Beauty & skincare: an ingredient list that's actually readable

Skincare shoppers check ingredients before anything else, especially if they're avoiding something specific. A dense paragraph of INCI names asks them to do the work. A table does it for them.

· 3 min read

Why the plain-text list fails

A full INCI list is required information, but reading it as one unbroken line tells a shopper nothing about what matters to them: is there fragrance, is it the formula or just the packaging that's recyclable, what does this ingredient actually do. Most people give up scanning after the first ten names.

What a table adds that text can't

Cartsella Studio's Table field lets you group ingredients by what they do, not just list them in INCI order: active ingredients in one row group, then preservatives, then fragrance — each with a one-line note on its purpose. "Hyaluronic acid — holds moisture in the skin" says more in context than it does buried in a thirty-item list.

The Cartsella Studio table editor filling in a table on a product, with buttons to add rows, columns, merge cells and add a header row

Pair it with how-to-use

A short "How to use" field next to the table — AM or PM, how much, what to avoid mixing it with — answers the second question shoppers have, right where they're already reading the first answer. Mark both as required in a field guide, and the fill-in report catches any product that launched without them.

Build it once per formula family

If a serum and its travel size share the same formula, a metaobject for "formula" holds the ingredient table once, and both products link to it. Update the formula, and both pages update.

Where to start

Start with your three best-selling actives. Get their ingredient tables and how-to-use fields right, then roll the format out across the rest of the range.

Make your ingredient list worth reading.

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