Dive Brief:

• Birchbox has revamped its website to make it easier to shop and customize its subscription boxes, according to an email to Retail Dive. The online beauty retailer is now employing "Pillar Pages," which add storytelling, education and navigation to categories like makeup and skincare.

• The company is also using the data and marketing around its monthly boxes to change up the website's content each month with a new theme, according to the release. "Birchbox has seen and heard how people react to the monthly boxes, and wanted to replicate that personal element across the website," the company said.

• Design elements for each of the monthly boxes, like the color scheme and patterns, are incorporated into the online experience, "creating one cohesive brand," the company said.

Dive Insight:

Birchbox was at the forefront of bringing beauty sales online, but it's struggled somewhat as other retailers caught up and, in many ways, surpassed it.

Last April, the company told Retail Dive it had reached profitability. However, the year prior had been rocky for the business. After struggling to raise more funding, Birchbox pulled back plans for growth and underwent several rounds of layoffs. 

Since its launch in 2010, Birchbox has raised nearly $90 million from investors and was once valued at nearly $500 million, according to Recode. The beauty brand has since expanded to six countries, with two permanent brick-and-mortar stores in New York City and Paris. The company has said it has more than 2.5 million active customers and partners with 800 brands, and that last year was a "record-breaking year for subscriber acquisition."

But the company seems to still be in customer acquisition mode, and accumulating customers doesn't necessarily translate into higher sales or profits. More recently, the company, which had been trying to sell itself for a while, was given a lifeline when it sold a majority stake to one of its investors, hedge fund Viking Global Investors.

The Birchbox website has always had appeal, though, and it had the top-ranking e-commerce site in terms of overall website performance for the fourth quarter of 2017, according to the Shoppimon Online Health and Usability Index. Without many stores, it's likely a smart move for the brand to turn to data from its subscription sales to bring in the design elements and storytelling that customers are responding to best.