How to create your beauty app? Know the required app features and development steps

Want to know how to start beauty app development in 2023?

Beauty services apps offer a platform where customers can access beauty care-related services be it massage therapy, skin or hair care, etc., straight to their doorstep.

According to report, The revenue of the beauty and personal care market was around US $571.10 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow annually by 3.80%. 

The above market figure showcases the perfect business opportunity to invest in by creating beauty care platforms. 

However, many other reasons tell why it is the right time to start beauty app development.

Reasons startups should invest in beauty app development in 2023

Check out the top reasons that tell why investing in building beauty apps is a great idea. 

1. It offers a great customer experience

Creating your beauty service app will allow you to offer better value to your customers, giving them easier access to browse beauty-related services on your app. 

Also, having your app will give a competitive advantage to your business by allowing you to attract an online audience to your business. 

2. Simplify marketing efforts

Having your beauty care-related app will help you build your social presence among different online platforms. 

With your mobile app, you can ease the marketing effort of your business by promoting your offers, new products, and services on your app. 

Moreover, you can include loyalty programs in your app to bring more customers and promote your business.

3. Creates additional revenue streams

You can add additional income sources to your business with your app by adding multiple monetization models. Adding various revenue streams will give an additional advantage to your beauty-related business.

Many customers prefer using mobile apps for accessing beauty-related services, and you can attract them to your platform by starting beauty app development.

4. Offer better employee opportunities

Help your professionals quickly offer their beauty-related services from your mobile app. Your app users and beauty care-related professionals can access and provide beauty services by making an appointment on your app.

You can check out some top apps in detail if you want to get relevant ideas for your beauty care business.

Top beauty apps available in the market

Here are some apps that perform really well in the beauty care market:

1. Beyou

The platform offers makeup artists to users’ doorstep whenever needed. Users can choose from different profiles related to beauty professionals on the Beyou app. 

It simplifies choosing the best makeup artists that allow access to their prices and ratings.

The app has embedded a payment system to help users to make payments straight from the app. Users can access a wide range of makeup styles for different occasions on the Beyou app.

Pros	Cons
Allows users to book makeup artists anytime, anywhere in England	Only available in England.
Offers secure payment facility
Provides makeup inspiration menu
Offers beauty care services for various budgets
Allows access to professional profiles, prices, and ratings.

2. bgX

The platform is well known for offering beauty products and hairstyling services. bgX offers its products to popular cities like Abu Dhabi, Dubai, London, Los Angeles, New York City, and Paris.

bgX has partnered with many leading salons to offer top-rated beauty services to their customers and has partnered with big brands, including Loreal, Toni & Guy, and Uber.

Pros	Cons
Present across major cities worldwide.	Their services are only limited to hair styling.
They offer e-commerce support to their partner merchants.
Allows partner retailers and salons to deliver on-demand products in hair styling services.

3. LeSalon

Le Salon offers a wide range of beauty services in London, such as lash, nail, and waxing. Whenever a user requests beauty services, the app forwards them to its local partners to help users to get suitable professionals for accessing beauty services.

The app offers the best beauty services for anyone who wants beauty treatment on their doorstep without waiting in long queues outside salons. 

Le Salon has carefully chosen its partnered beauty professionals to ensure their app users can access high-quality beauty-related services.

Pros	Cons
LeSalon offers a Wide range of beauty services, including nail, waxing, and lash.	Their services are only limited to London.
They offer flexibility in booking, allowing users to book from their app or website.
The platform contains highly experienced and well-trained beauty professionals.

4. Soothe

A wellness delivery app that offers licensed massage therapists and other personal care service providers where users can access massage-based services without leaving the comfort of their homes. 

Along with massage services, the app offers other beauty services such as haircare, makeup, massage therapy, and skin care. 

Pros	Cons
Soothe offers a wide range of Wellness services.	Limited availability in England.
The platform includes only experience and licensed beauty professionals.	Only offer services between 8:00 AM to 12 midnight every day.
Offer flexibility to booking both from their website or app.

5. Urban

The app is famous for offering beauty and wellness-related services. Along with beauty treatments, the company also offers fitness and mindfulness service right to users’ doorstep. 

The platform showcases all their service providers’ profiles, ratings, and reviews to help users select the best one for their needs. The app allows users to book appointments anytime between 7 AM to 11 PM every day. Also, the app offers online beauty consultations and complete packages like well-being sessions, etc. 

Pros	Cons
Allows to view profiles of beauty professionals.	Urban services can only be accessed between 7 AM to 11 PM.
Offers online consultancy.
Provides fitness and mindfulness services.
Corporate Wellness package available.

