The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on all facets of daily life. Of course, that includes the way we shop with consumers shifting online at an unprecedented rate.
But – as the pandemic has worn on – many consumers have become increasingly eager to get back to stores. However, their preferences and expectations have changed considerably in the last six months. Retailers must adapt accordingly.
Download our Guide to learn:
Why the store channel still has a very bright future
Data-backed guidance from our consumer survey on what actions you should be taking to make customers more comfortable
Nine key store reopening considerations to set your retail operations network up for success
If there’s one thing we feel we can speak authoritatively on (if we do so say ourselves), it’s best practices for showcasing User-Generated Content (UGC) in your product display pages.
Specifically: Exactly what information should you include and why?
To answer this question effectively, it’s worth explaining the point of UGC. Before making a purchase, consumers want validation for their decisions from a trusted source. And what could be a more trusted source than an independent third-party (i.e. customers) who have already experienced the product in question?
UGC weaves the Voice of the Customer throughout your site, for greater authenticity and customer-centricity. UGC adds functionality and utility to your website to support the buyer journey, and in doing so, it provides critical social proof that turns shoppers into buyers. In other words, the main benefit of UGC is that it maximizes conversions and drives sales.
At PowerReviews, we analyze extensive volumes of web traffic to understand what types of UGC have the most impact on the buyer journey. More than three-quarters of online shopping traffic across all our clients consume at least some form of UGC (i.e. visual media, Q&A, reviews, ratings), and the results of those interactions are quite compelling. In fact, across all this web traffic, online shoppers that interact with some form of UGC are actually 103% more likely to make a purchase.
I work with a bunch of leading brands that leverage a range of UGC to drive conversions. Here are the UGC that have the biggest impact, along with some real-life examples.
UGC Type 1:
Questions & Answers (Q&A)
What is Q&A?
Q&A provides the opportunity for customers to provide specific questions about a product on your product pages. You can then answer these questions yourself or allow other customers to provide responses.
Why is Q&A valuable?
Q&A gives shoppers answers to the very specific questions they have before making a purchase. In doing so, it boosts confidence and removes hesitations to buy – absolutely critical when aiming to convert browsers to purchasers.
Q&A also enables you to bridge the content and contextual gaps often not covered in standard online product descriptions. Think questions about various use cases, product compatibility, warranty and how the product performs in given scenarios. You 1) can’t cover all these topics in your product descriptions and 2) can’t anticipate every question your customers may have. So crowdsourcing these questions in a mini and highly specific online forum is the next best thing.
Our research shows Q&A is the No. 1 most impactful type of UGC content. Consumers engage with this content convert at 153% the rate of overall site traffic.
Real-life best practice example of Q&A
If you’re looking for a retailer with a solid Q&A foundation, check out global footwear mega brand UGG. The retailer has 34 questions in its Q&A for its 5-star rated Fluff Yeah Slide. Shoppers can ask a question, sort responses by various criteria – newest, oldest or most answers – and also search by keyword.
UGC Type 2:
Size/Fit Snippet
What is the size/fit snippet?
The ability to sort review content according to consumer sizing reactions. Is the item coming up smaller than anticipated, larger or just right? Receiving this information from people who have actually bought and tried the item provides authentic guidance you simply cannot replicate.
Why is the Size/Fit snippet valuable?
Consumers who interact with review content drive a 115% increase in visitor conversion rate per our research. The Size/Fit Snippet is a great way to facilitate this interaction. Why? It gives shoppers the ability to filter reviews to bring the most relevant review content front and center.
Studies show consumers will pay a premium for products that are personalized to their specific needs. Think of the Size/Fit Snippet in the same manner – consumers place a premium on user generated content that is personalized to their specifics.
If you’re an apparel or footwear brand in particular, the Size/Fit Snippet is a “must have”. Presenting reviews in this manner is a win-win for retailer and for the customer. It elevates consumer confidence whey they can’t touch or try on a product but want to ensure it will still look and feel great; as well, it acts as an excellent qualifier thereby significantly reducing the likelihood of return.
