INKEY optimizes its interactive skincare tools with Contentsquare to drive customer engagement

The company

INKEY (formerly The INKEY List) is a U.K.-based skincare brand with 4 global websites and is available across retail stores worldwide. Known for its straight-talking approach to skincare, the brand's mission is to turn knowledge into power for every skincare journey. By clearly explaining science-backed ingredients and offering real results through effective formulas and education, INKEY aims to empower customers to understand their unique skin and needs.

Their direct-to-consumer (DTC) website team brings knowledge-powered skincare to life through interactive and personalized digital experiences. Chief among these are their 'Skincare Quiz', 'Build Your Own Bundle (BYOB)', and 'Breakout Analyzer Pro' Skincare Tools, which offer skincare solutions to customer segments at different stages of their online INKEY journey. In 2024, the company's Skin Tools feature won the Best Digital Experience Innovation Award Contentsquare's DX Awards.

As INKEY continues to expand, optimizing the right digital experiences remains crucial in driving value to both customers and the business.

The challenge

Jo Melville, Senior Ecommerce Manager at INKEY, wanted to focus on optimizing the site’s 3 main skincare tools, ensuring they were engaging, educational, and provided a seamless customer experience. The goal was to drive commercial impact through conversion, average order value (AOV), and retention. 

To do the job, her ecommerce site merchandising team needed to capture granular data and perform a comprehensive analysis. This meant using

• The same data source to accurately compare each tool

• Consistent visuals (Ex: screenshots and data exports) in stakeholder reports

• Multiple ways to analyze each skincare tool with its own user experience (UX)

Jo’s team realized it was time to part ways with their free analytical tools and shift to a platform that would help them quickly understand and confidently deliver the right experiences to their customers.

Without Contentsquare, we would have relied on various internal opinions on how our skincare tools ‘look’ rather than on how they actually perform and help our customers. We wouldn’t have made tangible, commercially driven steps forward in our skincare tool journey.

Jo Melville

Senior Ecommerce Manager

The solution

Instead of relying on assumptions, the team tapped into Contentsquare’s Experience Intelligence platform to gain deep, actionable insights into customer behavior. This data-driven approach enabled them to make impactful optimizations, one skincare tool at a time.

1. Skincare Quiz: growing customer engagement and conversions

As INKEY’s original skincare tool, this 2-minute quiz has seen various iterations and serves as a key entry point for those new to the brand and/or skincare in general. By applying customer segmentation to Contentsquare’s dashboards, the team identified their Skincare Quiz as a high-impact conversion driver:

• Customers who engaged with it had a +258% higher conversion rate (CRV) and a +40% higher average order value (AOV) than those who didn’t

• 75% of quiz orders came from new customers, and customers who made their first purchase through the quiz had a +31% higher retention rate

To capitalize on this, they focused on getting more customers to complete the quiz and reach the results page, which shows tailored products using a custom-built product recommendation algorithm engine. 

Then, they used Contentsquare’s funnel analysis feature to track quiz completion rates and drop-off rates, identifying any leaks in the question funnel.

The 2-minute Skincare Quiz offers personalized skincare knowledge and product recommendations

The team A/B tested elements of the Skincare Quiz steps with higher drop-off rates to refine the path to conversion, reduce abandonments, and encourage completion.

We know where and how our customers are interacting and engaging with our site at a granular page and segment level, which is something generic data reporting can’t provide context to.

Jo Melville

Senior Ecommerce Manager

2. Build Your Own Bundle: optimizing the customer journey

This project, led by Kiri Leach, Global Ecommerce Manager at INKEY, is a one-page tool that promotes repurchasing by offering a higher percentage of savings the more products customers add. A condensed bundle builder also appears on product pages. 

