Yves Rocher
Yves Rocher enhances customer experience with Sensefuel's AI-powered search and product discovery platform
Key benefits
1month
to deploy Sensefuel
28%
increase in search usage
Significant rise in product page views
Boost in add-to-cart actions
Measurable lift to NPS scores
An iconic brand in the beauty industry
Yves Rocher is an iconic beauty brand, globally recognized for its commitment to plant-based cosmetics and environmental sustainability. Founded in 1959, the company currently operates 2500 stores worldwide.
30 million customers worldwide
2,500 points of sale
Presence in over 110 countries
Cosmetics leader in France
A website bridging the retail network
Yves Rocher’s website offers beauty products and assists shoppers in locating their nearest local store and beauty salon. Its primary goal is to attract new customers who will eventually become loyal in-store shoppers.
Since its launch, the website has experienced a doubling in revenue. However, the ultimate goal of the website is to serve the brand experience and support the physical store network. It provides valuable services that complement the offerings of the retail network, such as facilitating repeat purchases of products unavailable in-store, enabling online bookings for beauty salon treatments, and offering gifts.
Exploring Upgrades to Search
Laëtitia Le Moigne serves as the E-Commerce Director at Yves Rocher, bringing with her a decade of experience working for the company. In her role, Laetitia is responsible for overseeing and optimizing all digital touchpoints within the Yves Rocher group, ensuring optimal digital commercial performance.
Nine years ago, the company migrated its website to SAP Hybris. However, the e-commerce team realized that its native search capabilities – in reality, an implementation of Apache Solr, a general-purpose search framework – could not meet their ambitions in terms of user experience and performance. Yves Rocher's internal architects and developers made several attempts to optimize Solr. However, despite their efforts, and multiple platform upgrades it became evident that the desired optimization couldn't be achieved.
Laetitia Le Moigne's team started exploring third-party ecommerce search and product discovery solutions and reached out to vendors, including Algolia. They were interested in understanding what an e-commerce search engine solution could offer and sought feedback from their peers to evaluate the implementation effort required.
Sensefuel: a Promising Alternative
During a trade show, Mrs Le Moigne encountered the Sensefuel team and was immediately drawn to their innovative AI-driven search solution. “In comparison to other options, Sensefuel stood out as superior,” she remarked. “Its promise to enhance e-commerce search, along with added features like product recommendations and dynamic merchandising capabilities, intrigued me. Sensefuel's unique approach was evident.”
Yves Rocher’s e-commerce team found Sensefuel user-friendly for e-merchandisers and manageable for marketing teams. Unlike solutions requiring lengthy IT projects, Sensefuel offered swift implementation and notable flexibility. The ability to quickly test Sensefuel in a Proof of Concept (POC) was also a decisive factor. Recognizing their modest product catalog of only 1000 references, they sought a solution that could perform regardless of catalog size.
Conducting a Proof of Concept with Sensefuel
Yves Rocher embarked on a Proof of Concept (POC) with Sensefuel in September 2022, following discussions with other Sensefuel clients. Collaboration between both technical teams was seamless," Le Moigne noted. "Yves Rocher's IT team found that Sensefuel's platform was open, contrary to being a black box."
The companies defined specific KPIs for the POC. Yves Rocher's internal analytics team created a custom performance dashboard using Google Analytics alongside Sensefuel's provided dashboards, ensuring independent performance evaluation.
Integration of Sensefuel into Yves Rocher's website was swift via a simple script. Within a month, after minor iterations for branding alignment, the cosmetics company was set for the POC's launch.*
Preparation began in July 2022, followed by a 4-week POC in September. The company split web traffic in France for A/B testing, comparing Sensefuel against their commerce platform's native search engine, Solr. Weekly meetings tracked performance throughout the POC.
Achieving a 28% Increase in Search Usage
The results of the test were positive and the cosmetics leader made the decision to deploy Sensefuel across the whole French website in early 2023.
The search usage rate saw an immediate improvement, increasing from 7% to 9% of visitors, marking a 28% increase. This metric had remained stagnant for years. The e-commerce team also observed a significant rise in product page views originating from search and an increase in add-to-cart actions from the search page.
Most importantly, customer NPS surveys no longer received negative feedback about the search engine; in fact, there were positive comments.
Expanding from France to Europe and Beyond
Sensefuel is currently being deployed in seven European countries, extending beyond France. Mrs Le Moigne highlights that Sensefuel presents a genuine opportunity for smaller subsidiaries with smaller teams, as the Sensefuel engine can autonomously fine-tune itself with minimal effort.
Yves Rocher is considering transitioning from integrating Sensefuel via a script to utilizing the Sensefuel API, aiming to further enhance performance and the user experience. Additionally, the cosmetics leader is exploring the integration of Sensefuel into their mobile application.
Sensefuel: “A True Partner, Not Just a Vendor”
Laëtitia Le Moigne takes pride in the perseverance shown in optimizing Yves Rocher's online search. She firmly believes in the importance of continuous self-challenge and embracing innovative approaches. Her team refused to give up, and engaging with Sensefuel proved to be a wise decision. She looks forward to fostering a strong relationship with Sensefuel, providing feedback to their R&D team, and sharing best practices on AI-powered search optimization and performance metrics with other clients.
Yves Rocher's E-Commerce Director summarizes her experience working with Sensefuel by stating, "Sensefuel is one of those suppliers who position themselves as true partners rather than just vendors, and this is highly valuable as it allows both parties to progress."