Real-life best practice example of size/fit snippet
To see a great use of the Size/Fit Snippet in action, check out Bonobos. The men’s clothing designer and retailer’s claim to fame is that it offers “the most fits in pants – Skinny, Tailored, Slim, Standard, & Athletic – across sizes 28-54 so you’re bound to find the right fit.” To support this value proposition, the company offers copious size and fit information resources on its website.
On its Stretch Washed Chino product display page, 155 reviews can be sorted by Size (Too big, too small or true-to-size fit), Height (options from 5’4” to over 6’4”), and Weight (options from under 150 to over 300 pounds).
UGC Type 3:
Imagery
What is imagery?
In a UGC context, photos from actual customers of the product “out in the wild”. These show what it looks like in reality
Why is consumer imagery valuable?
Real-life customer photos trump corporate glossy product images taken in a controlled lighting environment. Why? They are far more authentic and reflective of the actual reality of buying the item in question.
According to surveys, some 88% of shoppers polled want to see authentic product photos and videos. Our tracking data shows that engagement with this user-generated imagery results in an 81% increase in visitor conversion rates.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words; most of us are very visually oriented and images can convey information in a much more nuanced and detailed way than text. (e.g. how a duvet looks in the bedroom, or the specific grey color of a belt etc.).
Real-life best practice example of consumer imagery
One brand leveraging user-generated imagery to its advantage is casual apparel and accessory retailer Aéropostale. Its product display page for its Real Denim High Rise Slim & Thick Curvy Jegging features an image carousel with images from reviews and social media channels showing real people in all shapes and sizes modelling and styling the jeans.
UGC Type 4:
Review Faceoff
What is the Review Faceoff?
The Review Faceoff showcases the most liked positive and negative review for a specific product.
Why is the Review Faceoff valuable?
This review feature gives prospective buyers a read on the most valued product and pros/cons quickly and easily. This reduces effort while promoting authenticity.
While it may seem counterintuitive to showcase a negative review, our research shows 85% of shoppers seek out negative reviews prior to purchase. A full two-thirds of visitors filter for 1-star reviews and yet these visitors still convert at 108% the rate of general web traffic.
After all, no product is perfect and customers are realistic to know that; a jacket is super warm and waterproof, but maybe the zipper breaks easily. Customers want to know the full scoop – all the pics and pans, what people love and what people hate. They’ll want to see the worst and realize to see if they can live with it. And this also mitigates future disappointment down the road because it helps manage expectations
Real-life best practice example of Review Faceoff
One example of a brand reaping the rewards of the Review Faceoff is Learning Resources. On its Review Snapshot on the Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog, shoppers can clearly see the pros and cons of the product as cited by reviewers and view the Most Liked Positive Review and the Most Liked Negative Review.
UGC Type 5:
Sort and Filter/Search Bar
What is the Sort and Filter/Search Bar?
A bar at the top of your review content in your product page that provides the ability for customers to sort and filter your review content. This helps them personalize their own research process to get the information they need on the product before hitting the “buy” button.
Why is the Sort and Filter/Search Bar valuable?
Consumers like options, so giving shoppers the ability to sort and filter and slice and dice UGC as they desire is a big win. By adding Sort and Filter/Search Bar functionality, you can offer the flexibility to sort by reviews with images, highest rated, lowest rated or most recent reviews, a certain size, or other keywords. They get the information they need to make informed purchase decisions.
Real-life best practice example of Sort and Filter/Search Bar
The Sort and Filter/Search Bar on home furnishing retailer Hayneedle’s product display page for its Algoma 11-ft. Cotton Rope Hammock with Metal Stand Deluxe Set, is a solid example. It’s also clearly a very helpful feature given the product has over 225 reviews!
Do You Have the Data to Drive UGC Decision Making?
While these types of UGC are tried and tested by our customer community and proven to help drive conversions, your results may vary. It’s important to consider what is important to your audience when devising your UGC strategy.
And as with any eCommerce tactic, it’s important to benchmark efforts to determine what is working. Small shifts can produce big results when it comes to UGC, but you need to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of your current efforts to understand what, if anything, needs to change.
Unfortunately, many brands have little to no insight into their UGC efforts and as a result, are unable to size or even define this impact. They have no way of knowing the nature or extent of consumer interactions with UGC. To address this issue, we recently released a new analytics product that provides very precise recommendations based on data (i.e. what interactions with UGC content lead to conversions/purchases).