The Build Your Own Bundle tool, located on a product page

Build Your Own Bundle (BYOB) primarily targets returning customers with known higher AOVs (+10% higher vs. new) and aims to boost 1st-to-2nd purchase rates, supported by customer relationship management-driven flows. It also delivers a personalized on-site experience based on past purchases.​

Since BYOB’s UX is intuitive and dynamic, Kiri used Contentsquare’s Journey Analysis capability to better understand customer behavior and uncover key insights, such as

• 14% of customers were navigating to the Skincare Quiz after viewing BYOB

• The user journey from BYOB to the Skincare Quiz yielded 11.3% CRV

To optimize the experience, they moved the Skincare Quiz call to action (CTA) higher up the page. Driving traffic away wasn’t a concern, as they remained confident that BYOB remained the highest-converting skincare tool for returning customers at 13.8%. 

Plus, customers who took the sequential journey from BYOB to the Skincare Quiz had a higher funnel completion rate (52% vs. 42% of those who navigated to the Skincare Quiz organically).

Journey Analysis revealed that many users exited the bundle builder to start the Skincare Quiz. This indicated that new customers may still be viewing BYOB but Skin Quiz suited their needs better, therefore we optimized this journey by putting more CTAs for the Skincare Quiz on the bundle builder itself.

Kiri Leach

Global Ecommerce Manager

3. Breakout Analyzer Pro: personalizing skincare with AI

Fatimah Khan, Senior Analyst at INKEY, identified that acne and breakouts are the #1 skin concern identified through the Skincare Quiz. This prompted INKEY to partner with dermatologists to develop the AI-powered Breakout Analyzer Pro tool that offers:

• Bespoke dermatologist-recommended products to a third of INKEY’s customer base

• Continuous engagement through email nurturing campaigns that guide customers to the Breakout Analyzer Progress Tracker, a gamification feature that tracks how customers’ skin changes over time

To refine the user journey, Fatimah and the team initially compared it to the Skincare Quiz (due to its similar step-by-step UX) using funnel analysis They also looked into both tools’ results pages via Contentsquare’s page comparator.

They focused mainly on the results page as it contained the most information about customer interactions and raised the following questions: 

• What were they engaging with? 

• Were there any pain or frustration points? 

Contentsquare’s Heatmaps capability and user engagement metrics like attractiveness rate, hover time, click recurrence, and exposure rate also provided valuable insights. These insights led the team to:

• Optimize and rearrange elements with high attractiveness rates

• Identify UX bugs in CTAs

• Add a visual breakout activity level bar, an ‘explainer below’ bar, and CTAs to retake analysis 

Breakout Analyzer Pro before optimization

Breakout Analyzer Pro after optimization’

Since its launch, the Breakout Analyzer has had over 40,000 scans globally, which gives us 3.6 million data points. Using Contentsquare’s zone-based heatmaps, we’ve been able to make UX optimizations, particularly on the results page.

Fatimah Khan

Senior Analyst

The results

Thanks to Contentsquare, the team now has a trusted, consistent, and synergized data source for easily surfacing behavioral insights across all 3 skincare tools. 

It's empowered them to focus on optimizing their different skincare tool experiences to targeted segments enhancing conversions and retention. The visual data has also made reporting and presenting back to stakeholders seamless.

INKEY’s dashboard in Contentsquare

With Contentsquare, we proved that people who engage with our skincare tools have +155% higher conversion rates, drive +45% higher AOV, and spend +256% more time on the site. This invaluable insight ensures that we’re focusing on optimizing the experiences and products that drive value to the business and for our customers.

Jo Melville

Senior Global Ecommerce Manager

What’s next?

INKEY has made tangible, commercially driven strides in optimizing its skincare tools, but the journey doesn’t stop there. Jo’s team is focused on the next phase of their digital experience optimization.

First to watch out for is their product page redesign, where the team aims to leverage UX data to enhance the usability and effectiveness of high-traffic product pages. 

Another initiative is the Dynamic Yield integration, which will allow INKEY to create A/B segments and amp up personalization. They can then use Contentsquare to evaluate A/B test performance at a page, group, or event trigger level, ensuring data-backed optimizations across content, product recommendations, and customer journeys.

Lastly, the team is looking at using Contentsquare’s Impact Quantification capability to measure and prove the return on investment (ROI) in digital optimizations. This approach drives data-backed decisions that yield tangible, high-impact results.