchase journeys, and create an online experience that matches the expectations of a category as high-involvement as skincare.

This approach improves continuously. By analysing performance and shopper behaviour, we constantly refine the logic and business rules to better target the products most likely to resonate with each shopper.

Conclusion

The skincare category is in full transformation. The routine, proven efficacy, and clean beauty are no longer emerging trends: they are the new norms of a category driven by knowledgeable, demanding consumers.

For brands and retailers, the question is no longer whether these pillars matter. They do, enormously. The real question is: does the online shopping experience you offer live up to these expectations? Not just in terms of range, but in terms of guidance, advice, and personalisation.

It is by answering this question that skincare e-commerce players will build their best growth opportunities tomorrow.