Additionally, 86,000 products were added to “favorites” in 2012 on Totalbeauty.com’s mobile app. The data also suggests women visit mobile Web sites while on the go, with the Totalbeauty.com site seeing 10.8 million mobile visits and 21.6 million mobile page views in 2012.

“We are seeing that not only are women looking to their networks, to people that they know, but they are also looking to trusted resources,” said Mary Dolan, social interactive marketing manager at Totalbeauty.com. “We have the biggest database of unbiased consumer product reviews on the Web so our mobile app lets them easily log-in and check out products and what people are saying about them before they purchase.

“Women are researching on average 20 minutes before they hit the store to make a purchase,” she said.

“We really aim to educate the consumer and be a resource where she can come in and find the ratings for products and find all the information she thinks she needs while she is standing in the aisle at the beauty store or at the beauty counter so that she feels ready to make that purchase.”

Mobile engagement
The online beauty reviews and tips site found that more than three-quarters of its audience uses mobile in store, with more than half using mobile to aid in making in-store purchase decisions and 25 percent using mobile to find coupons while shopping. The results point to how engaged beauty shoppers are with mobile.

Other key findings include that 75 percent of Totalbeauty.com’s audience downloads apps and that there were 1.86 million video views from a mobile device of Totalbeauty.com content on YouTube, with 60 percent saying they use video in place of consumer reports and product manuals.

“The biggest trend we are seeing right now is mobile video,” Ms. Dolan said.

“That is the biggest diverging pattern that we are seeing, that women aren’t just looking at the information, they are actually relying on their mobile devices as a tool all the way from purchase through to use of product info,” she said.

Content creation
The results also underscore how beauty shoppers are engaging with social media via mobile, with one in ten women reporting to spend two to four hours per day social networking on her phone.

Additionally, among Apple users, 50 percent are gamers, 42 percent are catalog shoppers, 39 percent are social influencers and 34 percent are fashionistas.

The results point to an opportunity for brands to intercept beauty shoppers via mobile while they on the way to making a purchase by creating content that resonates with them in an authentic way.

“Eighty percent of women said they find advertising extremely annoying, but only one-third of women were willing to pay for premium content,” Ms. Dolan said. “So what that says for brands is that they really need to find different, fun ways to engage with the consumer.

“There are a lot of different ways to do that, such as engagement surveys, polls and social media,” she said.

“Incorporating gaming elements as well is a good idea as we are seeing about 50 percent of mobile users consider themselves gamers, so interactive, entertaining content is a huge opportunity for brands right now.”

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York