Personalized Klevu search improves conversion and engagement rates for Bare Minerals and Laura Mercier

In the ever-evolving world of e-commerce, established beauty brands strive to maintain their global presence while adapting to the changing digital landscape. When they were purchased by Orveon Group, Laura Mercier and BareMinerals had an opportunity to start fresh and launch digital flagship stores that truly represented and promoted the unique brand experiences. In collaboration with Half Helix, a full-service design and development agency specializing in helping brands come to life online, and Klevu, an eCommerce product discovery technology, these Orveon brands have been able to create personalized and immersive online customer experiences.

First impressions, first focuses

Carney Nir, VP of Global eCommerce at Orveon Group, recognized the unique opportunity to innovate with the big established brands under Orveon’s umbrella, delivering speed to market, expanding globally, and building a flexible infrastructure to support acceleration plans.

Partnering with Half Helix, Carney led the careful selection of a robust tech stack, including Shopify for ecommerce, Klevu for personalized search and product discovery, and Nosto for UGC.

Migration to Shopify + Localization

First, Half Helix helped with the strategic migration from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify 2.0. The migration to Shopify has given them the opportunity to launch four out of the planned twelve global sites within one year. Shopify also has given Orveon the flexibility to look at each region specifically and make easy changes on what they individually need to succeed. One store in the UK can look and feel the same as the US site however they have the flexibility to make each regional experience unique.

Onsite Search and Merchandising

Search personalization plays a pivotal role, particularly for beauty brands like Laura Mercier and BareMinerals, as they can explore various search methods to enhance their users’ experience. Remarkably, beauty brands rank second highest in search conversion rates, reaching approximately 10%, owing to shoppers precise knowledge of what they seek.

Products in the search bar and product landing pages are ordered by understanding the user’s behavior and rearranged on what the consumer is more likely to buy. The significance of personalization in search for beauty brands is crucial, as consumers search for various product features, names, and even symptom-related queries. The ability to process natural language and provide relevant search results greatly enhances the user experience and drives higher conversion rates.

Klevu, with its fully automated system, has alleviated a considerable workload for Carney and her team. By integrating with Klevu, the Orveon team can access valuable data that deepens their understanding of consumer preferences. This information empowers them to fine-tune their merchandising strategy. For instance, if they consistently observe the demand for a particular product, they can draw up effective ways to showcase it more distinctly. Since much of beauty product discovery relies on educational content, the team also regularly reviews longtail search queries to fuel the content creation efforts, such as blogs and how-to guides.

Personalization in Product Search Results

Personalization plays a pivotal role for beauty brands, and it held particular significance for Laura Mercier and BareMinerals. Carney explains that a substantial portion of the business revolves around complexion products, which can be challenging to sell online to new customers. Understanding factors such as skin tone, type, and preferences is crucial in guiding customers toward the right products and ensuring a positive experience. If a consumer buys the wrong product, that impacts the shopping experience, retention, and reviews. It is critical to understand what the customer is looking for so that they can serve the appropriate product for their skin type. Through Klevu’s API, the onsite search and personalization feature enables BareMinerals and Laura Mercier to be customized to look and feel like an authentic part of their own user interfaces rather than being a third-party platform. By leveraging personalization through AI and capturing customer inputs, they can curate tailored product recommendations and anticipate customer intent.

The emotional aspect of the beauty industry further emphasizes the importance of personalization, as it allows brands to connect with customers on a deeper level, catering to their specific desires. Carney says, “I might buy a new lipstick if I am having a bad day. You may buy something else because you are feeling a certain way. There are signals that the consumer gives us that allow us, through personalization and AI, to understand the intent in a better way to serve the right product. It might be based on what you have previously browsed, might be based on what similar consumers are searching for, or frequently bought together. These all help guide the customer to better find what they are looking for.”

Laura Mercier and BareMinerals also have a feature called Virtual Try-On that takes personalization to a whole new level. It really brings that in-store experience online so that consumers can picture what the product will truly look like.

Results

The Shopify replatform, website redesign, plus the strategic tech stack including Klevu for personalized search, and Nosto for UGC, has resulted in impressive results:

• 38% increase in AOV for Laura Mercier
• 29% decrease in bounce rate from Paid Search for Laura Mercier
• 26% increase in ecommerce conversion for Bare Minerals
• 18% decrease in bounce rate for Bare Minerals

Klevu Feature Focus:

• Merchandising: Klevu’s Smart Merchandising is a holistic tool that magically combines rich insights from site-wide search, navigation, purchases and the customer’s current session with strategic business goals. The results? A hyper-relevant discovery experience for customers and a nice boost in performance for ecommerce websites.

• Search Personalization: When a search happens, Klevu identifies the shopper’s intent and matches their behavior to the behavior of others using the Klevu platform. Klevu then uses clickstream data to re-order products within subsequent search results.

• Natural Language Processing for Longer tiered searches: No matter the length or the complexity of the query, Klevu processes and understands what the shopper means when they search, including complexion type, articles, stop words, inflections, and price points.

• KMC analytic tracking: Realize your revenue potential with Klevu analytics. You can optimize major campaigns, uncover new tactics, reduce friction in the customer journey, and avoid missed opportunities for revenue growth through Klevu’s analytics dashboard.