What Israeli skincare brands put on the first screen

What Israeli skincare brands put on the first screen

We classified the hero — the first screen of the homepage — across six Israeli skincare stores. Half still run a slider, none lead with the product, and zero offer a subscription on a product that runs out every six weeks.

First batch · 6 of 60 stores · September 2026

Table of Contents

1. The slider died everywhere else. Here it's alive
2. Not one of them leads with the product
3. The headline opens on price, not on outcome
4. One action — that resets every five seconds
5. The announcement bar is carrying too much
6. The one finding they all share
7. If you're building one
8. How this benchmark was made

Open almost any Israeli skincare homepage and you land in the middle of a sale. Forty-five percent off with a countdown. Fifty-two percent for a birthday. A holiday gift event. Four of the six stores we looked at open with a number, and every one of those numbers is a discount.

That isn't necessarily a mistake. Small market, crowded shelf, a shopper trained to wait for a promotion. But it does mean the first screen answers exactly one question — what does it cost — and skips the two that come before it: what is this, and why you.

That gap is what we found. Three dimensions where Israeli stores behave nothing like international skincare brands, and one where all six, without exception, leave money on the table.

First, on sample size. Six stores is not a benchmark — it's a first batch. Each brand here is worth 16.7%, so we report absolute counts and names rather than percentages. Everything below is a strong working hypothesis, not statistics. The full sample of 60 stores follows later.

1. The slider died everywhere else. Here it's alive

In the largest published study of the category, covering 312 beauty brands, only 5% still run a slider in the hero. The logic is simple: asking a shopper to wait or swipe is asking them to leave.

Here it's three out of six. Skin and More rotates three banners, Lilit rotates fourteen, and FRÉ stacks two panels on top of each other plus a rotating announcement bar. The cause is probably organizational rather than aesthetic: when every house brand or category manager wants their slot on the homepage, the slider is the compromise that lets you say yes to all of them.

Hero format

Static image Promise · Dr. Riva · Iconix	████████████████████	3 of 6
Slider or multi-panel Skin and More · FRÉ · Lilit	████████████████████	3 of 6
Background video Produced by two, both below the fold	████████████████████	0 of 6

n = 6 · one category per site · desktop

The other side is worth noting. Background video — 19% of international brands — doesn't appear here at all. Promise and Iconix both produce video, and both bury it below the fold. In a category built entirely on texture, absorption and application, that's an asset sitting unused.

2. Not one of them leads with the product

Internationally the most common move is to put the product at the center — 35% of brands do it, and another 16% combine a person and a product in the same frame. The reasoning: a face creates desire, a product creates comprehension. The best heroes do both at once.

Across our six, zero. Four open with a campaign graphic: promotional text on a designed background, no identifiable product and no face. Only two, Dr. Riva and Iconix, open with a photograph of a person.

What the hero is built around

Campaign or promo graphic Promise · FRÉ · Skin and More · Lilit	████████████████████	4 of 6
Person-led Dr. Riva · Iconix	████████████████████	2 of 6
Product-led	████████████████████	0 of 6
Person and product together	████████████████████	0 of 6

n = 6 · one category per site

A first-time visitor should answer three questions in five seconds: what is this, why should I care, where do I click. A promo graphic answers only the third.

3. The headline opens on price, not on outcome

The same pattern repeats in the copy. Three stores open with a discount percentage. Two open with a positioning statement. None open with a product name, a problem, or a number tied to a result.

What the headline opens with

Promotion first FRÉ (45%) · Skin and More (40%) · Lilit	████████████████████	3 of 6
Benefit or positioning Dr. Riva · Iconix	████████████████████	2 of 6
Campaign or season Promise	████████████████████	1 of 6
Product name	████████████████████	0 of 6
Problem or skin concern	████████████████████	0 of 6
Credibility or result figure	████████████████████	0 of 6

n = 6 · one category per site

The depth of the discounts deserves attention on its own: 52%, 45%, 40%, 25%. When a deep sitewide discount runs permanently on the first screen, it stops being an event and becomes the price. The shopper learns that full price is theoretical and waits for the next code.

Iconix is the only store that places a different kind of number directly under the hero: 115,000 customers, 92% reporting visible improvement, 24 years of research. That's the move strong international brands make in the hero itself — in a category drowning in broad promises, a real figure is the cheapest credibility you can buy. Dr. Riva holds a comparable asset in a Tel Aviv University doctorate and a Weizmann Institute post-doc, but tells that story only after a long scroll.

4. One action — that resets every five seconds

Here there's actually convergence with the rest of the world. Five of six show a single call to action on the first screen. That's the right call: the first screen should make one decision, not offer five.

Visible calls to action

One CTA Promise · Skin and More · Lilit · Dr. Riva · Iconix	████████████████████	5 of 6
Two CTAs FRÉ	████████████████████	1 of 6

n = 6 · buttons visible simultaneously on the first screen

Except the number misleads in three of them. A slider shows one CTA at any given moment — but it changes. Lilit cycles fourteen buttons, each pointing somewhere different. From the shopper's side that isn't one decision; it's one decision that keeps moving under their hands.

The button copy itself stays conservative across all six: Shop Now, Buy Now, Shop All. The first screen is not the place to be cryptic.

