Demandware's 'Trojan Horse' analytics allowing L'Oréal to 'better manage the customer journey'

L'Oréal global head of digital Vincent Stuhlen explains how analytics were a surprise package within Demandware's e-commerce platform

Analytics is a "Trojan Horse" inside Demandware's enterprise cloud commerce platform which has allowed international cosmetics and beauty company L'Oréal to "much better manage the customer journey".

That's what Vincent Stuhlen, global head of digital for L'Oréal, revealed during an address at the Demandware Xchange '14 conference in Barcelona. The firm had deployed Demandware to aid with e-commerce but Stuhlen said that it's the analytical tools that have unexpectedly provided L'Oréal with the greatest strategic benefits.

"Before we didn't have that [analytics] and Demandware brought in a Trojan Horse for our analytics strategy, as part of the full package," he explained, going on to describe that now L'Oréal can use analytics to measure performance of everything from media campaigns to the designs of individual sections of its website.

"What we do now is much more optimising the full impacts of media exposure or going into diagnostic tools to going into certain merchandising pages and optimising everything," said Stuhlen.

"We've got to the state where we measure things and do much heavier testing than we had been doing before. We do multiple types of testing on key pages and we've had some intellectual challenges to crack," he added.

The use of analytics has enabled "a new way of working" for L'Oréal, with Stuhlen describing the aim of the firm to be "really wanting to move towards constant evolution", through the use of tools to measure customer behaviour, something he added L'Oréal is "trying to do more and more".

Stuhlen described some examples of how use of Demandware's analytical tools has already benefited L'Oréal, including "already twice optimising the home page".

"Because this is where we had a great brand point of sale as a global brand, but then we had to run the numbers and we had to do some trade off. Maybe it's going to be less experiential and a bit more functional," he explained, describing how functionality is often viewed as more important by customers than a brand experience is.

However, Stuhlen added that these updates aren't just rolled out immediately, but rather are properly tested using the tools in order to ensure L'Oréal gets the biggest benefits possible.

"We've optimised dozens of pages and the good thing is we can launch a pilot, learn, stabilise, then rollout. That's really what we try to do, with three months between the first pilot and the rollout," he said.