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48 March 2014 | beautystorebusiness.com showcase the brand in a better light, and you can create marketing partner- ships and ways for you to work better with them. Working with brands directly brings out more of the story, and I think at StyleBell.com we sell the brand, the story and the use of the product. What features make your site unique? And how do you plan to enhance the customer experience in the future? We know our customers and products; we understand our site analytics, seg- ments and browsing patterns; and we're building a brand. I'm such a tech junkie, which is why I'm in this industry; so I'm always looking for cutting-edge technology to help the overall shopping experience, whether that's personalized marketing, determining appropriate seg- mentation or looking into new search features. As far as new features, we're putting a lot of focus on navigation, con- tent and product display to enhance the shopping experience. That might mean doing promotions catered to a certain segment or testing email capabilities—a lot of that is industry practice you can research. But I would say a key differentiator is that a number of our customer-service representatives are licensed cosmetologists. I think that's a unique part of our business, and it really showcases who we are. The people who answer our phones know and have tested almost every single product that's on our site, and within three minutes they'll under- stand what type of hair you have and offer the flat iron or hair dryer or curling iron that will suit your needs. That's something you realize your customers need. It helps with everything—product choices, understand- ing product assortment, understanding the differences between the various clips a stylist may use, what would work on a certain hair type, etc. In general, how would you assess the current online salon-retail landscape? I would say there are two: the beauty consumer landscape and the online salon landscape. The biggest difference now is that there is a market for salons. Three years ago there was a very limited salon and stylist market. The introduction of mobile devices and tablets has changed the online salon opportunity and taken it to a different level. We do surveys with our customer database and our salons, and about three years ago we asked salons and stylists about their Internet accessibility. Only 10% had some Inter- net accessibility during the day. In the same survey seven months ago, 80% of survey participants had all-day Internet accessibility. That's a dramatic shift in the salon-retail world. We're able to capture that market, and they're able to do one-click checkout from the salon and get all of their replenishable goods. That's what really excites me because it's always fun to work in new markets. By starting our salon-professional pro- gram, which was driven by all of these analytics, we see more licensed cosmetolo- gists coming on. Whether they're actually purchasing on the phone is a different story, but they're able to research and find products in the daytime, which they haven't been able to do before. What percentage of your site's visitors are on mobile devices? Currently, about 25% to 30% of our traffic is mobile. In 2010, it was 5%. In the last three years, that's a pretty dramatic shift. The other shift is from tablets: In 2011, probably when the iPad was launched, only 0.5% came from tablets. Now, it's 14% of our overall traffic. The beauty of the tablet is that traffic from these devices creates about 25% of our revenue. Mobile conversion rates are considerably lower than desktop or tablet conversion rates. One thing we're really focused on for 2014 is working with cutting-edge advertising partners to really figure out the reason for this conversion gap and how we can close it, because 30% of traffic equals a good amount of revenue. Traffic is going to be growing; I'm very curious to see what that percentage is next year. We're see- ing day-to-day shifts; month over month it grows. Even after the holidays, everyone was using Safari 7.0.1 all of a sudden. As soon as Apple releases something, people get on it—they don't wait around. There are a lot of first adopters for all devices, including Android and IOS. How important do you think ecommerce is for traditional retailers? It's so important, and everyone knows it. In 1998, I had to explain to everyone what ecommerce was and why it was important. They would put one person on the project. Now, if retailers aren't online, it's detri- mental; they simply have to be. The holiday season showed incredible numbers. When Williams-Sonoma released second-quarter data, direct-to-consumer sales—which, I think, was 95% ecommerce—accounted for 50% of total revenue. That is huge and can't be ignored. I think retailers now are going into the next phase, talking about conver- gence. How are they bringing together their stores, ecommerce, phone orders, etc., converging them to understand the shopper and provide a unique, easy way to shop so they never lose a customer? I think that's where the industry is going. Say you need a size 10 shirt at a store; it can refer you to its website and may even place the order for you right there. It's all about convergence and retaining that customer. I think retailers are continuing to innovate. One cool idea I saw was the shoppable storefront, where a shopper on the storefront window can browse through and create an online purchase right there. Things like that will be much more integrated into stores. I think that, in essence, the storefront is becoming a marketing tool for all of these various channels they have, whether it's ecom- merce or on a phone. The storefront always has been a major marketing tool. Where do you see the future of beauty retailing online? Mobile and tablet ecommerce can no longer be ignored. Manufacturers, especially in professional hair care, if they haven't already, will be creating partnerships with sites such as StyleBell.com. I think larger sites, such as Amazon, Drugstore.com and Target, which have made major investments in luxury beauty and haircare websites, will continue to do so because there's so much opportunity. I see more convergence. I also see the salon industry growing more, and it hasn't really been fully tapped yet. Would you ever want to have a brick-and-mortar store? It's not in our immediate goals to create our own offline presence. But that being said, we're definitely being approached by and looking at various offline part- ners that have expertise in that area to play upon and market that convergence opportunity. We'll see what happens! How did your own product line, Maijan, come about? At StyleBell.com, we're all about customer data, customer feedback and understanding T h e O n l i n e E m p r e s s . i n d d 4 8 The Online Empress.indd 48 2 / 4 / 1 4 1 : 3 5 P M 2/4/14 1:35 PM