Urban Decay, the L’Oreal cosmetics brand that touts cutting-edge formulas and bright colors, has implemented the Product Discovery solution from Compare Metrics to help shoppers find the right products online.
The combination of Content Curation, Adaptive Navigation and Shopping Scenarios solutions in the Eyes section of its web site has helped Urban Decay improve product discovery, resulting in a 16% lift in conversions and 17% average engagement rate.
Although Urban Decay products are available in a variety of retail stores, including Sephora, e-Commerce plays a “significant role in the overall business,” according to Katherine LaFranchise, AVP of Digital at Urban Decay. “We consider the web site as our primary door and the place where our customers can get a glimpse into our world. Consumers gravitate to Urbandecay.com for a variety of reasons, including product discovery, consuming and contributing content, and purchasing Urban Decay products first, before they hit our retail partners’ sites or stores.”
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On the Urban Decay e-Commerce site, visitors typically read reviews, watch videos and sift through products using search and navigation. Prior to partnering with Compare Metrics, most consumers used the search bar, as the site navigation experience was limited. The only navigation options were to select a sub-category and sort by filters such as price, rating or color.
“It was then up to the shopper to bounce around to product pages and back to the category listing to learn enough about their options and hopefully make a decision,” said LaFranchise in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. She noted that prior to Compare Metrics, customers were more likely to convert when using site search rather than navigation. “We saw our conversion rate last year was five-fold higher for shoppers using the search bar. That led us to believe that our navigation had definite room for improvement.”
Adding Relevance To Online Shopping
Consumers now have the ability to interact with the Compare Metrics solution within the Eyes category to filter product selections down to the color and even attribute level.
“So in the case of eye shadows, consumers can more easily select on finish variables such as ‘matte’ or ‘glitter,’” LaFranchise explained. “The Compare Metrics solution not only provides them a much richer and more accurate way to sort, it is also visually more fun and interactive for them. I think that engagement is something that our consumers crave now that they are used to platforms like Pinterest that are so highly addictive.”
Since implementing Adaptive Navigation, Urban Decay has seen 18% of traffic to the Eyes section of the site interact with the improved filters, compared to 5% to 8% interaction with standard filters, according to LaFranchise. Additionally, the average user interacts with the Compare Metrics filters nine times. It’s very exciting for us to see our shoppers responding so positively.”
Urban Decay recently implemented the solution on its newly redesigned responsive site, LaFranchise reported. “We also will be looking to also expand into other categories to extend our investment now that we’re seeing success in the Eyes category.”
The Compare Metrics Content Curation Team used existing product detail page content to create attributes such as “finish.” But attributes such as “color” and “shade” had to be created and tagged as new product data.
This new set of rich merchandising data is key to helping Urban Decay shoppers find the best products for their unique wants and needs. Now, shoppers can browse and filter products, and then narrow their selections based on relevant attributes.
“The team did a good job of trying to understand how we thought about our products and our current merchandising strategies to come up with a curation strategy that would bring new data and vernacular into the experience without compromising the brand we’ve worked so hard to build,” LaFranchise said. “I think the strategy they set and the data they’ve helped us generate creates a nice translation between the preferences our customers have in mind and our very diverse product offering.”
The Shopping Scenarios function also has encouraged positive conversions because it allows consumers to search for products for specific occasions and purposes.In the near future, Urban Decay will expand the use of Shopping Scenarios, so customers will be able to sift through makeup “looks,” which then link directly to pages with pre-set preferences and a curated set of products.
