Ulta Beauty’s investment in their e-commerce platform paid off. Earlier this year, it was reported the beauty salon company’s total traffic to their website increased by 74 percent with a 104 percent increase in mobile traffic alone. The result: Ulta Beauty’s online sales for Q3 rose by 62.8 percent from the same point last year. Online accounted for nearly 9 percent of all sales for the quarter.
Improvements in the company’s supply chain lead to a 10 percent cost reduction to complete each online order, according to CEO Mary Dillon on an earnings call. Such improvements lead to the expansion of other programs, such “store to door” which allows customers to order items to be delivered to their house at no extra cost if they can’t find it in-store.
“We rolled out this capability chainwide at the end of the third quarter, and while this initiative is still fairly small in terms of demand, it’s proving quite useful and satisfying guests looking for hot brands that are not available in every store, such as MAC or Morphe,” – Mary Dillon, CEO of Ulta Beauty
M-commerce continues to be a focus of Ulta Beauty’s expansion efforts. Having re-launched their mobile application in Q3, the company saw their mobile traffic increase by 92 percent year-over-year. Ulta Beauty’s mobile app has been downloaded over 4.4 million times and has an average 4.8 stars out of 5 across the Google Play and iTunes stores. Dirxion has partnered with Ulta Beauty to provide the company with new avenues to connect to their customers. This is done by utilizing Dirxion’s integration technologies and e-flyers within Ulta’s mobile applications. The e-flyer gives customers a new way to browse and purchase Ulta’s products in a format that can be sent to their customers at anytime from anywhere. This format also increases the efficiency in which Ulta can interact with and extend new deals to their customers. Integrated into their Google Play and Apple iTunes store applications, Ulta’s e-flyers receive a high level of exposure to their mobile customers.
