The Body Shop has announced that it is launching a £10 million digital transformation project designed to expand its e-commerce footprint and provide a more seamless online experience.

As part of the project, The Body Shop has launched a mobile-first e-commerce platform which enables customers to engage “more effectively” with the retailer.

Rather than creating a ‘one-size-fits-all’ platform, The Body Shop has accommodated regional variations in its development, meaning it can be adapted to each market’s consumer preferences for merchandising, payment and delivery fulfilment.

The new digital platform has launched in 11 countries, including the UK, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Brazil and Indonesia, and will be rolled out to over 20 more countries in 2017.

The new platform will act as a hub for all of The Body Shop’s content and will also feature a number of tools such as a live appointment booking service for in-store consultations, as well a personalised skincare diagnostic tool. It incorporates Click and Collect functionality which will launch later this year.

More than half (52 per cent) of The Body Shop’s existing online traffic currently comes from mobile and 11 per cent from tablet. The retailer saw a 19 per cent year-on-year growth in global e-commerce sales in 2016 and expects e-commerce to account for 20 per cent of total sales in 2017.

Harriet Williams, chief digital officer at The Body Shop, said: “With the successful launch of a responsive, content-rich digital platform, we have established a strong foundation to support our future innovation agenda and global rollout.

“The Body Shop is a big business, operating in a large number of countries with both franchise and non-franchise markets. The platform needed to strike the right balance between global brand consistency and local relevance, being flexible enough to meet the needs of each individual market.

“With a number of new digital innovations in the pipeline and continued in the consumer retail experience investment, we anticipate that e-commerce will form 20 per cent of our total sales.”

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