[tweetmeme]I was asked to provide a professional opinion about the design of Paula’s Choice website. Not having a command of cosmetics, makeup and skin care, I asked my cosmetics aware colleagues, Jennifer and Sabrina to talk with me about makeup.

We reviewed a number of makeup sites including Paula’s Choice, CoverGirl, Max Factor, Revlon, Clinique, MAC, ProActiv, Aveda, Perricone MD, and SkinCeuticals.

PAULA’S CHOICE

The value proposition of Paula’s Choice was unclear to us. Who’s Paula? Why would anybody care? Why do we want to buy these products? These answers were not obvious to us. It took a fair amount of reading ‘About Paula’ for Sabrina to remember this woman. “Oh, yeah she wrote a book.” It also took awhile for us to read that she’s “The Cosmetics Cop”. If the value proposition is her opinion and choice then that needs to be emphasized much more in the site. We thought that Perricone MD and his melons (www.perriconemd.com) did a better job communicating his command of medicine as the value proposition.

Many of the other cosmetic sites do a good job getting their value prop across in the design of their site. For example, MAC’s value prop is about color and artistry. Check out their site, www.maccosmetics.com and the value is obvious.

MAC

Recommendation 1
The value proposition and brand qualities of Paula’s Choice needs to better present Paula as the authoritative cosmetics cop. Make Paula relatable to the target audience. Make her someone whose voice and choice is respected. It will be in brand values that Paula’s Choice can be differentiated in a meaningful way. Designing the site around reviews, comparisons and ratings is perfectly align with this brand.

Observation:
Paula’s Choice is designed to browse and search products. It’s designed as a very functional, marketing and sterile site. There was nothing that moved our emotions. Where’s the no wrinkles girl? Where’s the air-brushed girl that looks amazingly beautiful? Is there anything that’s going to appeal to my vanity? We couldn’t find it.

MAC moved our emotions. The photography was artistic and tasted like honey. The artistic nature of the photography aligns perfectly with the values of the brand.

Recommendation 2
Paula’s site could benefit by providing some aspirational content that moves the soul, for example brand appropriate high resolution photography at the right scale.

Observation:
We weren’t really sure where to go on Paula’s site once we landed on the home page. Granted we didn’t have any particular goal to shop or buy makeup, but there also wasn’t any one thing that caught our attention. The site uses a common navigation bar with drop down menus. There are standard drop down controls for selecting items that will help find the best product for our skin. We could imagine the results being a catalog of pages showing rows and columns of products, just like many shopping websites. Not too engaging but very efficient and familiar.

I personally enjoyed the Max Factor site the most. It’s the makeup of makeup artists. They had high resolution photos of women wearing makeup. Imagine that? I thought it was slick that I could click on the photo and learn what product was used by the pretty model. Not only was it useful, it was fun to explore the images to see what makeup was used to make these pretty girls, pretty.

MAX FACTOR

Recommendation 3
Provide engaging and fun features that easily encourage exploration. Paula’s site could benefit by enabling people to explore options, reviews and see which products might be best and why.

To wrap this blog up, Paula’s site could be improved by doing the following

1. apply a good foundation of brand values to cover the entire site.
2. accent the eyes and lips to move the soul.
3. highlight the best features to lure engagement.

If you can inspire a guy like myself to browse makeup online and blog about it then you’ll have beautiful results.