Kate Somerville achieves a 14% increase in revenue using Nosto and Guidance

Industry: Beauty
Platform: Magento
Iconic skincare clinic Kate Somerville (named after its founder) is a destination for anyone seeking real solutions to skin concerns.
Learn MoreSolution:
Highly personalized homepage, Product page, Cart and Checkout experiences and template customization
Learn moreResults:
16% more transactions, 14% more revenue, 5% higher conversion rate on PDP cross-sell recommendations and 66% more traffic
Learn moreAbout Kate Somerville
With over 25 years of experience in treating some of the most photographed faces in the world, the iconic skincare clinic (named after its founder) operates out of the heart of Hollywood. Her products provide a visible skin transformation, formulated with highly functional active ingredients for maximum efficacy and balanced with soothing botanicals to reduce potential sensitivity concerns. With an emphasis on clinical skincare, advanced technologies, unparalleled service and proven results, Kate Somerville is a destination for anyone seeking real solutions to skin concerns.

Challenge
Like most brands starting out as brick and mortar stores and later expanding into ecommerce, Kate Somerville needed to improve and develop their digital presence while recreating consistencies in their customer interactions. Shopping for skincare products is an endeavor unique to every person: the perfect product can depend on factors like gender, age, skin type, and ethnicity. In a clinic, Kate’s specialists can help each shopper directly; the challenge was finding a similar way to engage customers on a 1:1 basis online. Struggling with outdated UIs, limited tracking, manual processes and no personalization, Guidance and Nosto teamed up to help.
Nosto has been a great partner for us. We were able to see a significant lift in revenue/visitors when we A/B tested the solution vs manual selection. The results sealed the deal for us as we know for certain that we are getting return on the investment. You can’t say that about too many software solutions.
Sarah Zylstra Skinner, Director of Digital Marketing
Solution
Highly Personalized Hompage Experience
Guidance designed, built and launched the Kate Somerville website on the Magento Commerce Enterprise Edition platform in early 2017. The robust flexibility of the Magento Commerce platform allowed Guidance to design a highly customized homepage featuring a combination of Product Recommendations, still and moving product visuals and user testimonials. Kate Somerville was recognized as a finalist for a 2017 IRCE Excellence Award for Web Redesign of the Year in eCommerce.
Product Recommendations and Template Customization
- Home and Category pages were enhanced with data-driven Product Recommendations to inspire new visitors to convert. Returning visitors are shown recommendations based on past browsing, search and purchase data.
- Nosto’s Recommendations template was customized to showcase products with a color-coded border for a more organized visual appeal. Product descriptions expand when hovering over the product image to increase consumer knowledge. Customers have the ability to add products to a cart directly from recommendations based on past browsing, search and purchase data.
Personalization on Product Pages
- A customized product filter functionality was added to filter products by ‘Skin Concern’, ‘Product Types’ and ‘Skin Types’. This functionality fits all browsing methods.
- The PDP dynamic layout was updated to include product descriptions covering benefits and ingredients, customer reviews and a persistent “add to bag” feature.
- Automatic cross-sell and up-sell product recommendations were added to inspire customers to shop further for similar or higher valued items, increasing average order value and conversion.
Personalization on the Cart and Checkout Pages
- Shopping cart Product Recommendations were added to the Cart page to display items most relevant to the ones the shopper is purchasing – driving last minute purchases.
- ‘Ultimate Kate Rewards’, a customized customer rewards and loyalty program, was promoted using banners strategically placed on the Cart and Checkout page. This provided greater visibility of the program to encourage shoppers to join.

Products used:
Results
Since going live with Nosto and Guidance, Kate Somerville has seen:
- a 66% increase in valuable traffic
- a 14% increase in revenue
- a 16% increase in transaction
- a 5% conversion rate on PDP cross-sell recommendations
66 %
increase in valuable traffic
16 %
increase in transactions
5 %
conversion rate