Oracle Commerce And ULTA Beauty Transform Customer Experience

Leading beauty retailer’s mobile-friendly platform integrates content and streamlines customer interaction management

As online cosmetic shopping booms, leading beauty superstore ULTA Beauty has responded with an enhanced online experience that helps customers compare products, take advantage of promotions, and try new items. ULTA’s upgrade to a new Oracle Commerce platform integrates search and navigation, facilitates commerce anywhere, enables cross-channel promotions, and caters to customers on nearly any device. As a result, customers can find what they want, when they want it—regardless of location or device.

ULTA Beauty, a leading US retailer of cosmetics, salon products, and services, implemented Oracle Commerce to support growing e-commerce sales and deliver a consistent consumer experience across more than 696 retail locations as well as mobile, web, guest services, and direct mail channels.

“Elevating the customer e-Commerce experience is a priority for us and having the ability to design the customer experience and showcase the breadth of product offerings at ULTA Beauty is integral to our success,” said Jeffrey Hamm, director, e-Commerce, ULTA Beauty. “The Oracle Commerce upgrade has been instrumental in helping us achieve our vision for the business and deliver a personalized experience for our e-Commerce customers.”

By replacing a third-party search service with Oracle Commerce’s integrated search and navigation, ULTA Beauty dramatically improved site navigation and search results. The updated site lets consumers easily browse categories and find specific products among ULTA Beauty’s more than 20,000 items in cosmetics, fragrance, hair care, skincare, body and bath products, and salon styling tools.

“The Oracle Commerce platform offers a foundation for growth as we innovate and evolve to continually improve the ULTA shopping experience so we can continue to meet order volumes particularly during peak trading seasons,” said Michelle Pacynski, director, IT, e-Commerce, ULTA Beauty.

ULTA.com is now optimized for mobile, tablet, and desktop devices using a responsive web design architecture integrated with Oracle Commerce. The new architecture replaced a third-party mobile solution that required additional resources to maintain consistency between online and mobile channels.

Since going live with the upgraded site, ULTA Beauty has reduced processing time for key content deployments by 50 percent. The site also performed seamlessly during peak trading periods over the 2013 holiday season.

“ULTA Beauty is using Oracle Commerce to create a more interactive purchasing path that improves customers’ experiences across stores, e-commerce, and all other channels. The result is convenient, 24/7 access to the products and services customers expect,” said Mike Webster, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Retail. “Integrated search, better performance, flexibility across platforms, and best-in-class functionality are what make Oracle Commerce the go-to solution for retailers.”

ULTA Beauty implemented Oracle Commerce with minimal customizations and relies on the solution’s best-in-class dynamic content capabilities to engage customers. ULTA Beauty also integrates third-party solutions with Oracle Commerce to further enhance the customer experience.

Supporting Resources

• About ULTA Beauty (http://www.ulta.com/)
• About Oracle Commerce (http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/commerce/overview/index.html)

About Oracle
Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle, For more information, visit www.oracle.com.

About ULTA Beauty
ULTA Beauty is the largest beauty retailer that provides one-stop shopping for prestige, mass and salon products and salon services in the United States. ULTA Beauty provides affordable indulgence to its customers by combining unmatched product breadth, value and convenience with the distinctive environment and experience of a specialty retailer. ULTA Beauty offers a unique combination of over 20,000 prestige and mass beauty products across the categories of cosmetics, fragrance, haircare, skincare, bath and body products and salon styling tools. ULTA Beauty also offers a full-service salon and a wide range of salon haircare products in all of its stores.