When cosmetics company, NARS, recognized that it needed to address mobile, the French company quickly decided that it wanted a lot, and fast.

With very strict brand guidelines (all creative must be approved by the masters themselves in France), and a keen understanding of platform usability, NARS wanted to deliver a seamless, beautiful experience across tablet, mobile and desktop, without having to do an entire re-platforming. The company wanted a very fast turnaround time, an impeccable design, error-free usability and functionality and to literally wow users at first glance. NARS also did not want to split and dilute its SEO investments across mobile, tablet and desktop. AND, the company wanted to fix the problem that email and social links only led to the desktop site.

In other words, NARS wanted it all.

Lucky for executives there, Merkle‘s company, 5th Finger, had a solution that would fit in quite nicely. As Steen Andersson, VP, 5th Finger, says in this case study presentation below, the answer for NARS was responsive design, but that would take too long. The software solution 5th Finger could offer involved a new, responsive design that would adjust automatically to whatever device the user was on, without a re-platforming or redesign. The 5th Finger technology brings together all the elements of responsive design with only the simple insertion of a line of javascript coding.

Watch this insanely enlightening case study presentation from eTail West to learn just how Steen and his team worked to address all of NARS’s challenges, including how they navigated NARS’s highly customized e-commerce platform with a labyrinth of patches and tweaks, how he addressed new priorities that arose within the first month of the project, and how he adhered to very complex brand guidelines throughout the project.

As a makeup gal, I may be a bit biased, but the end result really is beautiful. Check it out.