The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Ecommerce Platform in India for Beauty and Cosmetics D2C Brands

Struggling to find the right ecommerce platform in India for your beauty and cosmetics D2C brand?

The decision can no doubt be a tough one to make, especially when you already have a successful offline business running and growing rapidly. 

Nevertheless, to go digital, you have to map a new route, offer an exceptional online buying experience, and carve your niche in the Indian ecommerce space. 

The goal is to become your customer’s favorite, whatever the channel.

But how do you ensure you are getting the largest slice of the digital success pie? 

Well, that's what we are here for!

Keep reading to learn how to choose the top ecommerce platform for your D2C brand that ensures your business growth. 

Why use an ecommerce platform to power your enterprise brand

Well, to put it simply, using the top ecommerce platform not only speeds up your go-to-market time but also makes your business future-ready. Using a turnkey ecommerce website builder saves a lot in terms of time and resources and also gives you a gamut of features, apps, and integrations to stay ahead of the competition. 

With so many readymade website builders in the market, you always have the option to research and choose the one that is the best fit for your D2C brand. With each brand having its own set of requirements and needs, the choice of the ecommerce platform may vary. For a fast-growing beauty and cosmetics D2C brand like yours, you need a futuristic and scalable marketplace website builder. Let us dive deep into finding you the right ecommerce platform in India for your D2C brand.

The ultimate guide to choosing the right ecommerce platform in India for your D2C brand

Right from the top beauty brands in India and how they caught their customers’ attention to how to build yourself the top ecommerce platform, this blog brings to you a complete blueprint to kick off your cosmetic brand’s ecommerce journey.

Top 5 D2C beauty and cosmetics ecommerce brands in India

1. Lakme

India’s first made-in-India makeup brand, Lakme was groundbreaking for the Indian market and offered cosmetics suited for Indian skin types. With its aggressive marketing even in the early days, Lakme soon became a household name. The brand has reached customers in many different ways, using both traditional and digital marketing strategies, Lakme is the trusted beauty and cosmetics D2C brand in India. 

2. Nykaa

Providing a convenient platform for customers to purchase their favourite beauty products from different brands, Nykaa quickly emerged as the customer’s go-to brand for all beauty products. With its focus on customer service, affordable pricing, and a wide range of products like makeup, personal care, skin care, wellness products, etc. Nykaa is popular among beauty and cosmetic customers. Along with many Indian and global brands, Nykaa has also launched its own line of products for its customers.

3. Sugar Cosmetics

With more than 2500 stores and a digital following of 5 million users across channels, the top ecommerce platform, Sugar Cosmetics has stood out by introducing the world of mattes to the gloss and glitter culture. India’s fastest-growing cosmetics business that targets bold and independent women, Sugar Cosmetics, became sensational by going omnichannel and developing its own app.  

4. Lotus Herbals

Staying close to its roots, Lotus Herbals launched products in categories like baby care, makeup, organic skincare products, etc. to widen its audience base. With a retail focus, the D2C cosmetic brand lays emphasis on social goals like packaging and recycling. Creating unique products for its customers, Lotus Herbals is a leading natural cosmetic company that combines the goodness of the 5000-year-old science of Ayurveda with 21st-century technology.

5. MamaEarth

The beauty and cosmetics D2C brand, MamaEarth has banked huge customer loyalty and engagement. With a strong focus on its marketing strategies like influencer marketing, Mamaearcth focussed on mothers and their babies in its initial days and shifted to younger audiences as the brand gained audience. MamaEarth quickly became a customer brand with its rapid product experimentation and improvement in real-time. 

Wonder what is the secret of the success of these brands? 

India will have an estimated 1222 Mn online beauty shoppers by the year 2025. Given that, now is just the right time to successfully position your beauty brand in the industry. 

To woo and win these buyers your brand needs more than just the right products. You need to hack the success strategies just like these top 5 beauty and cosmetics D2C brands did.

To carve a niche for your business, you need to take into account the needs and demands of your audience. The digital age buyers today look for reasonable pricing, a personalized shopping experience, a top ecommerce platform to shop on, timely deliveries, full transparency, unparalleled customer support, etc. to stay hooked to your brand. 

But, do you have the right ecommerce platform that offers futuristic enterprise-grade features to make it to the customers heart?  

How to choose the top ecommerce platform to build a successful cosmetics D2C brand

With the changing customer behaviour, market trends, and business dynamics, you need to  align your business to attract the customer’s attention and win the ecommerce battle in the diverse Indian market. Well, selling more today is equal to constant rethinking and re-strategizing.

The question is how do you do it for your beauty and cosmetics D2C brand in India? Quite simple, by powering your business with a cutting-edge ecommerce solution, that gives you the freedom to explore, experiment, and win the ecommerce battleground! 