5. The announcement bar is carrying too much

The healthy split is simple: the bar answers "why buy now," the hero answers "why this." Most stores respect it. Three run a single clear message about free shipping, and Promise does something smarter — it spends the bar on risk reversal: a full refund for up to three months.

Lead message in the announcement bar

Free or reduced shipping Skin and More · Lilit · Dr. Riva	████████████████████	3 of 6
Coupon or discount FRÉ · Iconix	████████████████████	2 of 6
Guarantee or risk reversal Promise — full refund up to 3 months	████████████████████	1 of 6

n = 6 · first message in the rotation

The problem is volume, not content. FRÉ rotates five separate messages through one bar — a coupon with a countdown, a 30-day refund, a gift over ₪299, a holiday set, and two shipping thresholds — with two hero panels underneath. Iconix rotates three. When five messages compete for the same forty pixels, none of them gets read.

Rotating messages in the bar

FRÉ	████████████████████	5 messages
Iconix	████████████████████	3 messages
Lilit	████████████████████	2 messages
Promise · Skin and More · Dr. Riva	████████████████████	1 message

n = 6

One dimension left open: copy placement. Text alignment in the hero — left, centered, or split across panels — can't be determined reliably without a visual review of each site. It's a meaningful dimension internationally (57% align to one side to avoid covering faces in the image), and it's particularly interesting in Hebrew because the reading direction reverses. It will be closed in the full sample and is not reported here.

6. The one finding they all share

So far we've talked about what's visible. Now for what happens after — how each store tries to grow the basket. Here the picture becomes completely uniform, in one direction.

Not one of the six offers a subscription. Zero. In a category where every product runs out within four to eight weeks, where sunscreen empties faster in summer, and where every brand invests in building routines — repeat purchase is left entirely in the customer's hands.

Meanwhile, six of six sell bundles.

Basket-growth mechanics

Bundles and kits All six. Iconix lists 13 kits with the discount shown on each	████████████████████	6 of 6
Gift over a threshold FRÉ · Skin and More · Lilit · Dr. Riva	████████████████████	4 of 6
Points loyalty club Promise · FRÉ · Lilit · Dr. Riva	████████████████████	4 of 6
Explicit volume tiers Dr. Riva — discount rises with spend	████████████████████	1 of 6
Subscription	████████████████████	0 of 6

n = 6 · checked on homepage, cart and product pages

Bundles and subscriptions solve two different problems. A bundle grows one transaction. A subscription grows the number of transactions. The Israeli market has built excellent muscles for the first and hasn't touched the second — and since acquisition costs on Meta only go up, the difference between the two is the difference between a business that has to re-acquire every month and one that doesn't.

Dr. Riva comes closest to solving it without a subscription. The cart shows a progress bar toward gifts at two thresholds, ₪599 and ₪1,399. Kits run from two to seven products with unit price displayed. The loyalty discount tier rises with spend. It's more sophisticated basket engineering than anything else in the group. It still only solves transaction size.

The dominant pattern in each dimension

Dimension	Most common	of 6	Global
Hero format	Static / slider — tied	3 / 3	Static 75%
Built around	Campaign graphic	4	People 42%
Headline opens with	Promotion	3	Product 27%
Calls to action	One	5	One 70%
Announcement bar	Free shipping	3	Shipping 38%
Bundles	Present	6	—
Subscription	Absent	0	—

7. If you're building one

1. Give the hero one job. Launch, bestseller, promo, category or brand. Not all five, and definitely not on rotation.
2. Put the product in the frame. None of the six do. A face creates desire, a product creates comprehension — you need both.
3. Swap one percentage for a different number. Customer count, percentage reporting improvement, years in operation. Iconix is the only one doing this, and it's the strongest asset in the group.
4. Kill the slider. If three messages absolutely have to appear, that's an organizational problem, not a design requirement.
5. One message in the bar. Shipping, guarantee or promotion — not five in rotation.
6. Test a subscription on one product. Sunscreen or cleanser. Something that empties on a predictable cycle, with a small standing discount and an easy skip. This is an entire opening nobody in the category has touched.
7. Design mobile as its own frame. Don't shrink the desktop — and in Hebrew, check where the text lands relative to the face in the image.

None of this forces you to look generic. Be distinctive in the image, specific in the message, and predictable in the interaction.

8. How this benchmark was made

Manual review of the desktop homepage of six Israeli skincare stores in September 2026: Promise Cosmetics, FRÉ Israel, Skin and More, Dr. Riva, Lilit and Iconix. Each site was classified into a single category per dimension, so every chart sums to six.

Two caveats worth knowing. First, the sample is too small to draw conclusions about the market — it's a first batch from a planned sample of 60. Second, the group isn't homogeneous: Lilit is a multi-brand retailer that also sells makeup and fragrance, and Skin and More is a house of six brands. Both stayed in precisely because they produce the sharpest contrast against single-brand stores, but they shouldn't be compared directly to Promise or Iconix.

And as with any benchmark of this kind — this is a snapshot, not a performance test. It shows what these stores chose to put first, not what made them the most money.

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Independent research. No commercial relationship with any brand reviewed.