This new offering enables brands to establish the impact of their UGC investments across their eCommerce environment, including analysis across all UGC on product pages; engagement data, such as viewing of, filtering of and clicking on specific elements on each product page; key related site analytics, such as time on page, and critically subsequent actions and outcomes – i.e. whether shopper bought the product or not.
As online shopper behaviors are shifting drastically, now is the time to make sure your product pages are capturing customers’ attention. What type of UGC content results in better outcomes? Understanding which types of UGC will drive the most impact will allow you to prioritize efforts to give your customers more of what they want and need and in turn maximize conversions.
Not sure your review display is giving you the highest conversion rate? If you are a PowerReviews customer, reach out to your Customer Success Manager who will tell you have the right setup in place. If you are not a PowerReviews customer, we’d love to tell you more.
The Definitive Guide to Product Sampling
By now, the value of reviews in converting browsers to buyers is well known. More reviews on your site = more sales.
Product sampling – the act of sending free or discounted samples of product to a consumer – is a proven strategy for accelerating the review generation process.
But product sampling campaigns contain a number of different elements and are serious challenge to execute.
Generate Longer 5-Star Reviews by Maximizing the Value of our new Capability
We get asked a lot by customers: how can we generate longer reviews?
At the core of our company ethos is the concept of authenticity. While our competitors are releasing functionality that enables brands to selectively delete review content they don’t like, we are focused on building capabilities that drive high quality and real content that performs.
So we recently rolled out a feature focused specifically on this goal: the Review Meter.
What is the Review Meter?
An interactive character count positioned under the review commentary section that increases as your customer writes his or her review. Here’s an example of it in action:
As you can see, a little green bar grows as the customer types. Some explainer text beneath gently reminds customers to keep writing until they reach the minimum number of characters (this length can be customized to your own specification). Nothing stops the customer from submitting at that shorter length. But this provides some encouragement to provide just a little more detail – particularly if that customer has just been primed by you to talk about best uses or where they are using a product and why.
Once the customer hits that minimum character count, the meter lights up excitedly. The text also converts over to a “keep it up” message, further reinforcing positive behavior.
It’s very simple. But that small visual can go a long way in helping to encourage customers to talk just a little more about their experiences and/or why they like something.
Here’s what McKenna Rowe from DRINKS (featured in the image above) thinks.
“I love it! It’s elegant AND I don’t have to bug my engineers to enable it on my side! Since we implemented this, we’re already seeing much better quality reviews.”
McKenna Rowe Product Design Lead at DRINKS
Taste in wine creates a lot of debate and opinion. Our sample reviewer (in the above example) is explaining how he or she usually likes red blends, and is typically not particularly enamoured with dry wine. Others reading then gain a sense for this reviewer’s preferences, taste, palate etc. If this matches theirs (or even if it doesn’t but they know enough to understand), the impact is huge.
Review content is all about relating and connecting with the reader. The more likely your content is to do this, the more likely it is to have the desired result.
If you’re a PowerReviews customer, this is super easy to enable. Your Customer Success Manager would be delighted to talk you through it so please reach out if you’re interested.
Longer reviews have deeper impact
To understand the value of the Review Meter, you need to understand the very real and tangible impact of review length.
As we mentioned at the outset, we get asked this a lot by brands and retailers. How much of a focus should it be? What does the data say in terms of the value and impact of longer review content over shorter review content? And, most of all, what can they do to inspire their customers to leave more detailed reviews?
Read on to find out a detailed data-backed take on why curating longer consumer review content is worth your while.
Based on our own PowerReviews review interaction data (taken from analysis of 1.5m+ product pages across 1,200+ brand and retail sites), we can see the distribution of “helpful” ratings according to review length. By this we mean the average number of “helpful” votes review content receives from shoppers. This acts as a good barometer of review consumption and engagement.
As you can see, helpfulness increases in line with review length growth. The trend is very clear. The longer the review, the more helpful it is. 500+ character reviews – in particular – evidently offer huge value to shoppers.