Wonder what features to look for in such an ecommerce platform? Here is the list to make an informed decision: 

1. Beautiful design solutions, easy navigation, and smooth search

When buying makeup and cosmetics, customers get attracted to beautiful site designs and appealingly placed products. Successful beauty and cosmetic ecommerce platforms in India are categorically known for their jazzed up designs. Along with the design, you also need your ecommerce website to offer easy navigation to your customers. Since there are millions of products when it comes to beauty and cosmetics, you wouldn't want your customers to be lost while buying on your website. You need to make it easy for your customers to navigate through your website and make a purchase smoothly.

StoreHippo, the best ecommerce platform helps you build an online store with beautiful store design that enhances your products. StoreHippo comes with a rich built-in design theme library that has 100+ device-optimized themes for you to create the most-amazing website designs. With its easy drag-and-drop feature, even novice sellers can design their platform with zero knowledge of coding. StoreHippo, the top ecommerce platform in India also offers functionalities to help your customers with easy navigation and easy search of the beauty and cosmetics products on the platform. The faceted search feature helps your customers to filter and find the exact product they are looking for.

2. Omnichannel ecommerce 

Did you know that going omnichannel can boost up your purchase frequency by 250%? Well, if you have not yet thought about going omnichannel, here is your cue to take your beauty and cosmetic D2C brand on multiple channels. As you target your beauty customers on multiple platforms and channels they love to shop on, (like mobile phones, social platforms etc), you can boost your growth manifold. Since almost every Indian owns a smartphone today, selling your cosmetic products on mobiles will not only boost your order volume but also give you rich insights into customers behaviour. 

StoreHippo comes with a ready-to-use omnichannel ecommerce solution for your enterprise brands multi channel selling needs. You can offer a personalized shopping experience to your customers and get better audience engagement by easily going for product-market mixes. StoreHippo, the top ecommerce platform helps you to easily create new customer touchpoints using the same backend logic and APIs. You can control all your sales channels centrally and improve the operational efficiency across all channels. 

Built on mobile first technology, StoreHippo comes with an inbuilt mobile apps builder that helps you build Android and iOS beauty products apps directly from your dashboard without any coding and at zero additional costs. The online stores built by StoreHippo are PWA stores that look, feel, and work like mobile apps even on entry-level devices in India. You also get a variety of apps for multiple purposes like for admins, customers, vendors, delivery boys, etc. 

3. Easy customizations 

With the changing market dynamics of the Indian ecommerce industry, you need to stay one step ahead of your competition and always think by stepping into your customers' shoes. If you want to become the top player in the beauty and cosmetic industry, you need to stay ahead of  the latest market trends. For this, you need the top ecommerce platform that comes with customizable solutions to build tailor-made ecommerce solutions for your business. 

StoreHippo ecommerce platform is built on decoupled headless architecture to help you build a flexible enterprise ecommerce platform. You can seamlessly tweak your platform inside out with StoreHippo’s customizations. It helps you implement multi-level customizations like building multiple storefronts/sub-stores for different locations, audiences, or different categories, customized shipping solutions and digital payments, multilingual content, personalized pricing, different store designs, discounts etc. on your ecommerce platform in India.

4. Personalization 

Well, every skin type is different, and each customer has their own unique needs when it comes to beauty and cosmetic products. And do you know 66% of customers tend to drop the purchase if the shopping experience isn’t personalized? Well, customers in India do like to be heard and seen, and it is a proven fact that personalization in a D2C ecommerce yields great results. Wondering how you can personalize the whole shopping experience on your beauty and cosmetic D2C brand. 

StoreHippo ecommerce platform is built on the decoupled headless architecture that can be tweaked inside out seamlessly. You can implement multi-level personalizations on your D2C cosmetic brand and offer your customers a personalized shopping experience. You can personalize the shipping solutions, digital payments, offer localization with multilingual content, personalize the pricing, store design, offer personalized discounts, etc on your ecommerce platform in India.

5. Advanced marketing solutions  

The marketing plans for your D2C ecommerce brand need to be fool-proof. As you establish your beauty and cosmetics ecommerce platform in India, you need to announce it to your customers. And, it should be easy to plan and execute marketing strategies for your brand. With all the competition in the ecommerce industry, it really is important to market your brand to the right audience.

StoreHippo comes with effective marketing tools to make it easy for you to take your brand to the Indian audience. With the built-in discount engine, you can implement multi-level discounts like product-level, category-level, etc. on your beauty and cosmetic D2C brand. You can also implement a variety of coupon codes for your customers. StoreHippo also comes with a powerful SEO tool that helps you rank higher on SERPs by adding SEO elements like meta titles, meta keywords, alt tags, sitemap, etc. With the built-in blog feature, you can use personalized notifications to recover abandoned carts. The inbuilt blog engine from StoreHippo, helps you to publish a variety of content about your brand and create a strong brand value. You can also integrate with the marketing software of your choice to market your beauty brand.  

