There is a rapidly growing trend and desire to engage with customers digitally. As more brands start to offer digital experiences to enhance the shopping journey, innovative beauty technology will become essential to meet consumer expectations. Increasing sales through the use of Beauty Tech will always be the ultimate goal for brands, however, there are also other important digital metrics (KPIs) that can be improved as a result of implementing AI, AR and beauty technologies.
Important digital metrics that can be significantly improved with beauty tech experiences include:
Basket Size, CR (Conversion Rate), and AOV (Average Order Value)
Nielsen reported 51% of consumers are willing to use AR to assess products, as the “try-before-you-by” experience is now helping to address real consumer pain points and help customers make more confident purchasing decisions. In fact, e-commerce platform Shopify reported that interactions with products featuring AR content and filters showed a 94% higher conversion rate than products without AR. With technology, such as virtual try-on, customers can try-on and discover more products than they would during the traditional in-store product try-on experience. For this reason, they are more likely to find more products that they love and purchase more. As a result, basket Size, CR, and AOV are three important metrics that brands can see a significant improvement with after implementing beauty tech.
Digital Engagements
Beauty Tech delivers useful and interactive content that helps customers find the products that are best fit for their individual needs. AR beauty filters are fun and engaging, bringing products to life before the customer’s eyes. As a result, consumers want to engage with such content more and more, and will often stay on a brand’s website longer trying on multiple shades and products. This higher engagement leads to better click-through-rate (CTR), and thus more sales.
Time-on-Site
When beauty shoppers can try on products virtually, they stay on a brand’s website longer. Beauty Tech adds interactive elements to the consumer journey, making the entire experience more entertaining, which in turn increases the average time they spend on a brand website. KAO’s makeup brand KATE reported that users stayed 4.3 times longer on the site that offered a virtual try-on experience compared with the previous campaign site without virtual try-on features.
New & Returning Traffic
Beauty Tech helps brands and retailers build a vital emotional connection with consumers, which leads to higher brand awareness and loyalty. Customers tend to return to brands they have positive associations with, and Beauty Tech delivers immersive and interactive shopping experiences that create such associations. Moreover, when customers are satisfied with their online shopping experience, chances are that they would come back for more or recommend the brand to their friends. This brand loyalty leads to higher return traffic numbers. Additionally, as many consumers are now searching for ways to virtually try-on products, brands are also likely to see their new site traffic increase as more and more consumers discover their virtual try-on tools through organic search.
Product Return Rate
Beauty Tech significantly increases confidence in purchase decisions—effectively lowering return rates. With virtual try-on, customers can directly see how the product looks for them, boosting confidence in making purchases. Beauty consumers who can experience the product virtually tend to avoid common shopping mistakes, leading to lower return rates.
Beauty Tech’s Growth and Evolution
Beauty Tech — especially the realms of AI-powered AR — has proven to be so helpful, and captivating, that it has enjoyed rapid growth and evolution. Moreover, recently the expedited shift to digital beauty behaviors due to the global pandemic, as well as demand for hyper-personalization and lack of physical product samples/in-store makeup & skincare services has led to an increase in virtual try-on usage and beauty tech’s growth. Along the way, Beauty Tech has found some fascinating uses—some expected, others emerging as surprises. Examples include:
- The Birth of Virtual Try-On Communities
- Creating digital beauty consultations and AR-enabled video tutorials
- Completely virtual personalized makeup tutorials
- Providing Touchless Try-Ons During the Pandemic
- Doing the Impossible “30 Shades in 30 Seconds”
- AI-powered skin analysis and simulated results for skincare products
The Birth of Virtual Try-On Communities
The joys of AR-enabled virtual try-on has given birth to a vast number of online communities in which users share their looks and see what others have done. Vogue refers to the rapid growth of virtual try-on communities as the democratization of beauty. “Social media, particularly Instagram and YouTube, has been widely accredited with the democratization of beauty,” Vogue writes. “The authority once attributed to European fashion houses now lies at the hands of online communities, helmed by the likes of Charles Jeffrey, Jackie Aina, and Nikkie de Jager. In 2018, beauty content generated more than 169 billion views on YouTube. The result is a highly-engaged audience, fluent in small-print formulas and who know the difference between a retinol and retinoids.”
