The website will provide a platform for the brand to market its product launches, and offer its consumers tutorial videos and similar digital content across the wider Asia Pacific region; in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
The move by the L’Oreal brand will enable Maybelline to leverage the potential of mobile retail in the region, which has been highlighted by experts as enormous.
Mobilising with mobiles
According to a new PwC survey, 69% of respondents in India said they shop online via mobile platforms, with this number set to rise considerably, and similarly high numbers of mobile shoppers are being seen across the APAC region.
The percentage of internet traffic in Asia has risen from 23% to 37% on mobile devices in the last year, well above the global average of 25%, according to Infosys.
"The mobile web development programme will enable Maybelline to take advantage of the rapid growth of mobile Internet in Asia by reaching out to its end consumers effectively," the digital developers confirmed.
Digital in India
Choosing to launch with a tech firm in India may prove a savvy move on Maybelline’s part, with the country increasingly a cornerstone for digital in the region.
The size of India's e-commerce market in 2013 was around $13 billion, according to a joint report of KPMG and Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).
Shiseido is another major brand displaying a keen awareness of the potential of digital in the country, launching its Za range earlier this year via a digital-heavy campaign.
Tripti Lochan, CEO of one of the region’s key players in marketing, VML Qais, recently noted that as India has a huge consumer base of web users; "digital, as a medium, has deeply entrenched itself in the Indian scenario”.
“India is now the 3rd largest internet population, out of which 39% are women. It is therefore a necessary platform for a contemporary beauty brand to connect with their target audience,” she confirmed.