Retail

Madison Reed taps OnQ for interactive digital swatch panel

Image courtesy of OnQ.

April 27, 2021

Madison Reed recently tapped OnQ to develop a new interactive digital swatch panel experience to help customers explore the retailer's hair color products to find their perfect shade, according to a press release. Madison Reed debuted the experience recently at its Color Bar in Manhattan, with more recent roll-outs in Miami, Chicago and Boston.

Thousands of unique interactions were captured in just the first several weeks of deployment, with each customer engagement averaging more than three minutes per visit. The experience — which features a 46-inch touchscreen by Elo integrated with OnQ's Converge digital engagement platform — has become a supplement to Madison Reed's on-site color specialists, able to provide a self-assisted product education journey for customers to select their perfect shade.

"Enhancing the process with the digital swatch panel introduces a certain air of playfulness that makes the whole experience much more approachable and fun," Andrew Lande-Shannon, Madison Reed's senior director of store experience, said in the press release.

With more than four dozen shades to choose from, Madison Reed wanted to create an intuitive experience for customers to narrow their choices, filtering by the customer's desired hair color, level of gray coverage and color intensity.

By tapping their way through this series of questions, customers arrive at their perfect color, and then have the option to "text me this shade." By entering their mobile number or scanning a QR code, details about their chosen shade are sent to their phone so they can take the experience home with them, get advice from others and then complete their purchase.

Of the 1,500+ customers who visited the display during the testing period, nearly 12% of them sent the experience to their phone to continue at a later time.

Customers also have the option of taking the Madison Reed color quiz by entering their mobile number or scanning a QR code. Sending the quiz to the customer's phone brings yet another interactive element into the store, with the added convenience and privacy of delivering the experience on the customer's phone.

Lastly, the digital swatch panel experience also includes a library of informative videos that can either be viewed on the display or sent directly to the customer's phone for later viewing. Video content includes tutorials about home hair coloring, as well company history, to create a deeper connection between customers and the Madison Reed brand.

Every point of interaction with the new digital swatch panels is captured by OnQ's Converge digital engagement platform, giving insight into how and when customers engage with the screen.

Customers in Madison Reed's retail-only locations researched an average of 2.86 products, while Color Bar customers researched an average of 1.79 products.

Similarly, customers at the retail-only locations were more likely to view instructional videos than customers at the Color Bar locations.