The consumer is a fickle creature, and evermore fickle in an age where they can seemingly go searching for anything and everything they think they might want at the drop of a hat. In the current climate, it pays (quite literally!) to have a loyal customer base. While some brands or retailers can trade on their name and renown, if you don’t show that you care about your customer’s needs and desires, they won’t stick around.
So what are the difficulties when it comes to building online loyalty?
- Customers have numerous means of comparing prices and products
- They can shop around
- The average consumer has a short attention-span
- Numerous competitors are ready to jump in at the first sign of faltering allegiance
For many reasons, building online loyalty can be a greater challenge for those in the beauty and cosmetics industry, compared to other industries wanting to keep and grow online loyalty. One of the reasons for this is that the products themselves tend to be considered as easily found commodities, where one brand doesn’t tend to have been able to corner any particular market. Yes, you may have a mascara brush that does work quite uniquely, but a dozen other brands are going to have their own uniquely designed mascara brush. Unlike markets where the products are more niche, or areas where it’s simply easier to go to the nearest retail store, the urge to shop around isn't curtailed by a beauty brand or cosmetics retailer having a unique product that the shopper couldn’t possibly get anywhere else.
How beauty personalisation builds trust
If you want to build online loyalty amongst your customers, you need to make sure that there is a solid foundation of trust. Now, trust doesn’t mean that you have a site that has a secure payment system and has been recognised as safe by computer browsers (although, if you have neither of those things, then you might want to deal with that first). To build online loyalty, you need to make sure of a couple of things. Firstly, that they can trust you with their personal data. Secondly, that you care about their customer experience and loyalty.
Beauty personalisation can help you with both those things in order to help you build online loyalty. When it comes to data, beauty personalisation spells out exactly how it is used: it is used to help the customer by creating an individual profile that will improve their shopping experience. It improves the shopping experience by providing personalised recommendations and complementary products, based on what the customers needs are across a variety of products.
Returning to the difficulties stated earlier, beauty personalisation is also an excellent way of keeping the consumer’s attention-span well and truly on your website and what it is offering. If you have a wide variety of price ranges, those that are appropriate to the customer can be shown first. The fact that the service also means that they can find what they need and desire very quickly, means that their attention doesn’t wander and they are less likely to go shopping elsewhere.
In conclusion
For beauty and cosmetics brands and retailers, building online loyalty is one of the most profitable ways of growing revenue. This is especially true since most cosmetics, or skincare and haircare products are far less likely to be brought back to the store than most other types of product. It therefore pays in many ways to make sure that you have built online loyalty and built trust.
If you'd like to see how our AI-powered beauty personalisation technology can help you build online loyalty with a larger and more loyal customer base, book a demo.