How AI and AR Can Help Beauty Brands Attract and Retain Customers
With the rapidly rising popularity of AI and AR, it’s no surprise to see beauty brands embracing the advancements to enhance customer experience, grow sales, and more. While it can raise the concern of whether these technologies are overhyped or actually have lasting substance, AI and AR have proven to be useful in a variety of different areas — and proven that there is longevity beyond just the hype.
The power of AI and AR has reached major beauty brands like L’Oréal, CoverGirl, Aveda, and Tarte Cosmetics, enabling them to offer customers individualized shopping experiences, all from the comfort of their own homes. Through features like virtual product try-ons, a beauty brand’s website can allow users to see how different beauty products would actually look when applied to their own unique features. By providing this functionality, brands can boost buyer confidence and reduce the rate of unsatisfied customers, resulting in more purchases and fewer returns.
Tarte Cosmetics, for instance, saw a 200% increase in sales when it launched its virtual makeup try-on tool. Aveda’s similar hair-color feature led to a spike in traffic and a 112% increase in the length of time people spent on the brand’s site.
AI in the beauty industry isn’t just useful for customer-facing products, either. Beauty brands can use it to improve supply and demand forecasting, as well as get more detailed insights into exactly what it is consumers want. Estée Lauder experienced a 30% increase in forecasting accuracy after making the switch to an AI application. As the presence of these technologies continues to grow within the industry, no brand, whether big or small, will want to be left behind.
AI and AR: The Great Equalizers
AI and AR in the beauty industry provide opportunities for customers to connect with brands beyond traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Whether it’s AR face filters or AI chatbots, these solutions make it possible to bring all the benefits of a physical store into the digital world.
This is especially good news for smaller brands still trying to build up loyal customer bases. Chatbots can be employed to answer common questions from new customers, while virtual try-ons make it possible for users to experiment with new products before they buy, removing much of the risk associated with purchasing from new brands.
Behind the scenes, AI will play a crucial role in helping companies personalize customer experiences and predict customer demand. Brands can use AI algorithms to analyze user behavior and feedback to find out what customers are truly looking for and adjust their strategies accordingly.
These technologies make it possible for beauty brands to truly compete in the online space, regardless of how established they are. For this to happen, however, companies need to understand how these technologies are best implemented within websites and mobile apps.
How AR, AI, and Web Development Work Together
While the details will vary from one beauty brand’s website to another — depending on a brand’s particular products and customer base — there are three general areas where these technologies can be integrated into the online experience:
- Interactivity – This is the customer-facing aspect of AI and AR. It’s where users can try on different products and chat with virtual assistants when they have questions. These are the types of technological tools that will bring new customers in and boost consumer confidence.
- SEO and Lead Generation – There are AI tools available that can help brands choose the right keywords and search terms best suited for brand discoverability. They can even be used to improve customer segmentation to help better reach specific subsets of a brand’s target demographics. Once users are on a website, AI can be put to use to personalize the experience for each customer by showing the most relevant products to them first.
- The Backend – AI will not just improve the user experience (UX); it can make websites run better and more efficiently. Modern AI can write code and find errors within existing code in order to ensure everything is optimized on the backend. It can also be used to monitor product inventory to ensure items remain stocked.
While these technologies have the potential to be useful for virtually any beauty brand’s website, it’s important to implement a thoughtful strategy with specific goals in mind instead of choosing a tool for the sake of embracing the latest and greatest. Those strategic goals can be anything from building up a loyal fan base to improving inventory predictions to optimizing the user-friendliness of a website.
To ensure a successful implementation of AI and AR in the beauty industry, it’s important to know what you’re aiming for. If you keep that in mind, you can ensure that these technologies will benefit both you and your customers.
Ready to enhance your beauty brand’s online presence and customer experience with AI and AR? Contact us today to discuss a tailored strategy for your brand’s success in the digital beauty industry.