These communities offer brands undreamed of opportunities for directly interacting with their customers, gauging which products are most tried, engaging in real-time market testing, and gaining insight into where trends are going. Harnessing all of this requires the use of an AR platform that supports analytics and can be seamlessly integrated across the 360 omnichannel shopping journey. Used optimally, such platforms can greatly enhance customer loyalty, as well as on-site dwell time and larger cart purchases. Perfect Corp. is the only beauty tech solution provider to offer 360 omni-channel digital solutions that engage consumers, provide personalization, and integrate seamlessly across platforms to ensure unified and comprehensive data insights.
Beauty Tech Enables Product Discovery and Education
These impactful results illustrate why Beauty Tech has become essential for beauty brands to drive customer engagement and sales. It is an immensely powerful tool that not only helps beauty brands deliver personalized product recommendations to customers but also provides real business value.
How Beauty Tech Can Improve Ecommerce KPI Metrics
There is a rapidly growing trend and desire to engage with customers digitally. As more brands start to offer digital experiences to enhance the shopping journey, innovative beauty technology will become essential to meet consumer expectations. Increasing sales through the use of Beauty Tech will always be the ultimate goal for brands, however, there are also other important digital metrics (KPIs) that can be improved as a result of implementing AI, AR and beauty technologies.
Important digital metrics that can be significantly improved with beauty tech experiences include:
Basket Size, CR (Conversion Rate), and AOV (Average Order Value)
Neilsen reported 51% of consumers are willing to use AR to assess products, as the “try-before-you-by” experience is now helping to address real consumer pain points and help customers make more confident purchasing decisions. In fact, e-commerce platform Shopify reported that interactions with products featuring AR content and filters showed a 94% higher conversion rate than products without AR. With technology, such as virtual try-on, customers can try-on and discover more products than they would during the traditional in-store product try-on experience. For this reason, they are more likely to find more products that they love and purchase more. As a result, basket Size, CR, and AOV are three important metrics that brands can see a significant improvement with after implementing beauty tech.
Digital Engagements
Beauty Tech delivers useful and interactive content that helps customers find the products that are best fit for their individual needs. AR beauty filters are fun and engaging, bringing products to life before the customer’s eyes. As a result, consumers want to engage with such content more and more, and will often stay on a brand’s website longer trying on multiple shades and products. This higher engagement leads to better click-through-rate (CTR), and thus more sales.
Time-on-Site
When beauty shoppers can try on products virtually, they stay on a brand’s website longer. Beauty Tech adds interactive elements to the consumer journey, making the entire experience more entertaining, which in turn increases the average time they spend on a brand website. KAO’s makeup brand KATE reported that users stayed 4.3 times longer on the site that offered a virtual try-on experience compared with the previous campaign site without virtual try-on features.
New & Returning Traffic
Beauty Tech helps brands and retailers build a vital emotional connection with consumers, which leads to higher brand awareness and loyalty. Customers tend to return to brands they have positive associations with, and Beauty Tech delivers immersive and interactive shopping experiences that create such associations. Moreover, when customers are satisfied with their online shopping experience, chances are that they would come back for more or recommend the brand to their friends. This brand loyalty leads to higher return traffic numbers. Additionally, as many consumers are now searching for ways to virtually try-on products, brands are also likely to see their new site traffic increase as more and more consumers discover their virtual try-on tools through organic search.
Product Return Rate
Beauty Tech significantly increases confidence in purchase decisions—effectively lowering return rates. With virtual try-on, customers can directly see how the product looks for them, boosting confidence in making purchases. Beauty consumers who can experience the product virtually tend to avoid common shopping mistakes, leading to lower return rates.
AR virtual try-on experience on a beauty eCommerce site.
Well-crafted AI + AR beauty tech can help consumers find the best products, but it can also educate consumers on these products while helping them understand how to use products to create the best results.
Many consumers turn to YouTube videos, for product advice, but makeup videos can often lack the interactivity and personalization provided through AR. With beauty tech solutions, such as Perfect Corp.’s YouCam Tutorial makeup teaching platform and Beauty Advisor 1-on-1, consumers can access personalized advice and education from the comfort of their homes, in a fully digital setting. AR can help consumers understand how to best use products for their individual features and beauty needs.
With Beauty Advisor 1-on-1, consumers can connect with beauty advisors through a real-time video call. Customers can chat with the advisor, receive beauty recommendations, and even try-on recommended products through AR-powered virtual try-on.