The Redesign of Lancôme’s Websites - a Global Success Story

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.

Performance Goals Met

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:

• The loading time was reduced by 30%.
• A net increase in mobile traffic on all sites, as well as a 30% increase in mobile conversions and 23% increase on the desktop.
• The average shopping basket value increased by 6%, as did the time spent per session.
• The site gained 13 points on the Net Promoter Score in France over a relatively short time, between one month before the project and one month after the launch the number of visitors who recommend a website is also increasing.
• Internally, this code cleanup has facilitated and accelerated the adoption of new templates by all countries.

A Collaborative Project Followed by All Countries

For the first time, the project brought together experts from the different entities of the group (corporate IT, luxury, brand, trades) and involved the countries in the discussions. For Irene Garcia, this explains the unanimous success in the adoption of the project in all areas of the group in record time. The other success factor of the program is that the business is now at the heart of the process. "Previously, the brand was responsible for graphic design, and the integrator managed by the IT department. When the division and brands drive the integration between Corporate IT, the link is between functional and business needs, without extra processing between entities," says Irène Garcia. It was a fully assimilated approach by OSF, integrator of the group since 2014.

A Mature Localization Strategy

Since 2015, a centralized structure within the luxury division governs all needs, which has enabled the creation of UX templates with global regions as part of the software redesign. "With these interfaces ready to implement, the adoption rate has been fast. Countries have been able to focus on their added value, limiting debates on this subject, which previously have been endorsed," observes Nathalie Victoria. Thus, a globalized strategy was created, which allowed Lancôme to expand their operations in all areas.

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?