Chief marketing officer Arie Tom discusses GlassesUSA’s new tool that uses artificial intelligence to scan a shopper’s face and suggest tailored product recommendations. The customer experience feature increases conversion and decreases returns.
GlassesUSA.com’s new product recommendation tool uses artificial intelligence to help shoppers sort through its inventory of 10,000 frames to find the right glasses for their face.
On the brand’s mobile site, shoppers tap on the “Take the Pairfect Match Quiz” button. The website brings the shopper through a series of prompts to access the phone’s camera.
How the AI matching tool works
In about one minute, the AI tool scans the consumer’s face recording measurements such as hairline, eye height and width, pupil distance, skin tone, nose bridge, cheekbones and jawlines. Using these unique facial features, plus a short quiz of shopper preference for frame material and color, the tool will suggest 10 glasses for the shopper, said chief marketing officer Arie Tom.
Shoppers have to enter their email address to see the results, which the brand uses to remarket these recommendations.
“Perfect Match AI, it’s a way to experiment. It’s a way for you to see yourself in a different frame that was recommended to you based on data, unbiased. It’s not like a sales person in the store that earns commission,” he said.
After the quiz, the shopper is then on the product recommendation page. The shopper can then try those glasses on using augmented reality via the phone’s camera. The shopper can swipe through her results and GlassesUSA virtually displays them on the shopper’s face. The glasses are all linked to the product page where the shopper can receive more details about them, add them to her cart and buy.
Results of the AI product recommendation tool
In the three months since GlassesUSA launched the feature, it has both increased conversion rate and decreased return rates. For consumers that use the features, conversion rate increases 21% compared with GlassesUSA’s shoppers visiting the site from similar traffic sources during the same time period.
“We see that more people actually ending up buying glasses after they complete the new Pairfect Match AI, and this is a testimony that the new process actually helps them find glasses that they were happy with compared to the other older version,” said Tom referring to a quiz that didn’t use AI.
Another good testament of the effectiveness of the feature is GlassesUSA’s return rate, which decreases by 12% for shoppers who use the match AI tool compared with its average return rate, Tom said.
“That’s very, very significant. And then again, this is another thing that we measured to show customer satisfaction and how well the algorithm was able to match the customer with the glasses,” Tom said.
The retailer developed the tool for about two years and has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee time and resources, Tom said. GlassesUSA declined to share how many shoppers have used the feature.
Overall business at GlassesUSA.com
Pairfect Match AI, which it debuted in August, has helped the retailer’s bottom line. In 2024, the retailer has had double-digit sales growth, which it plans to continue during Q4, Tom said.
While this is good news, the biggest challenge for executives at GlassesUSA is planning in the post-pandemic world.
“Every year since 2020 it gets harder to predict and plan,” said Tom, citing supply chain instability, politics and shifting consumer demand.
With more consumers shopping online more frequently after the pandemic, shopper expectations have increased, Tom said. This has pushed GlassesUSA to continually invest in its customer experience to attract new shoppers and maintain its base of loyal shoppes.
Tom said, 50% of shoppers on GlassesUSA.com are returning shoppers. While most shoppers don’t purchase two sets of eyeglasses in a year, they do purchase sunglasses and contact lenses. The average shopper purchases more than two products a year with GlassesUSA.com, Tom said.
GLassesUSA.com launched in 2007, and Optimax Eyewear owns GlassesUSA.com.
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