Mobile Apps for Beauty eCommerce: Feature Ideas to Enhance User Experience (UX)

You have an online store with makeup and skincare products and wonder how to make the best use of the beauty industry’s growing value? Going mobile may be the answer.
However, if you want to succeed, you must meet several conditions. The app has to address users’ needs and expectations, and the UI should reflect trends in CX design. It’s also recommended to make use of innovative technologies.
How do you get a handle on this?
Explore ideas for features you can implement in modern beauty eCommerce apps.
Key takeaways
- A user-friendly interface with clear navigation and intuitive layout is crucial for a successful beauty app.
- You can use AI-powered recommendations, personalized search, and virtual try-on features to enhance the shopping experience.
- To entice customers, you can showcase products with high-resolution images and videos.
- Allow users to share their favorite products and write reviews, building brand awareness and driving engagement.
- To incentivize repeat purchases and build customer loyalty, offer a loyalty rewards program.
- Ensure secure payment options with trusted payment gateways to instill confidence in customers.
- Offer fast and reliable shipping options with transparent tracking.
- Provide responsive customer support channels to address any inquiries or concerns promptly.
- Continuously update the app with new features and content to keep users engaged and interested. Leverage AI to provide personalized product recommendations, enhancing the shopping experience and increasing conversion rates.
mCommerce apps – a way to grow in the beauty industry
You’re probably well aware of how important online presence is in the case of stores with cosmetics and skincare products. According to McKinsey and Company, eCommerce is the largest single channel for the beauty sector.
Smartphones contribute significantly to this success. Mobile users purchased an est. 62.7% of products in the global online beauty care industry in 2023, according to Statista.
It’s best to consider mobile app development when planning a strategy for your store, as it opens you to new opportunities. It’s especially important given the current market situation.
In the State of the Consumer 2024 article by McKinsey and Company, the authors, C. Adams, K. Alldredge, and S. Kohli, draw attention to the fact that brand loyalty has weakened since the pandemic.
This situation has its pros and cons. Although it’s more challenging to get loyal users, more people enjoy exploring new brands and products.
The question is, how can your brand take advantage of it? The beauty market is promising but also competitive. It’s important to offer unique values and prioritize improving the user experience.
Check out ideas for features with the potential to improve UX in your mobile app project.
1. AR try-ons in beauty mCommerce apps
Sometimes, you can’t test beauty products on yourself because they aren’t available in the nearest store. On the other hand, buying an expensive lipstick or blush may be too risky without trying them on first. In such situations, Augmented Reality comes to the rescue.
AR allows customers to use filters that imitate specific products to check how they look on them. It enables users to try cosmetics without going out to a physical store and choose better products, so they’re less likely to return their purchases.
For example, in Sephora’s Virtual Artist app, you can see how various lipstick shades or eyeshadows look on you and even match them with your outfit. This makes buying beauty products easier and helps users make faster shopping decisions.
2. Skin analysis
Similarly to makeup, matching skincare products with one’s needs is often difficult. Luckily, AI solutions can conduct skin analysis and recommend the right products for the user’s skin condition.
By adding such tools in your mobile app, you help users improve their beauty routines and choose products that give the most satisfying results.
Skin analysis in mobile apps is a functionality implemented, for example, by Clinique or Ulta Beauty. There is also an option to connect the app with a device that creates personalized variants of skincare products, such as L’Oréal’s Perso.
3. AI chat
When a user doesn’t know how the returning policy works or can’t tell the difference between two similar products, the easiest thing to do is ask for help. Chat powered with Generative AI can answer their questions.
In the beauty eCommerce industry, AI-powered chat can advise users and give them personalized recommendations for beauty products. A good example of such a tool is Beauty Genius by L’Oréal.
4. Expert advise
AI can’t answer some questions when it can’t access specific information. In such a case, the alternative is cooperation with a specialist who can reply to user’s questions. It may be an expert who represents the brand or your store.
In practise, on the product view, there’s a section where users can write questions about the products. For example, whether it is suitable for people with extra dry skin or if it takes long time to absorb. Below these questions, you can read the expert’s reply.
Many users likely ask themselves similar questions, and this section would provide them with more information.