6. Booksy

The platform offers a marketplace for beauty-related professionals such as salons, wellness experts, hair specialists, and much more. With over 30 million user base, the platform is growing at a very fast pace. Recently the platform has gathered over $70 million in VC funding.

Booksy offers a complete management system, including payment processing, inventory and employee management, scheduling calendar, email marketing, and extensive reporting.

Pros	Cons
Offers a wide range of beauty care services.	Limited wage management.
Their services are accessible to most countries.
Allows online booking and payments.
Their platform offers a complete management system.

Is creating apps for beauty care platforms easy or challenging? Let’s understand the app-building steps to start beauty app development.

Steps to start beauty app development

These are the steps you can follow to start building your beauty care platform:

1. Know your audience and beauty care industry 

There are multiple categories within the beauty care industry like Skin care, Hair care, cosmetics, makeup devices, and much more. By targeting the exact category within the beauty care industry, you can expect the best return on your investment.

Also, you can research popular beauty care apps to find areas of improvement, such as

• What valuable features do famous beauty services-related apps lack in their platform?
• Are there any challenges users face while using popular beauty services apps?
• What unique points can you add to your beauty care platform to make it stand out among the rest of the apps?
• Can other beauty care apps easily allow users and professionals to find and connect? 

Also, there are many questions you can ask yourself to come up with a better idea about creating an efficient business strategy for your beauty platform.

2. Hire app developers to create your beauty app

Hire app developers to build your beauty app for platforms such as mobile devices or websites.  

To select the best app developers for your platform, you can check their portfolio of past published apps, especially for beauty care-related platforms. 

When hiring app developers, ensure:

• Can your partnered app development team create all popular features among beauty apps?
• Are they able to integrate all the advanced features and third-party integration, such as payment gateway, location tracking, and much more?
• Will they help you provide app maintenance in case you face any technical issues with your beauty app?

3. Create your business strategy 

Creating your app development and business strategy with your partnered app development agency is better than building a strategy yourself. 

To create an effective strategy for your beauty care platform, you can focus on:

• What target audience will you focus on for your beauty care platform?
• What unique points will you add to your platform to make it stand out among the rest of the beauty care apps?
• Adding popular beauty care products to your app
• Top categories of beauty care services you want to provide to your customers and app users.
• Which one will you choose between, self-owned or aggregated beauty care business models?

4. Make your beauty app’s MVP 

Instead of building your beauty care app on a full scale, you can create your app’s MVP, where there will only be special features to make your platform fully functional. 

In the MVP of your beauty care platform, you can be selective with limited features such as:

• Allowing professionals and customers to make appointments
• In-app payments
• Location Sharing 
• Accept/Reject requests
• Finding nearby jobs/beauty care professionals

Also, you can go with the suggestion of your partnered app development company for your beauty care platform. 

The MVP will help you decide what parts and functionalities to add or remove based on your app’s users’ feedback.  

5. Start back-end development

After successfully creating your app’s MVP, you can go for the rest of the back-end app development process, such as creating APIs and adding all the required features to your app.

For giving additional advantage to your beauty care platform, consider the following features and technologies to your apps:

• Chatbots to resolve common and basic queries among your customers that will use your platform.
• In-app payment feature to allow your users to buy and access beauty care products and services without depending on third-party payment apps.

6. Test your app

Before launching your app in your target market, ensure your app is free from all technical glitches and drawbacks by performing beta app testing.

Beta testing will help you improve your platform experience by allowing you to find and remove all the imperfections of your app. 

During testing your beauty care platform, you can check the following:

• Are all buttons working correctly on your app?
• Does your app properly showcase all the available beauty care-related services and products to your customers?
• Are all UI elements fully functional on your app?
• Can your app users easily find and schedule appointments with beauty professionals on your app?

You can contact the best app developers to help you test your app.

7. Launch your app in the targeted market

You need to decide the target market and platforms where you can profit from your app. Also, you can follow guidelines for different app distribution platforms, such as Google play and Apple app store, to optimize the app better.   

While launching your app, ensure you have added the following things:

• Your app screenshots on popular app distribution platforms that showcase the features and benefits of using your beauty care app.
• Mention popular products and services in the description section of your beauty app that can help you attract your potential customers.
• The color combination of the brand logo and banners you have created should be relevant to other beauty care platforms, such as pink and black.

Add screenshots and app descriptions of your app at your targeted app distribution platform. In the screenshot, you can tell about the features and benefits of using your app for customers and beauty professionals.

8. Promote your app 

How will you profit when there are limited app users on your app? To get more app users, you can perform app marketing and other promotional strategies to attract more customers and beauty professionals to your app. 

Also, you can consider influencer marketing, where you can contact influencers that create content regarding beauty care and wellness tips. Promoting your app from these influencers can help you quickly attract their audience to your app. 

