The brief
A botanical skincare brand whose argument is restraint: short formulas, legible ingredients, nothing you cannot name. A heavy site would have contradicted the product before the first sentence.
Only three references — a serum, a cream, an oil. A catalogue that short does not present itself as a shop: it tells itself.
The constraints
- Three products. Too few for a grid, too many for a single page each.
- Selling without discounting. The positioning ruled out the red banner and the countdown.
- The first purchase turns on trust, not on promotion: visitors had to be able to understand what is in the bottle.
The decisions
The ritual before the catalogue.
The three products are not lined up side by side: they are presented as three gestures — cleanse, treat, moisturise. Visitors are no longer arbitrating between three competing items, they are discovering a sequence in which each piece has its place. The average basket changes nature: you are not buying a product, you are completing a step.
The ingredient named, not the claim.
Every reference carries its active ingredient in plain words — stabilised vitamin C and camellia for the serum, hyaluronic acid and aloe for the cream, rosehip and bakuchiol for the oil. A whole section details those actives. It is the direct translation of the "short formulas" promise: if the formula is short, it can be read.
Astro rather than an application framework.
The site is content with a cart, not an application. Astro ships no JavaScript on the content pages and loads it only for the genuinely interactive islands — the cart, the form. A product page therefore arrives as pure HTML: it is the choice that does the most for perceived speed, and it is invisible.
The result
A complete purchase journey: discovery through the ritual, product pages with actives and prices (€38, €34, €42), a side cart with a running total, checkout, email capture at the foot of the page. Reviews and the FAQ close the last objections before payment.
What I would do differently
The social proof announced at the top of the page comes from demo content. On a real site I would move it after the actives are presented: an average rating displayed before visitors know what is being sold to them proves nothing, it decorates.