RE: Sephora Emails Could Be Better
Rethinking the Digital Beauty Experience: Pt. 2
Hi Sephora,
Just wanted to circle back with you on how the current email designs are inaccessible via screen reader.
Is there any way we can make sure that the screen reader doesn’t focus on words in a sentence separately? Is it possible to avoid making everything an image? Or making all components of the email — including text — read out as a “link”? And just less cluttered visually?
Let me know.
Thank you,
-Tanya
Why Emails?
Sephora — both online and in store — is my happy place. Sometimes, just to feel something, I’ll start adding obscenely expensive makeup and skincare I’ve been longing to buy into my basket and then closing out of the window before actually taking the plunge on the eventual $1,500 total.
That being said, I think their digital experience could be improved by some major tweaks. Right now, my love for Sephora is more-so based on their abundance of beauty products and less so because of any loyalty to their brand.
But, brand loyalty is how Sephora thrives, best exemplified by the Beauty Insider program.
“Research has found that almost 75% of what drives customer engagement and loyalty are emotional perks. Now more than ever customers, especially the younger generations, decide to engage with brands based on emotional loyalty drivers,”
Allegra Stanley, Sephora’s Vice President and General Manager of Loyalty
However, loyalty programs are not the only thing that keep customers coming back — empathy has to be present in every aspect of the company’s service, including email, which is how loyalty information is also distributed.
How are Sephora Emails Inaccessible?
The Subject Lines
One look at a bundle of Sephora emails and they’ll remind of news websites — the breaking news type subject lines, the alerts on new products, and the detail of what each product can do for you.
I did a quick analysis of how Sephora subject lines and compared them to others in a similar industry (Em Cosmetics, RANAVAT) or producing the same type of aggregator email (The New York Times). What I found was that, in all cases, the subjects lines did not exceed past the phone screen, something Sephora is a repeat offender of. For every Sephora email I saw, I was always unsure what actually the topic of the content would be, since most of the words were completely cut off.
Overview of Issues
In order to understand common issues within each email, I decide to do a low-level analysis of key user experience defects within the five most recent Sephora Insider emails I received.
Okay, let’s break these down one-by-one.
Text is meaningfully focused together
When using a screen reader, it is best if all text, buttons, and links are read separately, but the user is still able to understand their context. In Sephora emails, links are often included as part of paragraphs and when scrolling through these sections with a screen reader, the user hears one half of the text first [swipes], the link stand-alone [swipes], and then the rest of the text. This creates a disjointed experience and is also inconvenient for non-screen reader users, since it would be visually more appealing to have a clickable component stand-alone.
Component Roles are Accurately Defined
Links should be links and text should be text. However, in Sephora emails, overwhelmingly, everything is a link. This can get very irritating for a user trying to resizing the screen or simply maneuver around it for any reason, but then, suddenly, find themselves being taken out of the mail app and into a webpage.
Link Text is Meaningful
As discussed in “Text is meaningfully focused together,” much of the screen reader sounds disjointed due to links inserted in the middle of sentences. This also prevents link text from being meaningful in general.
Decorative Images are Skipped
Not all images are created equal and if some of them are not adding anything to Sephora’s content. It is best to avoid having them logged by the screen reader to reduce clutter.
Visual Design is Friendly to Text Resizing
While the Sephora emails may look visually decorative and colorful, the predominant use of images makes it very difficult for those who use text resizing. Although the subject line can be easily resized, as well as the header and footer, the main content definitely cannot since it is all images.
A Better Email Design
The Good News
Only a few simple fixes can make the Sephora emails very accessible and really reach the empathy factor that the company already aims for. Making sure the screen reader and keyboard focus for emails is up to snuff, link text meaningful, defining component roles accurately, and skipping decorative elements will improve usability substantially.
Something that Take Time to Work On
Making the visual design compatible with text resizing should be crucial for Sephora and the best way to do that is to avoid overwhelmingly using images for the body.
I took a crack at designing a “body cream” email from Sephora that mimics the New York Times daily email digests, which too contain quite a bit of information.
Final Thoughts
To put it plainly, if Sephora is serious about its commitment to user empathy in order to build customer loyalty, I think fixing their emails is a really great way to build this value into their digital environment.
As an able-bodied user, I still felt extremely overwhelmed by their emails and have now stopped opening them entirely (I’ve also stopped shopping at their ecommerce website, but that’s for another day.). The user experience and accessibility of Sephora Insider emails leave much to be desired, especially considering they are a party of the customer loyalty channel.
However, all is not lost. With a few fixes and a (major) visual design overhaul, Sephora’s emails can be a great extension of the company’s value on a customer’s emotional perks.