This makes complete sense: consumers like to consume longer review content because it includes more detail that is more likely to be relevant to them. Take a coat for example. A longer review might go into the fit, the material, the zipper, the color, the warmth, reasons for buying and so on and so on.
But what does a “helpful” review mean in terms of outcome? Quite a lot, it turns out.
Review Sort Conversion Lift
Conversion rate of visitors that engaged with each feature
Highest Rating
157.8%
Lowest Rating
105%
Images
167.3%
"Most Helpful" Reviews
192.1%
Most Recent Reviews
80.9%
Oldest Reviews
107.3%
Of all consumers sorting review content, those that sort by helpful rating convert at the highest rate. This actually amounts to 192% above overall average conversion rates. So longer reviews are more helpful and helpful reviews have a huge impact on whether that shopper then goes on to buy that item or not.
Something else to consider about longer reviews: they provide more information about the product for you to analyze (assuming you have the NLP and text analytics to do so…check out our UGC Analytics platform if you don’t). What do consumers like about your product? What do they hate? How can you improve it ? Now project this across your entire catalog. That’s a whole lot of high-value and actionable information for you to leverage to drive positive and meaningful change.
Why do longer reviews generate better results?
It’s not surprising that longer reviews generate better outcomes. As detailed above, the more information contained within a customer review, the more likely it is to clearly articulate a specific use case and answer whatever questions a customer has. It’s also more likely to enhance buyer confidence.
But this value has numerous levels. Think about it: unstructured product feedback is feedback in your customers’ own words. No BS. In this social media-influenced world where everyone is used to interacting and providing their opinions online in public forums, reviews offer an excellent outlet to provide feedback and recommendations for others.
Their verbatim nature mean you also really get to understand how an experience or product made a customer feel. The longer the review, the more customer emotion-type information you get. Reviews that highlight how products made a shopper feel something positive resonate and connect with customers. As a result, they can be extremely influential in the buying decision.
Longer reviews also make the product more likely to be found. Review content – like any other copy on a web page – contributes to SEO rankings, thereby increasing web traffic. More eyes on a product – particularly when the search is likely to be highly intent driven – means more sales.
The More Negative the Sentiment, the Longer the Review
We wanted to see if consumer sentiment affected review length. The answer is it does and significantly so.
To do this, we looked at the accompanying rating provided by the reviewer alongside their review content. It’s clear that – even over an extended period – five and four star rated reviews (out of five) are consistently shorter than one and two star reviews.
To spell this out, negative reviews are longer than positive reviews. Intuitively, this makes sense. You’ve probably seen a lot of review comments out there that say simply “amazing, love my new spatula”, “this coat is wonderful” or similar.
Negative reviews – on the other hand – tend to have more detailed explanations of why the reviewer didn’t like the product (e.g. “Bought the oven online, was a seamless purchase and delivery process. I wouldn’t buy it again though because it doesn’t heat to the temperature it claims at any given time, I’ve verified with my own oven thermometer. When I baked a cake, it didn’t rise. It ruined my son’s birthday. Such a shame as this brand is usually super reliable and this is the third oven I bought for them. I’m shocked and disappointed” etc.).
Negative reviews actually average more than 200 characters pretty consistently. But positive reviews track more closely to what we described across all our data. Why? Most reviews are positive. In fact, the bottom chart here highlights that a whopping 85% of product reviews are 4 and 5 star rated.
This is an especially important point for you to consider. What this means:
Longer reviews are more impactful and drive better sales numbers
Positive reviews tend to be shorter in length but greater in volume
You need longer positive reviews.
You need to focus on generating longer 5-star reviews
We offer extensive guidance on how to generate more review content. Check out this guide or this blog for more on that.
Here we want to explain: how do you convert willing reviewers into longer, helpful review content?
By this point, you have commitment from your customer to provide a review. They are already invested in the process. But you have to remember that your customers are most likely not experienced reviewers. They are also unlikely to be expert copywriters and they are probably not product experts. They may not even know where to start when it comes to providing information other shoppers look for.
Start with the Review Meter
Our Review Meter was designed with this goal specifically in mind. This is a very easy way to start increasing the length of your review content and generating more impactful reviews.
It’s very basic human psychology. Most people want to please others and/or achieve an objective. The way the review meter is set up, it hits on both these points. The bar only turns green when the review submission hits a desired length.
