Case Study · Beauty & Skincare
Allowance
A subscription-first beauty storefront with a guided box builder and self-serve subscription management.
Allowance — “Beauty, on your terms” — sells skincare and beauty by subscription. Its store made the subscription hard to understand and harder to change: recurring and one-time prices blurred together, checkout ran to five steps, and most changes meant contacting support. We rebuilt the storefront around the subscription.
Client / Product Overview
A direct-to-consumer beauty and skincare brand whose business runs on recurring subscription boxes, sold through its own online store.
- Industry
- Beauty & Skincare
- Services Provided
- Project Scope
- Audit of the subscription experience, and UX and UI design for a subscription builder, personalised product discovery, a subscription-aware checkout, and self-serve subscription management on desktop and mobile.
Before
The Challenge
The value of subscribing wasn't clear, shoppers confused one-time and recurring prices, checkout took too many steps, and managing a subscription was support-heavy — skipping or swapping a box meant raising a ticket.
Approach
From the problem to a direction
Strategy first, then the experience, then how it looks.
- 01
Discovery / Strategy
We treated the subscription as the product rather than a checkout option. The strategy: help shoppers build a box they want, make it obvious what recurs and what doesn't, and give them full control once they've subscribed.
- 02
UX Approach
A five-step builder — categories, preferences, frequency, budget and product count — with a live summary of the box and its price. Every product offers three clear choices: add once, add to subscription, or swap into the next box.
- 03
UI / Visual Direction
Blush and cream grounds with plum accents, a serif display face and styled product photography — soft and editorial, with the plum subscription summary as the one strong colour moment.
The Build
Development
A subscription-aware storefront: the builder, curated “For You” discovery, a review, shipping and payment checkout for subscriptions, and an account hub on desktop and mobile where subscribers manage everything themselves.
Key Features
- 01Five-step subscription builder with a live box summary
- 02Curated “For You” discovery with filter chips
- 03Add once, add to subscription, or swap into the next box on every product
- 04Subscription checkout: review, shipping, payment
- 05Self-serve management: skip, swap, pause, change date, update payment
- 06Mobile subscription management with a swap-products flow
The Result
Final Product
A store where subscribing is the easy path: build a box, understand what you'll pay and when, and change anything about it later without contacting anyone.
01 / 03Before: the original subscription commerce experience 
02 / 03The subscription builder 
03 / 03Subscription management on desktop and mobile
Outcome
Results
Every routine subscription change — skipping, swapping, pausing, rescheduling, updating payment — now happens in the customer's own account instead of the support queue.
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