Month: August 2016

The ITA CityLIGHTS Industry Champion Award honors an industry leader driving consistent growth and innovation in Illinois’ technology space

CHICAGO, IL – AUGUST 30, 2016 – The Illinois Technology Association today announced that Matt Moog, CEO of PowerReviews, a leading provider of ratings, reviews and question-and-answer technology to more than 1,000 global brands and retailers, has been selected as a finalist for the 2016 ITA CityLIGHTS Industry Champion Award. Moog, a longtime entrepreneur, angel investor, and CEO in Chicago’s tech community, has played a major role in the foundation and direction of Chicago based and nationally-recognized tech resources. Moog chaired the project to launch 1871, a leading co-working space for Chicago technology startups, co-founded Built In Chicago, a recruitment platform for the tech community and the FireStarter Fund, an early stage investment fund backed by 43 leading Chicago tech entrepreneurs.

“I am honored to be recognized by the Illinois Technology Association as a finalist for this year’s Industry Champion Award. Chicago’s tech community continues to mature and evolve at an impressive rate,” said Matt Moog. “I am excited and energized by the growth potential that exists for the Chicago tech community and would like to thank ITA for all they have done to advance, celebrate and honor achievements in the industry.”

The winner of the CityLIGHTS Industry Champion Award will be determined exclusively by the Illinois Technology Association’s Board of Directors. The winners will be revealed at the ITA CityLIGHTS Awards ceremony on Thursday, September 15 at Morgan Manufacturing in Chicago.

“Year-over-year we have seen that the CityLIGHTS Awards is a barometer for success in the community, often predicting who or what will be the next big thing,” said ITA CEO Fred Hoch. “I can say with confidence that this year, with these finalists, we are setting the stage for tech greatness for years to come.”

About PowerReviews
PowerReviews works with more than 1,000 global brands and retailers to increase conversion and improve products and the customer experience with ratings and reviews and Q&A software. PowerReviews unifies and amplifies the voice of the consumer throughout their journey, across all channels to help consumers make better purchase decisions and to help businesses drive conversion and improve products and services. Ratings and reviews solutions from PowerReviews are essential for consumers as they search and shop online and in-store, driving traffic on more than 5,000 websites, creating actionable insights to improve products and services, increasing conversion, and growing online site-wide sales up to 17 percent. The PowerReviews Syndication Network reaches 2,500 retailers and more than 700 million in-market shoppers every month, giving retailers and brands the power to reach shoppers wherever they are. For more information, visit www.powerreviews.com.

About ITA
The Illinois Technology Association (ITA) scales Illinois tech companies. With innovative resources that allow members to collaborate with each other, build their talent networks and elevate their local and national presence, ITA is the region’s strongest advocate for fostering innovation and growth. Founded in 2005 and supporting 500-plus growth-stage tech companies, ITA has a rich history of driving the business forward. For more information, visit illinoistech.org, follow @ITAbuzz on Twitter or find us on on LinkedIn.

Earlier this month, I was joined by Dave Munro, Director of Marketing Services at Registria, during our monthly PowerReviews webinar, to discuss the top actions brands and retailers can take to generate and leverage user-generated content such as ratings and reviews.

In a previous post, I recapped five of the tips we shared during the webinar that can help brands and retailers generate more ratings and reviews. In this blog, I’ll share five tips for leveraging those ratings and reviews to get your content in front of more shoppers and increase your traffic and conversion.

1. Display reviews throughout your site.
Displaying reviews on your product pages is a great start, but don’t stop there. Look for opportunities to feature reviews on other parts of your website, too. For example, when Mother’s Day is approaching, feature your top rated gifts for mom on your homepage. Or, build landing pages that feature top rated products in a specific category, such as top rating men’s products or top rating women’s products.

2. Include reviews in digital marketing initiatives.
Think about ways you can integrate reviews into your digital marketing initiatives, including email, display, and social media advertising. For example, let’s say you’re a baby products brand, running a Facebook targeted at expecting parents for a crib. Include the item’s star rating in the ad. Or, put together an email campaign for your customers that includes a roundup of that month’s top rated cribs. 

3. Enhance traditional print advertising with reviews.
If you run traditional print advertising, consider ways you can enhance your campaigns with ratings and reviews. For example, Duluth Trading Company, a PowerReviews customer, promotes the fact that their Buck Naked Underwear product has more than 12,000 5-star reviews by including this stat in various advertising campaigns.

