Benefit Cosmetics website screenshot
Benefit Cosmetics website (Source: Benefit)

News - Benefit Cosmetics rolls out Episerver Commerce Cloud

M Ryan M Ryan

September 9th, 2020. Episerver, a member of our ecommerce platform shortlist, has announced that Benefit Cosmetics relaunched their ecommerce stores globally on its Episerver Commerce Cloud platform. Benefit operates 42 country websites with language variations available in some of these. While not every country is ecommerce-enabled, those that are, are now running Episerver Commerce Cloud.

Jeff Shih, Senior Director of Global Web with Benefit Cosmetics, commented on the launch of the new websites claiming that implementation speed was improved by use of a translation management system provided by Smartling that is integrated into Episerver.

Benefit Cosmetics online customer experience examples

Some observations on the Benefit Cosmetics online store at https://www.benefitcosmetics.com/en-us 

Typeahead search

The search bar provides typeahead functionality including product images.

Benefit Cosmetics typeahead search example
Benefit Cosmetics typeahead search example

However misspells (and also Canadian / British spelling) are not supported

Benefit search does not support misspells
Benefit Cosmetics search does not support misspells

Faceted search

Despite providing faceted search, it is not very sophisticated on the Benefit website, given it is easy to resolve to zero search results.

Benefit Cosmetics faceted search can resolve to zero results
Benefit Cosmetics faceted search can resolve to zero results

In addition, if zero search results are found, it is good practise to show at least some bestsellers rather than a blank screen with "no products were found" as the message.

Product data

The product description for some products includes rather dubious sample sizes in its evidence of effectiveness. A sample of "20 panelists" or a "survey of 101 women" is really not sufficient to provide any confidence in the results. This author looks forward to trying the following "foolproof" product with "no ... mistakes". Sounds like a guarantee!

Benefit Cosmetics product data sample sizes are very small
Benefit Cosmetics product data sample sizes are very small

The ingredients listed in the following product description is (as you might expect) highly technical, however it would be more readable as mixed case, rather than upper case text. Also the first listed ingredient here of "talc" feels like it is an abbreviation and should be written in full.

Benefit Cosmetics ingredients description
Benefit Cosmetics ingredients description

Note, Episerver is rebranding to Optimizely (an acquisition) during 2021.

This article was updated on March 2, 2021

M Ryan

M Ryan is an ecommerce consultant with twenty years experience working with retailers, consumer brand manufacturers and other consumer-facing businesses helping them to develop their ecommerce strategy, implement ecommerce technology and improve their ecommerce operations. He works extensively throughout US and Europe, with clients including global brands, large retailers and household names in consumer goods.

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