A huge amount of fashion items are returned following online purchasing, but sending back beauty products isn’t so easy.
Rightly so, as hygiene and packaging considerations have to be strictly adhered to.
In a new survey by Nosto, the world’s leading e-commerce personalisation platform, more than 62 per cent of female beauty online shoppers aged 16 to 35 typically purchase brands they have bought before.
The study involved 2000 respondents in the UK and the US and also discovered that 44 per cent of beauty shoppers purchased colour cosmetics and skincare online, rather than in-store.
The biggest motivators on the path to purchase are customer reviews on brand and retail websites (74%) and free samples (72%).
Product recommendations from brands were also a major plus point with 66 per cent of respondents, folllowed by customisation of experiences centred on individual shopper histories – 63 per cent.
Not so popular were – virtual try-on tools (45%), recommendations from influencers and celebrities (44%) and one-to-one virtual/online beauty consultations (41%).
The beauty industry is moving in the right direction as far as consumer wants are concerned – clean ingredient claims hit the spot with 68 per cent of respondents, followed by cruelty-free (65%), sustainable packaging (59%) and inclusivity/diversity (58%).
Interestingly, the lowest motivator was vegan at 41 per cent.