New face brings 75% of leads online

Company

Authentica is one of the leading B2B distributors of professional beauty products in the CIS. For 20 years it grew through offline channels and personal relationships, with a website that was little more than an outdated catalog. By 2019 it had 350 employees, offices in major cities, and more than 15,000 beauty businesses in its client base — yet it generated zero leads online. Every inquiry came through word of mouth or direct sales.

Problem

That model worked in the premium segment, but it had a hard ceiling. Clients perceived Authentica as a supplier rather than a strategic partner, remembered the brands in the portfolio but not Authentica itself, and made their final brand choice before the company ever entered the conversation. My job was to lead the company's first serious move into digital without losing the premium perception that the founder had spent two decades building.

Discovery

I started with three months of discovery. I ran a full digital audit, interviewed clients and sales teams, reviewed support calls, analyzed CRM data, and mapped the customer journey and business processes in BPMN. The picture that emerged was clear: the company was seen as a logistics provider; clients were asking for education and business support that was not publicly available; and most digital touchpoints happened at the administrator level, leaving owners and managers out of reach. There was a wide information gap before the first contact, and the funnel was starting too late.

Hypotheses

From that research I framed five hypotheses. A brand showcase would increase trust and shift inquiries to digital. A services catalog would let us enter the funnel earlier, when clients were still deciding whether to open or grow a salon. An editorial journal would drive SEO traffic, raise awareness, and demonstrate expertise. A restructured information architecture would improve perception and flow. And a visual language inspired by high-end retail would signal that Authentica was not just another distributor.

Design

The design decisions followed those bets. The homepage referenced luxury fashion while answering the key questions about the company. Brand pages were built with brand managers and adapted for CMS management so the team could run SEO experiments. The services catalog was developed with sales to cover real scenarios: opening support, growth diagnostics, brand selection. The journal was organized around a four-format content model — Hero for case studies, Hub for recurring rubrics, Help for guides and SEO articles, and Hype for announcements and events — and built with editors and marketing in the room.

Tension between data and convenience

Not everything went smoothly. Sales insisted on a 10-field inquiry form, so I split it into steps, tracked drop-off, and used the data to prove that length was costing leads. Some article formats lacked expert depth and were discontinued. The RICE framework did not take hold in a low-digital-maturity organization, so I switched to user story mapping and business-priority-driven decisions. The founder made a fixed visual decision for the homepage, which prevented A/B testing alternatives. In hindsight I would have pushed harder for stakeholder alignment from the start, argued for an internal product team earlier, and launched the journal with an even simpler MVP focused on core SEO and case studies rather than a full editorial structure.

Results

After launch I set up tracking of user journeys and conversions, analyzed paths from journal to brand and service pages to inquiries, strengthened internal linking, and added CTAs in articles. I also trained the marketing team on the CMS and transferred content ownership so the product could keep evolving after I stepped back.

Within six months organic traffic grew 80%. Up to 75% of all company inquiries came through the website. 30% of inquiries came from users who first engaged with the journal. Average time on site increased 2.5×. The site became the new face of the company, not only generating leads but shifting how Authentica was positioned in the market: from supplier to expert partner.