REN Skincare — E-commerce Redesign

01 — Challenge

A clean beauty brand with a cluttered experience.

REN Skincare has built a genuinely differentiated position in the beauty market — clean formulas, sustainable packaging, and total ingredient transparency. Their brand is built on trust. But the digital experience was undermining that trust at every turn: complex product pages, an overwhelming ingredient list presentation, and a skincare finder tool that confused more than it guided.

The redesign focused on three areas: making ingredient transparency a strength rather than a source of anxiety, building a skincare finder that genuinely guided customers to the right products, and redesigning the subscription experience to reduce churn and increase uptake.

02 — Discovery

Transparency that confused rather than reassured.

User interviews revealed a consistent pattern: customers were attracted to REN because of its clean formulation stance, but the ingredient lists on product pages — while technically comprehensive — were presented as dense, unformatted text that felt overwhelming rather than reassuring.

The skincare finder, a key acquisition tool, had an 82% abandonment rate — users couldn't understand what the questions were asking, and the recommendations felt generic rather than personalised. The subscription model, meanwhile, was largely invisible to first-time shoppers.

03 — Design

Making clean beauty feel as good as it sounds.

Ingredient lists were redesigned using a tiered disclosure model: key active ingredients at the top with plain-language explanations of what they do; full INCI list accessible below for those who want it. Each ingredient linked to a brief science-backed explanation — turning the ingredient list from a wall of text into a trust-building editorial experience.

The skincare finder was rebuilt from the ground up. Questions were rewritten in plain language, anchored in real customer concerns ("Does your skin feel tight after washing?") rather than technical categories. The recommendation output now showed only 2-3 products with clear explanations of why each was recommended — rather than a scrollable list of everything in the range.

The subscription model was redesigned to be visible from the first PDP interaction — presented as a side-by-side comparison of one-time vs subscription pricing with a clear, one-line value proposition. The saving was made concrete and immediate, not buried in small print.

04 — Results

Trust, converted.

Add-to-cart rate increased 28% across the redesigned product pages. The skincare finder, rebuilt around genuine user language and clear output, saw abandonment fall from 82% to 41% — and the products recommended through it had a 30% higher conversion rate than the site average.

Most significantly for long-term customer value, subscription sign-ups increased 47% — driven by the new prominent, clear presentation of the subscription option on every applicable product page. Average order value increased 19% through improved cross-sell recommendations on product pages.