As mobile apps and m-commerce take their foot holds as location-based marketing tools in the fashion industry, I wondered how the beauty industry was utilizing apps for marketing.

Currently, there are no beauty apps designed for Nokia or Android phones. For the iPhone, there are just over 20. Sadly, most of these apps need a lot of improvement in regards to their functionality, stability and overall “socialness”. After three tedious hours, I was able to find three that I thought were good starting points.

TotalBeauty – Cost: FREE

Pros: This app is new to the the iTunes store. The app is an extension of TotalBeauty.com, a product review site and online consumer forum. The app allows users to search 280,000 product reviews by 45,000 brands (I don’t actually think there are this many). Users can also search by product type, brand name or by typing in keywords.

If a user searches by keywords, the app will pull relevant product reviews based on those keywords (“curly conditioner”, “acne treatment” and so on). Once the user finds the product they’re searching for, the app shows the user all of the reviews that have been written about that product on TotalBeauty.com.

Cons: The down sides are that if someone hasn’t reviewed the product on Total Beauty, there is no information on it; this means that most of the brands don’t have complete product line reviews. Also, for being a community site, I thought that Total Beauty would have added a login so that community users could post product reviews and ratings via their mobile phone. The app doesn’t have this feature, nor is it integrated into Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare (which would allow have allowed users to share their reviews from their phone to their social profiles).

Overall, it’s a good start, but there’s tons of room for improvement.

Mark. Cosmetics – Cost: FREE

Pros: MeetMark.com‘s app is a digital extension of its website. Users can shop by current fashion trends (conveniently paired with apparel and accessories available from mark.) and coordinate their makeup to those trends. It has instructional videos on how to get spokeswoman Lauren Conrad’s spring and summer looks as well as mark. product information. The app changes seasonally to match current style trends. For a branded app, it’s very cohesive and flows. There is some bugginess in its touch screen functionality that should be addressed.

Cons: Mark. actually missed the mark with this app. Here is another application that misses social sharing or m-commerce integration. Why leave them out? If the brand would look at the application’s comment page on iTunes, their representatives are begging them to enable m-commerce capabilities, social media functions AND personal sales extensions of their personal product pages. Now, I can understand that there may be some licensing issues with giving each and every rep his or her own sale extension, but why wouldn’t they give them social media sharing and online order capabilities to the website via the app? Your sales reps are asking for digital marketing tools.  Go make them so they can increase their sales.

Taking it to the next level: If this application incorporated social features and was m-commerce enabled, it could be translated to the iPad, as well — though that may not be the right medium for this brand and its target audience.

OPI Nail Lacquer – Cost: FREE

Pros: Opi’s app is very limited, but the purpose of it is to act as on in-store aid to help a consumer pick the right color. We really like this app because it allows users to can change the skin tone of the virtual hand and match it to their actual skin tone. A customer can try on every current shade of OPI nail polish before they buy it. It definitely cuts down on poor color choice remorse.

Cons: It is what it is. No cons because it’s only supposed to do one thing: pick colors.  I recommend it to pass boredom in a doctor’s office.