9. App maintenance and upgrade

Even after launching your app in your target market, you must regularly add new features and remove existing app drawbacks to provide the best experience on your beauty platform. 

Check what new features and products your beauty care competitors have added to their apps. Also, try to do extensive audience research in the beauty industry to know what challenges they face in using your or others’ beauty care apps. 

Once you find the solutions to their challenges, you can ask app developers to add these new features and functionalities to your beauty care app.

But what features can you add to your beauty care apps? Let’s check.

Features you can add to your beauty app 

The feature section has been divided into panels, i.e., admin, app users, and beauty professionals. 

I. User panel

The panel is for app users who will use beauty services on your app. Your app user will use this panel to schedule their appointment with beauty professionals or buy products related to beauty care services. Let’s check the list of features you can implement in the user panel.

1. Chat & Alert

Provide your app users with a way to communicate with beauty professionals available on your app. Offering chat and alert features are the best way to prevent app users and professionals from depending on 3rd party platforms to start chatting and booking appointments.

2. Appointment booking

The feature is helpful for users who want to pre-book beauty care-related services from your app. You can allow your app users to pre-book services a few hours or days ahead of time.

3. Appointment Cancellation

If anyone wants to cancel their appointment booking, they can use the appointment cancellation feature to postpone the appointment or for other reasons.

4. In-App payment

With an in-app payment system, you can ensure that your app users will not have to depend on a 3rd party platform to make payments for accessing beauty-related services or buying products from your app.

5. Real-time tracking

Users can use this feature to track the location of beauty professionals. Offering real-time tracking is the best way to assure users that their appointment for beauty care services are on the way and will get to their doorstep soon. 

Also, the feature will help app users to guide beauty care professionals to precisely reach their homes by knowing their exact location from the map.

6. User profile

The feature will help users to customize their profile on your platform. Their profile will help you and beauty care-related professionals to know about customers, such as contact details and addresses. 

Also, you can add social media integration to help users to join your platform by allowing your app to access information from their social media accounts.

7. Ratings and feedback

The feature will be helpful for users to submit their experiences with professionals by enabling them to submit ratings and reviews. The rating is also best for users to select the best professionals by checking their ratings and feedback.

8. History Information

The features showcase the records of all the bookings that users have made on your platform. The feature is also best for users to select professionals again by quickly checking their details from historical information. 

9. Advanced search

You can add advanced search to your app by implementing advanced filters to help users get the exact search results they are looking for.

10. Cost estimates 

It will be helpful for app users to let them know the cost estimates for accessing each beauty care-related service on your platform. 

Offering cost estimates for each beauty care-related service will help users to compare and pick the best beauty care professionals based on their budget and needs.

You can include several details in the cost estimates, such as the cost of beauty care-related services, beautician fees, and the cost of covering the commuting distance.

II. Salon Panel 

The professionals offering beauty services on your app can use this panel. The panel will provide all the features professionals need to offer beauty care-related services.

1. Availability 

Beauty professionals can use this feature to display their availability status to your app users. If they are occupied with other customers, they can quickly inform other users with the help of the availability feature. 

2. Profile management

Professionals can customize their profiles on your app with the help of the profile management feature. The professionals can share details about their services, including their field of expertise, price range, and so on. 

The feature will also help app users get professionals’ details to select the best one for accessing beauty care services.

3. View ratings and feedback

The professionals can access their ratings and feedback for their profiles to help them understand their customer experience with their beauty care-related services.

4. Commission report

You can add this feature to let beauty professionals on your platform know how much commission you have taken from each appointment or product sale on your app. 

5. In-app navigation 

Add in-app navigation to your app to allow beauty experts to reach their client’s homes by checking their home routes from third-party maps you will use in your app. 

6. Approve/Disapprove the request

Enable beauty professionals on your app to approve/disapprove any booking on your app based on their availability. They can accept/reject their client’s request through the approve/disapprove request feature.

7. Earnings

Help beauty professionals on your platform track their earrings by offering their beauty care services. Offer a detailed dashboard about their earning history from your beauty care platform.

III. Admin Panel 

As an app owner, you can use this panel to manage app users and beauty professionals on your platform. Let’s check all the features you can access in the admin panel.

1. Verified profiles

The features will allow you to access the profiles of all the beauty professionals and businesses registered through a verification process to your platform. 

2. User support 

You can use this feature to support your app users using your beauty platform. Your app users can use this feature to get support in case they are facing any challenges while using your app. 

3. Adjust the service provider’s range

You can set a proximity range for every beauty care service, so whenever a user requests any beauty care-related services on your platform, you can offer beauty professionals nearby to their locations. 

4. Advanced reports

You can use advanced reports to get an analytical description of your entire platform to improve the platform experience both for your app users and beauty professionals registered with your app.

