Lancôme was the first brand within the L’Oréal group to own more than 10 commerce websites. As of 2014, the company launched its e-commerce program on a global scale. Faced with an explosion of mobile users and the need for rich and constantly refreshed digital content, the brand launched an international redesign of its sites in 2017 as a part of its e-commerce acceleration plan, with the aim of improving user experience, e-commerce KPIs, and site performance.
By launching a new brand charter, Lancôme wanted to offer its customers online exclusives and a mobile-first experience. This ambition is accompanied by aims for growth objective and a desire to improve not only conversion, bounce and add to carts rates, but also overall site performance (page loading time, in particular). Under the leadership of Nathalie Victoria, Chief Digital Officer of the luxury division of L'Oréal, the project team initially considered the customer’s journey and user experience to help them to be more flexible in the development of the project. “In the project methodology, we focused on upstream analysis and data, gathering as much insight as possible into the current experience on existing Lancôme sites," explains Irène Garcia, Director of E-Business at L'Oréal Luxe. The optimizations put in place were then measured using tracking tools. "The Corporate IT teams have brought their front-end expertise to improve the quality of code and loading times, especially on mobile phones," says Garcia.
The results:
OSF has joined us in advance of this project, not only for defining the roadmap and timing but also working with us on a daily basis for tests and validations. They contributed to the success of this project by demonstrating agility and reliability in cost control, timely delivery, and rapid localization, especially in the United States.
Since content issues are fundamentally different from one country to another, the project team has focused on finding a viable solution for everyone. At the division level, monthly communication meetings have been put in place to anticipate any issues and to set priorities at the global level and for each brand. "For an effective localization strategy, communication is key. You have to work with a global ecosystem that can be easily localized and scalable for all countries," recalls the Chief Digital Officer.
The first localizations were followed closely to correct issues at the global level. For Nathalie Victoria, it's necessary to leave even minimally viable projects imperfect, because it is always easier to fix an error with a few keystrokes than to undertake another site redesign. "We gained agility. From this point of view, the warranty periods negotiated with the integrator are fundamental," she advises. This project sets the standard for future releases, such as that of personalization, requiring an even stronger support of the brand towards the countries and a total synchronization of the various entities, starting with the supply chain and logistics.
Will another success story follow?
Becky’s background in corporate marketing, sales and leadership spans several industries including Media and Communications, Retail and Consumer Goods, Professional Services, Finance and Technology. With more than 15 years of worldwide experience in rapidly growing organizations, Becky plays a major role in integrating technologies and business processes to create demand engines that influence and convert growth. Becky’s passion for technology and B2B enterprise services inspire her to share unique perspectives on digital transformation strategies that deliver strong results and deep business intelligence.