ULTA is a national retailer of a wide assortment of prestige, salon, and beauty products with over $280 million in annual revenues.

The Challenge
As a full service beauty retailer with in-store salons, prestige brands, and cosmetics consultation services, ULTA provided an extensive and robust experience within its stores. ULTA was interested in developing an ecommerce presence that would transition these elements to the internet, allowing visitors to shop in a fashion closely mirroring the real world cosmetics buying habits of its customers.

The Solution
To facilitate the presentation of relevant products and content to ULTA customers, a proprietary data-mapping system was developed. This system, utilized for both product and content, had a two-fold goal; to gather the data cosmetics customers need to navigate to and make informed decisions about beauty products, and to arrange all product (whether textual or physical) into a relational information matrix. The latter insures that particularly apt and relevant items are always available for cross-merchandising and reference purposes.

More Information
The Ulta Cosmetics site was originally built by Online Retail Partners. Nodal PT principal Rick Tilghman served as chief information architect for the ULTA engagement, overseeing all usability, navigation, and interface architecture.