4. Add reviews to in-store signage.
PowerReviews research found that 70% of consumers are interested in accessing product ratings and reviews while shopping in-store. Take a page from Amazon’s book and include the star rating and written review for products you sell in your brick and mortar stores.

5. Syndicate your reviews to retailer sites.
Brands can syndicate reviews to retailers to get their content in front of more consumers. And retailers can receive syndicated content from brands to improve their review coverage, without having to collect the content themselves.

One PowerReviews customer, a leading shoe brand, has collected over 65,000 reviews using PowerReviews. We’ve helped them syndicate their reviews to more than 5,000 product pages, and that content has been seen nearly a half million times in the last 3 months across our network. That plays a huge impact in driving sales throughout their retail channels.

Missed the webinar with Registria? Watch the on-demand session today.

It’s no secret that user-generated content, such as ratings and reviews and Q&A, have a big impact on website traffic and conversion. At PowerReviews, we’ve found that collecting and displaying ratings and reviews can increase online site-wide sales for brands and retailers up to 17%.

In most cases, a review is generated as a result of a relevant and actionable review request in the form of a post purchase email. This request asks a customer to write a review for a recently purchased product days after they’ve received it and had time to use it. However, in many retail sectors, merchandise moves on and off the shelves quickly. For these products, it’s key to generate user-generated content more quickly than a post purchase email allows — in hours or days rather than weeks. After all, if a customer waits a few weeks to write a review for a seasonal item like a swimsuit, that item may no longer be available or in-season.

With that in mind, PowerReviews developed a new product offering called Why Did You Buy. Why Did You Buy makes it easier for shoppers to provide feedback immediately after purchase, providing brands and retailers with additional content to drive traffic, sales, and insights.

How it Works
Imagine a customer purchases an item, such as a jacket, from your eCommerce site. Once the transaction is complete, the customer is taken to a thank you page. On that thank you page, the shopper is asked to provide feedback via a short, simple and mobile-friendly form by answering the simple question: Why Did You Buy?

All of the content submitted through Why Did You Buy then passes through our advanced fraud technology and our team of human moderators to ensure the content is authentic and fraud-free.

After moderation, content is displayed on product pages to help future shoppers understand the purchase intent of fellow consumers, which can give them the confidence they need to make well informed purchase decisions. For example, if a consumer is shopping for a jacket for an upcoming hiking trip and notices that other shoppers note that they purchased a particular jacket for a similar trip, she can confidently add the jacket to her shopping cart.

The content generated with Why Did You Buy boosts consumer engagement, which leads to greater conversion. In addition, this content provides businesses with insights to understand use cases and improve products.

What You Can Expect
PowerReviews customers have seen some impressive results by adopting Why Did You Buy. During the program pilot, a leading activewear and outdoor sports gear brand achieved product coverage that was 65% higher than using a traditional review display alone. In addition, PowerReviews customers display four times more total content on their sites than they would without Why Did You Buy.

Start Collecting More Content, Faster
Already a customer? Why Did You Buy can easily be added to PowerReviews’ Ratings and Reviews or Q&A solutions. If you’re an existing PowerReviews customer interested in generating more, high quality content faster with little effort on your part, contact your Client Success Director or Community Manager to learn more about Why Did You Buy.

Not yet a customer? If you’re not a PowerReviews customer but interested in learning more, contact us for a free demo.

Why Did You Buy allows brands and retailers to capture consumer insights and feedback immediately after purchase, resulting in 65% higher product coverage

August 15, 2016 – CHICAGO – PowerReviews, a leading provider of ratings, reviews and question-and-answer technology to more than 1,000 global brands and retailers, today unveiled Why Did You Buy, a new offering that helps brands and retailers drive conversion by capturing reviews and real-time insights from customers immediately after checkout.

As a result of turning on Why Did You Buy, The North Face, a leading retailer of performance apparel, equipment, and footwear, achieved product coverage that was 65% higher than using a traditional review display alone.

“Since partnering with PowerReviews, we’ve seen a surge in content collection,” said Cal Bouchard, Vice President, Digital Commerce and Experience at The North Face. “Why Did You Buy has allowed us to not only increase the amount of user-generated content on our website, but also get customer feedback more quickly on new product offerings.”

“Because ratings and reviews provide a significant boost on traffic and conversion across all industries and price points, PowerReviews is continually delivering new solutions that generate more content for more products,” said Matt Moog, CEO of PowerReviews. “Why Did You Buy not only generates more content and better review coverage, it also provides brands and retailers with fast feedback on new products and the shopping experience. Why Did You Buy delivers on the PowerReviews mission to unify and amplify the voice of the consumer throughout the shopping journey to help consumers make better purchase decisions and to help businesses drive sales and improve products.”

