How Clarins used Contentsquare to drive new product line conversions

The company

Clarins is a leading French luxury skincare and cosmetics brand, recognized as the number 1 premium skincare brand in Europe. With 28 subsidiaries, the company exports 93% of its products to 150 countries. 

Over the years, Clarins has continually reinvented its product portfolio, now incorporating over 250 natural and organic plant-based ingredients. The company has also enhanced its online shopping experiences to meet evolving consumer needs, launching 29 ecommerce websites across multiple markets, with its US site being the largest.

The challenge

Clarins wanted to continuously analyze its website performance and user behavior to identify points of friction, proactively make changes, and ensure a consistent experience across all of its sites. Its optimization strategy focuses on 3 main objectives: increasing conversion rates, enhancing user engagement, and promoting product discovery. 

To achieve these goals, Clarins relied on Contentsquare’s Experience Analytics and the AB Tasty Contentsquare integration. 

The solution

Using insights from both platforms, Clarins developed a simple, collaborative, data-driven framework for experimentation that ensures consistency across its brand. The company also shares these insights with its global team and key partners in different markets.

Here are 3 ways Clarins used Contentsquare and AB Tasty to optimize its product line.

1. Understand and analyze customer journeys

When Clarins launched its new Multi-Active day and night moisturizers product, they noticed that the page wasn’t converting as anticipated. 

To understand why conversions were low and uncover the exact points of friction in their customer journey, the ecommerce team used Contentsquare’s Journey Analysis.

This analysis revealed that users repeatedly navigated between product listing pages (PLPs) and product detail pages (PDPs). 

The team hypothesized that this behavior was because the night and day moisturizer product imagery looked too similar. Users were struggling to tell them apart and were likely to leave the site before making a purchase. 

To solve this, the team set up an A/B test in AB Tasty adding sun and moon icons to the product tiles to clearly indicate and differentiate day and night creams. This small visual change increased conversions on the Moisturizers PLP. 

Focus on understanding your customer journeys and analyzing them with empathy. Really put yourself in their shoes and explore your channels from their perspective. It sounds simple, but it’s one of the best ways to ensure your journeys are efficient and frictionless and that your branding is consistent throughout. Take time to dive deep into your journeys, identify fiction points, and optimize accordingly.

Edouard Madec

Director of Ecommerce

2. Increase customer engagement

Clarins wanted to engage users and create excitement around its new Multi-Active moisturizers without relying on frequent discounts that could compromise its premium brand image. 

The goal was to design a fun promotional campaign to boost customer engagement, build awareness, and drive sales across the product range.

To accomplish this, the team launched a 'spin the wheel' game featuring prizes from the new collection. The promotion allowed customers to receive products and gifts with their purchases, differing from typical discount deals. It also aligned with Clarins’ established practice of offering gifts with purchases.

The strategy was highly effective and is now repeated during pivotal moments throughout the year, such as seasonal sales, product rollouts, and holiday promotions.

3. Capture customers' attention as they’re about to exit the website

When Clarins relaunched its best selling product, Double Serum, they noticed that about 70% of the company’s customers weren’t buying the product. 

To make the product easily discoverable, the team A/B tested an exit-intent overlay that appears when users are about to leave the site. The overlay highlights the product and provides key attributes of the new Double Serum 9 formula, helping re-engage users. 

One of the tactics we came up with to increase product discoverability is this exit-intent overlay. So, as you're about to leave our site—if you're on desktop and your mouse moves close to that little 'X' button in the corner of your tab—we pop up this overlay. It tells you about the launch in a way that we think is very visually arresting. It provides everything you need to know about the product in just a few short lines, and it's a great way for us to encourage you to check out the new product.

Edouard Madec

Director of eCommerce

The results

These 3 optimizations helped Clarins to

• Increase conversion, considering every step of the customer journey

• Improve customer engagement, creating memorable experiences that increase delight

• Drive product discovery across all categories during new launches and cross-sell opportunities

Bonus content

3 best practices for brands looking to level up their website optimization like Clarins

To level up your experiments and product launches, Edouard Madec, Director of eCommerce at Clarins, recommends taking the following steps.

1. Define clear and measurable objectives

Ask yourself how the test supports your overall strategy and how you will measure success. If the test is not successful, are there opportunities to iterate?

2. Prioritize user experience

Review the different user experience (UX) elements and surface areas that could support your test, and consider how they can work together to create a cohesive experience.

3. Consider all data points, not just key metrics 

Leverage customer feedback and behavioral data to inform your future A/B tests and product strategies. If a test has neutral results, more in-depth analysis might be required. 

Our platform's integration with AB Tasty allows you to review your campaign performance to understand why your campaign outperformed or underperformed the control.