Beauty magazine Allure is rolling out a mobile site today that lets users sift through its 5,000-plus reviews while on the go—and should prove especially useful for point of purchase decisions.
Parent Condé Nast announced last year that it planned to launch mobile-optimized websites for all of its brands by the end of 2013, and there was a clear case to be made for Allure. The brand said its mobile traffic grew more than 230 percent in the past year and that nearly 40 percent of Allure.com's 2.3 average monthly uniques comes from mobile devices.
"We've seen tremendous mobile traffic growth in the last year, with the majority of mobile users connecting to Allure.com on their smartphone," said Allure editor in chief Linda Wells. "We know that they're using their devices to research products and hairstyles at retail and in salons—and that influenced our mobile content plan, navigation and user experience for the site."
In addition to the reviews, the mobile site will also have a heavy emphasis on images, with swipeable slideshows and the ability to closely zoom in on photos, a must for detail-oriented beauty addicts. Other Allure.com features being revamped for mobile (in addition to pared-down versions of the regular Web editorial) include an Award-Winners module where the Best of Beauty, Breakthrough and Readers’ Choice picks will live, the Daily Beauty Reporter blog, video content, and a My Saved Products tool that will let users bookmark favorite products across platforms. More mobile-only features like location-based product searches and e-commerce capabilities are expected to follow in the coming months.
The Allure.com mobile rollout is being sponsored by Johnson & Johnson. At launch, the sponsor integration will include ad units at top and bottom of mobile site, as well as interstitial units throughout.