Digital & Makeup 2020: From makeup virtual try-on to digital beauty advisor -experiences
Makeup virtual try-on is something we see weekly on the news and the technology has significantly matured within the last couple of years. It's proven that the try-on -experiences can help to convert the visitors to purchasing customers but it still only partly solves the product discovery dilemma as color and texture are merely two different components in the formulation of cosmetics.
The shape of your face, eye color, skintone & undertone, preferences of finishes & coverage and even more skin deep factors, like your skintype, are relevant factors when choosing what makeup you should be wearing. Not to mention, whether you prefer vegan, cruelty free, organic, paraben free, fragrance free, oil free and whatever you or your skin is sensitive to.
So what comes next?
Digital Beauty Advisor -experiences. With today's technology brands and retailers can leverage different types of virtual beauty advisor -experiences to bring automated, personalized and individualized recommendations to consumers across different touchpoints.
Technologies (like us at Revieve) allow building digital beauty advisor -experiences through technology, combining the traditional quizzes, questionnaires and guided selling tools with more advanced capabilities like skin diagnostics (skintone, shape of your face, skin concerns) to additional data (like purchase history) - in order to deliver highly individualized experiences and recommendations to consumers. Obviously, the makeup virtual try-on (LiveAR) is still there, just with limited amount of products that match the user as an individual.
Lets take an example:
Imagine that your user has symptoms of acne and your foundation can treat it while giving coverage during the day.
--> A mobile skin analysis will analyze the acne (along with other things like skintone) and take it into account for recommendations.
Or that a user has previously shopped with you and purchased only cruelty free and vegan products.
--> With an integration - the beauty advisor will only know to recommend cruelty free and vegan products.
Or that the user has a certain shape of face and hair color where it's more difficult to find certain color combinations.
--> The AI-driven recommendations will know what colors and combinations are suitable - in a similar way as your traditional beauty advisor would.
The last step to convince is then live video virtual try-on. If only virtual try-on can help you to increase conversion and basket size - imagine what a digital beauty advisor can (note: it's not a secret: it can - and a lot!)?
So does the digital beauty advisor replace or the beauty consultant?
One thing we hear most often is when discussing with the leading brands and retailers in the industry is that they still think the human beauty advisors are the way to go and they don't want to replace them. And the aim for any beautytech -company or brand/retailer currently deploying is surely not to replace anything. Human touch and experiences will be key part of the future, but along there needs to be technologies to serve certain customer groups and in many cases the tool acts as a supporting tool for the part-time beauty consultant or even more experienced ones to deliver great customer service for the client through technology. Moreover, it allows creating often a digital connection to your shopper. What this then means? It means that by sending the results to the user through technology - we can link the data to an individual for further re-marketing & personalization.
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Who’s the writer and Revieve?Miikka is the VP of Strategic Partnerships at Revieve, working with the leading beauty brands and retailers, helping them to build new digital beauty experiences across different channels. At Revieve we build white label Digital Beauty Advisors (with market leading mobile skin diagnostics, AI-driven product recommendations and 3D live video makeup virtual try-on) for skincare and makeup.
Get in touch: miikka@revieve.com.