Want to know how these beauty care apps make money? Understand in detail.

How do beauty apps make money?

There are multiple ways in which these apps monetize their business. You can choose any of the business monetization models that suit your business. Check all the available money-making options for your app:

1. Feature Listing

You can grab a few extra bucks from beauty service providers who wish to feature their products/services and capture the attention. The feature will give the service provider a spotlight, and you can generate extra revenue.

2. Advertising

In-app advertising is another preferred way of generating revenue. Service providers can use your platform and showcase their product/service advertisements.

3. Commission

You can charge a commission from professionals to use your platform. This commission can be charged monthly, yearly, or on every order.

4. Online store

In this monetizing way, you can integrate various beauty products and allow customers to purchase directly from the application.

You can choose different business models that are popular among beauty care apps. 

The business models of beauty apps

These are the business models through which beauty-related companies can operate their businesses:

1. Self-owned or dedicated model

Companies or shop owners who want to expand their beauty-related business can use a dedicated model. Creating an exclusive app helps business owners to have total control over their platform. 

Also, beauty-related businesses can avoid paying commissions to another app on each sale or appointment when they decide to have their app.

2. Aggregator beauty service app

These apps offer a common platform for all beauty care-related professionals. Aggregator apps make money by taking a commission on each sale or appointment made through their app. 

Anyone who doesn’t want to have their beauty care services but still wants to make incredible profits from the beauty industry can go for this business model.

So you want to build your beauty care app but need to know the cost-affecting factors? Know all these cost affecting factors.

Factors that affect the cost of building your beauty app 

Check out the factors affecting the cost of building your app.

1. App publishing platform

The platform where you will launch your y app will affect their app-building cost. 

Choosing a platform such as a website, iOS, Android, or others would need additional efforts to build and launch your apps for separate platforms in case of native app development.

However, you can also go for hybrid app development, where the app development can reuse the same source code of your app on your different targeted platforms. 

Know the difference between hybrid vs native app development to select the best app development approach.

2. List of features

Your beauty care platform will need several screens containing your app’s different features and functionalities. The more separate screens and features you add to your app, the more costly it will be. 

3. App design complexity

The complexity level of the design of your beauty care platform will be another factor that will decide your app development cost. You can reduce the complexity of your app design by selecting a plain and straightforward user interface and design patterns. 

4. Third-party Integration

Multiple additional features, such as payment gateway, analytics, and others, need third-party integration into your app. 

Each third-party integration, such as apps or plugins, may charge a fee for offering its services on your platform. 

However, you can go for third-party integration that offers pre-built services helping you to reduce your app development cost. 

5. Cost of hiring app developers

You can hire app developers in different ways, such as hiring in-house app developers and freelancers or outsourcing your app to software development agencies. 

Their fees can be based on per hour/ per feature and other factors. Also, the locality of app developers is another factor.

How do I create a beauty service app?

Understanding how on-demand service apps works are the best way to start your beauty care business. It will be challenging to create apps by yourself as it will require massive effort and time. 

However, the best options exist, like outsourcing your project to experienced app developers. They can help you create an effective business plan to launch them in your target market.

To partner with the best app development agencies, you can check their team of professionals and past projects to get a compelling idea about their records. 

However, you don’t need to make an effort to find the best app development agencies for your business. But how? Let’s understand!

Still, searching for the best app development agency?

Multiple app development agencies are ready to help with your project, and selecting the best one could be challenging. 

Still, you are at the right place if you are looking for someone who can understand your business needs and provide effective solutions for your beauty care platform.

You can contact Idea Usher if you need a complete solution for your business, be it app development, market research, adding the latest technologies, business marketing, and much more.

We are a team of app developers, project managers, UX designers, and marketers that can help you provide overall services for your beauty care platform. 

Contact Idea Usher 

Email:

[email protected]

Phone:

(+1)732 962 4560

(+91)859 140 7140

FAQ

Q. What is the cost of developing an on-demand beauty service application?

A. There is no exact app development budget for building an on-demand service app. Still, you can check the following factors that can affect your app-building cost such as

• App publishing platform 
• List of app features
• Design complexity
• Third-party integration 
• The fee of app developers 

Q. How do on-demand beauty services works?

A. These apps allow users to schedule appointments with beauty care professionals for their home services. These apps come with all the required features, such as booking beauty care services, sharing live locations, and others that help customers and beauty professionals offer and access beauty care services.

Q. How do I create a beauty service app?

A. You can create your on-demand service app by following the given steps:

• Research your competitors and target market
• Create a business strategy for your app 
• Hire app developers skilled in building beauty care platforms
• Tell app developers about the features and functionalities you want in your app