eCommerce Success Story: The Body Shop (1)

This is a particularly interesting case due to the transition from retail to a multichannel strategy, where the online store plays a significant role.

In this article, after providing some context to help us understand the process, we will focus on what The Body Shop looks like today, what it retains from its beginnings, and how it has adapted to a digital environment that, at the time of its founding, was unimaginable even to the most visionary thinkers.

Let’s dive in.

As often happens, this business reflects much of the character and values of its founder: Anita Lucía Roddick (who would later be recognized as a Dame of the British Empire).

Anita was a vocational teacher who ended up traveling the world while working for the United Nations. These experiences gave her firsthand insight into the realities of the world. During her travels, in addition to discovering other cultures and habits, she developed a deep concern for disadvantaged communities and the environment.

It is worth noting that this was in the late 1960s, a time when corporate social activism was rare, and sustainability was not a priority.

After traveling around the world, Anita Roddick returned to England, got married, and started a family. This new stage meant she needed to find a job, so she and her husband considered opening a business.

In fact, they started three businesses: two restaurants and then a hotel. Unfortunately, none performed well and eventually had to close down. However, they still needed income, so Anita had to find a viable alternative and she did.

Let’s remember that we are talking about 1976, so the obvious option was a physical store. But what kind?

Drawing from her recent experiences and knowledge, Anita decided to open a cosmetics store. This was not particularly innovative at the time, Brighton already had many such stores. What truly made her stand out was the product.

During her travels, Anita discovered that many women around the world cared for their skin using natural, chemical-free cosmetics. These products were not only healthier but also offered the huge advantage of aligning with ethical principles, being less harmful to the environment.

The Body Shop started with a short catalog: just 12 products. However, success was almost immediate.

Over time, they expanded their offerings and opened more stores, growing from a modest shop between two funeral homes in a coastal English town to managing a vast catalog of products across over 2,500 stores both franchised and company-owned.

Naturally, they eventually made the leap to eCommerce. A company as innovative as this one could not stay behind in this new channel.

Instead of analyzing the website’s design, offering a good user experience is now standard we will focus on what truly sets The Body Shop apart: its online marketing strategy.

SEO is always a complex strategy, but there are key aspects of The Body Shop’s approach worth highlighting.

The first notable aspect is their use of different TLDs (top-level domains) such as .es, .uk, and .it. This indicates a highly localized strategy with distinct metrics tailored to each market.

Considering their relatively small product catalog, how is this keyword volume possible?

The key lies in their strategy: not all the traffic they generate is transactional. They have cultivated significant traffic from various search intents, catering to customers at different stages of the customer journey.

Look at this graph:

If we translate this into the structure of their online store, we can see that they organize their menu as follows:

In the same tool, we have access to SEM data. As you can see, the number of keywords and traffic here is lower. This is because paid traffic is 99.9% transactional.

Keep this in mind for your campaigns, as the traffic you pay for needs to provide the most immediate return on investment possible.

Overall, we can see that they are investing to appear in searches for 266 keywords, which is, of course, far from the organic numbers.

They also purchase keywords related to physical stores, meaning the brick-and-mortar locations. Remember that Google Ads allows businesses to advertise on Google Maps and offers options like drive-to-store, designed to generate traffic to stores by providing directions to them.

By looking at some of their search network ads, we can also infer which terms are the most strategic for them.

As you can see, the vast majority of the ads are focused on "online shopping," aligning with the goal of achieving immediate returns.

Later, by reviewing other ad copy, we find terms such as "beauty must-haves," "beauty routines," "skincare," and "vegan cosmetics."