Why Did You Buy
Ratings and reviews play a vital role in a consumer’s path to purchase; products with shorter shelf lives demand consumer feedback in hours or days rather than weeks. Why Did You Buy gives consumers the ability to submit feedback immediately after purchase with a short, mobile-friendly form. This feedback is then displayed on product pages, helping other shoppers understand the purchase intent of other consumers. In addition to providing conversion-boosting feedback, Why Did You Buy provides retailers with insights to improve products and the shopping experience.

With Why Did You Buy, brands and retailers can quickly capture more content for new products, increase buyer confidence, and collect real-time insights that lead to greater consumer engagement and conversion. To ensure content is fraud-free and relevant, PowerReviews moderates all feedback.

PowerReviews will showcase this new capability and its full range of offerings at booth #208 of the eTail East conference in Boston, Aug. 15-18, 2016.

To learn more about PowerReviews, visit www.powerreviews.com.

About PowerReviews
PowerReviews works with more than 1,000 global brands and retailers to increase conversion and improve products and the customer experience with ratings and reviews and Q&A software. PowerReviews unifies and amplifies the voice of the consumer throughout their journey, across all channels to help consumers make better purchase decisions and to help businesses drive conversion and improve products and services. Ratings and reviews solutions from PowerReviews are essential for consumers as they search and shop online and in-store, driving traffic on more than 5,000 websites, creating actionable insights to improve products and services, increasing conversion, and growing online site-wide sales up to 17%. The PowerReviews Syndication Network reaches 2,500 retailers and more than 700 million in-market shoppers every month, giving retailers and brands the power to reach shoppers For more information, visit www.powerreviews.com.

For additional information:
Meghan Spork
Walker Sands Communications
312-241-1474
meghan.spork@walkersands.com

Whether it’s in-store or online, apparel companies are always changing and adding inventory to offer consumers (every day, every week, every month, or at the very least, every season).  While it’s great for consumers to have access to new products, the short shelf lives of fashion items poses a challenge for companies that want to quickly collect and display valuable user-generated content (UGC) from their consumers to help improve their conversion rates.

Consumers have come to expect UGC during their shopping journey. In fact, 86% of consumers say reviews are an essential resource when shopping. But with new items constantly getting added to shelves and sites, it’s difficult to collect high volumes of relevant content from consumers.   

For traditional reviews (star rating, tags, and comments), it’s a best practice to send a write-a-review request to a consumer who bought a soft good 14 days after a purchase to give him time to receive the product and use it. At some clothing retailers, however, certain apparel items will only be offered for 2 weeks before it’s a new season or the items go on the sales rack.  

Apparel companies know reviews and UGC are essential to consumers, but how can they collect more content and increase product coverage when inventory is constantly changing?

Check out the 4 reasons every apparel company should be using PowerReviews’ new Why Did You Buy offering on their websites.

1. You’ll collect and display content faster.
According to recent research with Northwestern University, new products benefit most from UGC. With new items constantly getting added on apparel brand and retailer sites, it’s important to capture content on the newest products, as quickly as possible. Why Did You Buy does not use a post purchase email to ask consumers to write a review. Instead, when a consumer is on the purchase page, they’re prompted to leave a short sentence about why they chose to buy a product. Because the content is collected at the point of purchase, you’ll be able to display the content quickly for your future consumers to see.

2. You’ll collect more content.
Why Did You Buy is designed to not only help you collect and display content faster, but also to enable higher content collection rates. Why Did You Buy complements your current review collection efforts by collecting additional content from your consumers immediately after purchase. Because the form is easy to use, you’ll be able to collect more unique pieces of content, helping you increase product coverage across your site.

3. You’ll reduce return rates.
A quarter of consumers say they return products because they are not what they expect (2015). Why Did You Buy allows you to capture specific information from purchasers about why they chose to buy your product. This content helps consumers make better informed decisions and increases their confidence when they’re on your site looking to buy a product.

4. You’ll collect content from purchasers who bought your product as a gift.
When you collect traditional reviews from your consumers, sometimes it doesn’t make sense for a gift buyer to write a review because they aren’t the end user. However, with Why Did You Buy, you can still collect relevant content from gift givers.

Interested in learning more about how Why Did You Buy can work for your business? Contact us for a demo. Or, if you’re an existing PowerReviews client, reach out to your Client Success Director to learn more.