You can see what this functionality looks like, for example, in the Ulta Beauty web app. In this case, when writing the question, users indicate whether it concerns the product details or its application. With the answer comes information that its author is an expert representing the brand, which increases credibility.
5. Loyalty programs
Every product owner dreams of having loyal customers. These are users who have positive associations with the brand, which allows you to spend less budget on marketing. Why? Loyal customers are more eager to recommend the app to others, especially if they’re encouraged with a promo code, for example.
However, to attract such users, you must make an effort. You should offer the best UX and clearly explain why they should choose your store.
You can also offer membership in your loyalty program, which gives access to various benefits. Usually, such programs rely on the points system given for purchases, that can be later exchanged for benefits. You can find such solutions, for example, in e.l.f. Cosmetics and Skincare or Ulta Beauty apps.
Propositions of benefits:
- Personalized promotions
- Free delivery
- Birthday present
- Gift card
- More free product samples
- Cashback.
6. AI-recommended products
AI-powered features become a new must-have for every eCommerce app, not just from the beauty industry. When you recommend beauty brands and products based on data processed by artificial intelligence, they are better adjusted to individual user preferences.
Personalization is one way of using artificial intelligence to boost customer engagement and encourage users to check the app.
How do you use personalization and AI recommendations in practice?
- Recommend products in different places in the app. For example, you can display your propositions at checkout, after the user adds a product to the cart, on the product view, or in the main view.
- Recommendations can be created in many ways. The algorithm can rely on recently viewed products, items on the list of favorites, purchase history, and even other customer’s purchases with a similar profile (representing the same segment). Keep this in mind when determining which recommendations should be displayed in the specific app views.
7. Short videos
Images on the product view are a must, and with additional video content, you can present cosmetics even better.
With videos, you can show users how to apply the product, what consistency it has, or how much can you increase color’s intensity.
You don’t have to create long content for this purpose. Videos can only last a few seconds, and you can loop them. This will be enough for users to see what matters and get the information they need to decide on the purchase.
If you want to see how renowned brands implement this solution, check out the Glossier store.
Staples and UX principles in mCommerce apps
Although innovative features can significantly improve user engagement and boost sales, you must first take care of the essentials.
Mobile app users need an intuitive UI design that facilitates searching for brands, cosmetics, and product details.
Examples of essential elements in beauty eCommerce apps:
- Wide selections of filters
- Product views with detailed info about a product, its usage, and quick access to other color versions
- High-quality images
- Properly named categories that facilitate product search and exploring the app
- Lists of favorites
- Notifications
- Different delivery methods and payment options
- Advanced product search engine
- Client reviews.
Online beauty shoppers who often buy on mobile devices are used to specific solutions and improvements. When an app lacks them, it’s more difficult to find required items, and users are less likely to make purchases. That’s why it’s important to balance innovation and standards commonly used in beauty eCommerce app development.
Evaluation of ideas for beauty eCommerce features
You have some inspirations and ideas for features, so now it’s time to decide which ones should be included in the MVP.
User research
First, ensure that the features you implement in the MVP address the target audience’s needs and offer solutions to their problems. After all, you want to engage them more. At the beginning of the project, it’s best to conduct user research to better understand users’ preferences, problems, and motivations. Based on the results, it’ll be easier to determine which features are more important from the user’s perspective.
- Check out different prioritization methods you can use in your project.
Technical analysis
The next step is a technical analysis of the solutions selected in the first step. It’s conducted by software developers who check if your ideas are feasible and how difficult it is to implement them in the mobile app.
Technical analysis is also required because it tells you how long it would take to create each feature, enabling us to estimate the project’s development cost. Sometimes, the results may not be worth the effort, and it would be better to consider alternatives.
- Technical analysis is a part of our Product Discovery workshops.
Team cooperation – the key to success
Many feature ideas sound great initially, but after deeper analysis, it turns out their execution would be too complicated, time-consuming, or simply too expensive. That’s the reason why mobile app development always requires a plan and careful preparations, in which a product owner, a UX designer, a UX researcher, and app developers should be engaged.
Every development team member brings a different perspective to the table, allowing us to create better mCommerce apps.
If you want to consult your product vision or get to know the estimated app development cost, send us a message. We’ll be happy to help you.