How Cosmetic Brands Can Scale with Virtual Try-On at 20x Lower Cost

In today’s beauty retail landscape, shoppers want more than just static product images — they expect experiences. And Virtual Try-On (VTO) has become one of the most powerful ways to bridge inspiration with action, especially for makeup products like lipsticks, eyeliners, foundations, and more.

Yet for many enterprise cosmetic brands, building or licensing this kind of immersive technology in-house is time-consuming, expensive, and complex.
Enter Shopalyst’s Virtual Try-On Widget — a plug-and-play solution that helps brands deploy rich AR-powered beauty experiences at 20x lower cost than traditional VTO tools.

While Virtual Try-On is in high demand by consumers, most cosmetic brands face one or more of these challenges:

• Development or acquisition costs are prohibitively high.
Developing a custom VTO engine can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars — not including ongoing maintenance or enhancements.

• Long Development Cycles
Integrating facial recognition, skin tone detection, real-time rendering, and product mapping requires months of dev time and vendor collaboration.

• Low Conversion Due to Disconnected UX
Most try-on tools are clunky and operate in silos — with little integration into the brand’s shoppable journey, reducing their actual business impact.

Empowering beauty brands with immersive, interactive, and commerce-ready AR experiences — with zero development lift. Shopalyst’s Virtual Try-On (VTO) widget brings the power of personalization directly into your digital storefront. Fully integrated within the Shopalyst Discovery Commerce Cloud, this solution is designed to help beauty brands accelerate product discovery, reduce decision anxiety, and convert trials into purchases. Key features that include:

Inspire users with curated styles — not just individual shades.
• Choose from a library of predefined, ready-to-wear makeup looks built using multiple products.
• Looks can be themed by season, trend, skin tone, or even celebrity inspiration (e.g., “Dewy Glow,” “Red Carpet Ready,” “Workday Neutrals”).
• Easily refreshed to align with current campaigns or new product launches.

Why it matters: Many shoppers don’t know where to start. Curated looks guide them visually and help increase basket size.

Turn virtual experience into real-time product discovery.
• Each makeup look is tagged with the specific products (e.g., lipstick, blush, eyeliner) used to create it.
• Once you apply the look users will be presented an option to buy the look – using which they can purchase the products used to put together the look
• Each product will be presented with it’s name, price, description and multiple retailer options (from which it could be purchased from)

Why it matters: Users can try a look and shop the exact products — all in one place, creating a seamless journey from intent to cart.

Give users full control over how they experience your products.
• Customers can either upload a static image or enable their device camera for a live, real-time preview.
• Accurate placement of makeup — making it feel natural and intuitive.
• Works seamlessly across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, without requiring an app download.

Why it matters: Different shoppers prefer different levels of interaction. Some want a live view; others are more comfortable uploading a photo. You deliver both, instantly.

Move customers from trial to checkout, instantly.
• Every product comes with a CTA button that links directly to its Product Detail Page (PDP) or your eCommerce cart.
• Optionally integrates with Shopalyst’s shoppable media layer, enabling add-to-cart directly from landing pages or digital ads.

Why it matters: No drop-offs. No second guesses. Just one tap from try-on to transaction.

Designed for today’s mobile-first beauty shopper.
• The entire experience opens in a distraction-free, fullscreen modal — optimized for performance and mobile responsiveness.
• Loads quickly, adjusts to screen size and orientation, and adapts to both touchscreen and desktop navigation.
• Can be launched from banners, product pages, or even digital ads.

Why it matters: Mobile shoppers are your fastest-growing audience. A clunky UX means lost conversions. This widget is built to match how they browse and buy.

Plug. Play. Perform.
• No SDK integrations or engineering resources needed.
• Hosted and managed entirely within the Shopalyst platform.
• Brands simply upload the looks and tag the products used — we handle the rest.
• Supports A/B testing, analytics integration, and campaign personalization out of the box.

Why it matters: Get to market faster and at a fraction of the cost — 20x cheaper than building your own VTO solution.

Challenge
A leading cosmetics brand was struggling to deliver personalized product experiences online. Their static product images failed to inspire shopper confidence, leading to low engagement and high bounce rates — particularly on high-investment makeup categories like lipstick, foundation, and eyeshadow.

Solution
The brand integrated Shopalyst’s Virtual Try-On widget across key campaign landing pages and product detail pages, enabling users to try on makeup through image upload or live camera. The widget included:
• Predefined makeup looks mapped to available SKUs
• One-click checkout integration
• Fast, mobile-first user experience

Highlights
• Full deployment in under 7 days, no dev effort required
• Customized lookbook for 3 product categories
• Embedded across paid media journeys, PDPs, and influencer microsites

Measurable Impact
• 3x increase in time spent on PDPs with VTO enabled
• 28% higher conversion rate for VTO-enabled SKUs
• Significant drop in product returns due to better pre-purchase visualization