B4A: Data management with AlloyDB results in an agile, customized user experience
About B4A
B4A (Beauty For All) is a Brazilian beauty-tech whose mission is to democratize the beauty market. Through its platform B4A Connect, the company brings together consumers, influencers, and brands to create networks, synergies, and value for all involved in the ecosystem.
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Contact usBy migrating to Google Cloud, the company automated processes and improved real-time consumer behavior analyses.
Google Cloud results
- Record acquisition of new platform subscribers after adopting AlloyDB
- Complex search results secured in 1.2 seconds instead of 12
- Waiting time for users to obtain customized results dropped by 73%
- Cost savings and forecasts with the new solution
- Scalability and guaranteed data availability
90% time savings in online catalog queries
B4A (Beauty For All) is a pioneering company in the field of technology for the beauty industry in Brazil. Through its ecommerce sites and platform, the company enables consumers and influencers to connect, interact, and build long-standing relationships with various brands.
On the company's sites—glam, targeting women, and Men's Market, targeting a male audience—consumers access a tailored beauty experience. They are shown the most suitable products for their profile after a curation process based on artificial intelligence. Information, demos with sample products, and more content are also provided to help customers make their purchase.
Both sites use B4A Connect, a platform combining data related to consumer features. Machine learning-based algorithms prepare the content displayed, so that each user only sees products matching their profile.
The algorithm, called 'glam-match,' collects user data over time based on authorizations registered on the sites, and connects the data with each customer's monthly feedback and satisfaction rates.
Meanwhile, B4A underwent some structural transformations to reach this level of innovation and customization. As it grew, the company realized that the technology it had been using needed to be improved. Queries on its ecommerce sites were taking a long time to load, coupled with other issues that were causing bad user experiences.
To solve this situation and improve its technology solutions and online performance, the company started looking for an agile, efficient, and high-performing database to feed B4A Connect. That is when the company considered hiring Google Cloud.
"We assessed a range of criteria when deciding whether to opt for Google Cloud, including intuitive management, an easy learning curve for teams to deploy the technology, and the scalability that could be achieved with the migration."
—Gabriel Romio, Marketing Manager, B4AA leap in information management
This cycle of technology updates and changes kicked off in October 2022. Migration was fast, and by the end of that year, B4A's platform was already running on Google Cloud. The database management solution chosen was AlloyDB to ensure that data usability was aligned with the company's strategies and to secure a better user experience.
"The challenge included our expectation to see a leap in performance, together with data communication agility. Fortunately, with AlloyDB, we can customize our store and retain customers in our online environment," explains Gabriel Romio.
After migrating the backend of B4A Connect to AlloyDB, users have been granted even faster access to over 10,000 beauty products together with descriptions and customer feedback. Monthly subscriptions to the platform skyrocketed and currently exceed 120,000.
"In January 2023, we had a record number of new subscriptions to the platform. This was down to better performance and other strategic measures. Moving to Google Cloud helped us secure this outstanding result."
—Jan Riehle, CEO and Founder, B4AToday, the new data infrastructure management allows the company's IT teams to spend more time developing new products and user experiences. And it is not just AlloyDB that makes all of this possible: Firestore chips in too.
An example of this is Influencer Connect, a platform that allows micro-influencers to sell B4A's products and brand subscriptions and participate in advertising campaigns for beauty brands. The platform runs on Firestore, which serves as a fully managed, scalable, and serverless database meeting real-time update demands.
A new experience for users
Numbers support the benefits reaped with the migration. Time for complex queries on the ecommerce sites' catalog decreased by 90%, from 12 to 1.2 seconds. The site also loads much faster, between 0.25 and 0.4 seconds. This means consumers now no longer have to wait a long time for customized results on the sites.
"By using AlloyDB for our glam-match, we have managed to reduce the time a user has to wait to get customized results by 73%. Meanwhile, we have improved our algorithm so it is more accurate when recommending specific products to each user."
—Jan Riehle, CEO and Founder, B4AUsing AlloyDB has also provided support for real-time analyses, which is very useful for assessing customer behavior and metrics. In terms of business plans, this leads to smarter decision-making, with a fast response to market changes.
In addition, the new solution has brought scalability, flexibility in resource use, more data availability and even cost savings, as AlloyDB lets the company forecast how much it will spend.
With better management and easy-to-use tools, the company keeps on evolving: it plans to migrate all of its databases to Google Cloud's fully managed solutions.
The company also intends to combine AlloyDB with machine-learning services. The mission is therefore to continue refining query customized results even more to provide a better user experience on the platform.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact usAbout B4A
B4A (Beauty For All) is a Brazilian beauty-tech whose mission is to democratize the beauty market. Through its platform B4A Connect, the company brings together consumers, influencers, and brands to create networks, synergies, and value for all involved in the ecosystem.