Notino was founded in 2004 and since then it has served over 16 million customers in 28 countries around the globe. Currently, their online store implements innovations so smart they make the customers feel as if they were in a real, brick and mortar store, helping them choose the best makeup shade or a perfume that matches their preferences perfectly.
“We want Notino to be a friend to our customers, one who uses innovation and new tools to deepen the relationship with them,” says Havlásek, web and innovations director, to explain the brand’s ambition. The online beauty and cosmetics shop strives to become the first place you go to when you look for health or beauty products, with over eighty thousand products to choose from and offering a generous 90-day return policy that also applies to items that were used but not devalued or spoiled. “We examine every returned item and carefully assess whether it’s just a case of opened packaging or whether the product could be contaminated,” Havlásek explains.
“At Notino, we want to be more than just a place where you go to stock up on soap and shampoo; we want to be a place of inspiration. We hope to achieve that by using tools designed to help customers choose products they haven’t tried before.”Lukáš Havlásek, Notino’s web and innovations director
One of Notino’s goals is to remove all barriers from online shopping. To help customers try new things without buying a pig in a poke, the brand has created a Fragrance finder – the customer simply needs to enter their favourite perfumes into the finder and then choose from the finder’s recommendations of similar fragrances. Notino’s store in Brno shows off another innovation – AirParfum, a device that contains thousands of fragrance components to help customers choose a new perfume. All they need to do is to smell the proposed component and select whether they like it or not, allowing AirParfum to recommend fragrances based on their individual preferences. “We also have a Shade finder tool to help customers select the best makeup shade to match their skin type and undertones, and we are currently developing a crosstable-based tool able to recommend a different makeup brand by analysing the one our customer is currently using,” Havlásek explains. Other methods the brand uses to motivate customers to try new things include gifts and a Try it first program, adding a travel-sized product to their order as a sample.
Customer reviews and impressions are involved in the selection process as well. Currently, the brand is testing a new quick-review method that saves customers’ time and provides the company with more valuable insight. “The customer just needs to pick corresponding options: does the scent last long or is it gone quickly? Is it a better fit for summer or winter? Customers sharing specific opinions on products by choosing from pre-defined options will allow us to gain much better insight than comments that let us know that someone bought something as a gift and that the recipient liked it,” says Havlásek.
When a customer logs into their account using an app or a web browser, they are greeted with a personalized offer and communication. But when they come to a brick and mortar store, they become just another anonymous client – something the brand aspires to change. “We’d like to use our app to identify our customers when they visit our stores to help our beauty experts provide customers with individual, personalized recommendations based on their preferences,” Havlásek adds to explain future plans. The brand’s stores are still the most popular delivery method, too, which is why a new Click and Collect feature was introduced at selected stores in October, allowing customers to pick up their order within just an hour after placing it.