Founder-Led and Affordable Beauty Brands Are Growing Faster by DTC Traffic

In beauty, personality-led brands and value brands are seeing the most significant growth in direct-to-consumer website traffic. That’s according to data from Similarweb, which shows that in August, the number-one brand by year-over-year monthly traffic growth was L’Oréal Paris , which grew 62 percent to roughly 1.4 million monthly visits. It was followed by Huda Beauty, which grew 59 percent to 196,799 monthly visits, while other top growers included E.l.f. Cosmetics and Hailey Bieber’s Rhode , which increased 46 percent and 3 percent, respectively. “Budget-conscious, digitally native or drugstore legacy brands are capturing massive consumer interest,” said Daniel Reid, principal, market insights analyst at Similarweb, adding that this momentum is in part driven by interest in dupes. He added that trajectories and growth drivers vary across the top 10. For instance, E.l.f. is a top-three grower despite being the overall top brand by website visits, logging 2.6 million in August, while Rhode’s annual growth hasn’t been as sharp but did ramp up 16 percent in August versus the month prior, indicating momentum around a particular launch or campaign. L’Oréal Paris also saw standout month-over-month growth in August, rising 31 percent, while L’Oréal’s consumer division more broadly is heavily represented across the top 10 brands, with Maybelline New York and Nyx Professional Makeup also making the ranking. The top 10 brands by year-over-year growth in monthly web traffic in August, and their visits that month. Source: Similarweb L’Oréal Paris: +62% Visits: 1.4M Huda Beauty: +59% Visits: 196,799 E.l.f. Cosmetics: +46% Visits: 2.6M Fenty Beauty: +34% Visits: 1.2M Rare Beauty: +25% Visits: 479,947 Nyx Professional Makeup : +19% Visits: 675,324 MAC Cosmetics: +12% Visits: 1.9M Kylie Cosmetics: +10% Visits: 298,750 Maybelline New York: +5% Visits: 711,941 Rhode: +3% Visits: 814,599