6. Seamless integrations  

Handling an enterprise-level beauty and cosmetics D2C brand can be challenging without the support of the right software and tools. You would need third-party apps for marketing, customer engagement, growth hacking, CRM, accounting etc. that can streamline your business operations and create your brand value in the Indian ecommerce market. As you plan to carve a niche for your brand, you need access to various tools that can help you offer an out-of-the-box feature to your customers. Like My Glamm, which gives a ‘try it on” feature to its lipstick customers. 

StoreHippo is the top ecommerce platform that supports multiple integrations with the tools and software of your choice to help you build innovative ecommerce solutions for your customers. The headless API structure from StoreHippo helps you to manage your day-to-day business operations with hassle-free and quick integration of third-party software like CRM, ERP, analytics, accounting, etc. You can integrate your beauty ecommerce platform with different chatbots and live chat to offer a smooth support system to your customers. 

7. Ease of payment

When you choose your ecommerce platform in India, you can NOT miss out on frictionless payment processes. Indian customers are accustomed to quick shopping and quicker payments. A lengthy or complex process can detour your customers, the goal here should be to offer a comfortable shopping experience and a frictionless payment process. Wonder how to achieve that? Well, you can integrate with more than one payment gateway allowing your customers to choose their preferred payment method. 

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions offer a full spectrum of payment solutions for your enterprise brand. You can choose from 60+ payment gateways to offer ease of payment to your customers. You can integrate with more than one payment option so that the customers of your beauty and cosmetic D2C brand can choose their preferred payment solution like COD, net banking, mobile wallets, card payments, etc.

8. Simplified inventory and order management 

Well, beauty, and cosmetics industry can have multiple SKUs and for a retail enterprise brand, managing order and inventory can pose a challenge. To simplify the entire management process, you need a well-rounded, comprehensive, and feature-rich ecommerce platform that makes it easy to manage your inventory and orders. With a streamlined order management system, you can not only make your business operations seamless but also fulfill orders faster and more efficiently.

StoreHippo helps you streamline your order and inventory solutions with its built-in inventory management and order-management system. The advanced and automated end-to-end order processing system saves time and makes the order process faster. You can get complete order details in your admin dashboard of all the orders received on your ecommerce platform in India. You can seamlessly view order details, add new orders manually, and perform a variety of other operations in just a few clicks. An efficient order management system like StoreHippo’s gives great insights into business and enables you to do strategic planning for your beauty business growth and expansion. 

9. Scalable and easy-to-use solution 

The Indian ecommerce market has great scope for the beauty and cosmetics industry. As you build your online store and enter the ecommerce space, you sure would like to scale up in the future. You might want to expand your product line, enter new geographies, or target a new audience segment. However, you need a top ecommerce platform that is easy to scale and easy to use, not only at the present time but also in the future. Also, handling business can be tiresome, and while you are busy making big business decisions, you sure would not want to spend time understanding your platform. To help you overcome this, StoreHippo comes with an easy-to-use ecommerce platform. 

Built on the most advanced MEAN stack technology, the StoreHippo ecommerce solution offers an inherently scalable solution for your beauty and cosmetics businesses. With StoreHippo top ecommerce platform you can scale to millions of users and products and still get consistent high-performance sites even during peak load. You can do away with the troubles of replatforming when you plan to scale your business. Building tailored solutions is also easy with Storehippo MACH architecture and a decoupled headless platform. The StoreHippo ecommerce platform helps build an easy-to-use solution that even novice sellers can quickly start selling without having to go under extensive training. 

10. Streamlined deliveries

As your customers order their beauty and cosmetics products, they are constantly anxious about the product's safety. Most customers also fear ordering fragile items from the beauty and cosmetic D2C brand, that might get destroyed during transit. It therefore becomes imperative to deliver the products safely. Make sure to streamline your deliveries with reputed logistics partners that take extra care of fragile items. 

With StoreHippo, you can pick and choose from 30+ pre-integrated logistics partners. You can also schedule pickups and offer a flexible delivery system to your customers. StoreHippo comes in-built with a comprehensive delivery boy management system to streamline and offer safe, error-free order deliveries. You can seamlessly onboard, manage, and track your own fleet of delivery boys right from the admin dashboard.

Conclusion

The game is all about choosing the top ecommerce platform for your business. While other factors like product quality matter, if you have a feature-rich robust ecommerce platform in India, you can take your business to the next level. In a nutshell, your business needs all the right ecommerce tools and features for successful brand building.

StoreHippo offers 360-degree ecommerce solutions for your beauty and cosmetic D2C brand. StoreHippo comes with 300+ inbuilt features like future-ready technology, a mobile-first approach, and various other enterprise-grade features to help you carve a niche for your brand. With the SaaS-based ecommerce platform in India, you can seamlessly cope with the changing market dynamics and future-proof your marketplace website. 

Are you all set to choose the top ecommerce platform for your  beauty and cosmetic D2C brand? Explore the top D2C features by StoreHippo by starting your 14-day free trial now.