Given your customers have already voluntarily chosen to provide content, they already have a certain amount of commitment to the process. So play on this to ensure the review they submit is as valuable to you as possible.
Also Encourage Quality with an Optimized Review Submission Form
To fully optimize the power of the Review Meter, we recommend also optimizing your review submission form.
Why? Your customers may not know exactly what to write or what other customers find valuable. However, they know why they bought the product and their specific use case. So you need to harness their enthusiasm to share their experience to tease this information out of them.
Our customer Room & Board offers a great example of how you can guide your customers through the review submission process (full form here for reference).
They do this by planting a number of ideas in the reviewer’s head before they get to the form.
Specifically, they ask customers to select from a series of multiple choice checkboxes. The review form is related to a furniture item, so Room & Board ask reviewers to choose their uses (options: accent, informal, lounging, small spaces, formal, large spaces, primary seating, watching tv) where they live (options: apartment, loft, townhouse, house) and so on.
This very smartly plants ideas in the reviewer’s head that they will take into their comment submission later in the form. So “love this couch” becomes “I needed a modern looking couch that is super comfortable (mainly for watching TV) to be the centerpiece in my one-bedroom New York City apartment. I love how flexible it is…it’s equally great for lounging and as a formal piece for hosting” etc.
The form in effect guides customers to provide helpful review content. The review meter in effect acts as “the convertor”, providing the motivation to create the sort of content that leads to sales.
And of course the checklist approach also has other highly complementary purposes. Namely, they help populate Pro/Con lists, use cases and demographic information at the top of the review display that summarize information contained in the reviews. These can then be displayed in an easily scannable and filterable way for shoppers, providing super impactful social proof from “people like me”.
In Conclusion
If you don’t care about review length, you should. Longer reviews are proven to drive more sales.
Why? During the research phase of their purchase cycle, consumers want authentic validation. If they get this, they are far more likely to follow through and convert to a buyer.
The more relatable the review content, the more likely it is to resonate and have an impact. And the longer the content, the more likely it is to contain this relatable information.
The good news is that there are some simple actions you can take to encourage these longer reviews.
First and foremost, you should leverage our new Review Meter. We built this capability exactly because brands and retailers are struggling to generate quality and in-depth review content. This plays on the concept of gamification to encourage reviewers to continue by way of a live character content.
But you should also think about adjusting your review form to fully optimize the power of the Review Meter. By guiding customers through the submission process by asking for relatable tags before they reach the commentary box, you plant ideas in the reviewer’s head that they take with them to when they start to write in their own words.
This – in tandem with the Review Meter – will help you generate the more in-depth and detailed review content that drives sales.
If you’re a PowerReviews customer, you can activate the Review Meter today. If you’re not, request a demo to see it in action.
Introducing the Number 1 UGC-Dedicated Analytics Platform on the Planet
By now the value of User-Generated Content (or UGC for short) on website product pages is well known. Ratings, reviews and consumer imagery/video are all highly valued social proof points for shoppers as they progress through the customer journey on the path to purchase.
But despite the extensive positive impact the UGC they capture has on sales and traffic, and even the more qualitative benefits like shopper confidence, few brands and retailers analyze UGC on a deeper level. Either as insight to drive product portfolio improvements or enhance their customer experience.
Why?
They haven’t had access to an intelligence engine powerful enough to take all of the rich sentiment data (from the thousands of UGC they’ve collected across the web) and turn it into clear, actionable insights.
UGC offers a ton of context-rich and actionable insight voluntarily provided by your customers. The sort of information organizations otherwise have to go to great lengths to capture through surveys or other methods. What makes UGC so powerful?
You can easily map consumer feedback to specific products. Think about that for a second: most brands and retailers have extensive catalogs of hundreds or even thousands of products. Monitoring customer sentiment accurately across this sheer volume of items is literally impossible via any other methodology.
Reviewers often provide demographic information (be this age, location, gender and – in some cases – use case). Being able to factor this insight in provides a highly valuable extra layer of context. No other type of customer feedback data captured digitally provides that level of specificity. With UGC, you can very precisely map product feedback and information about those who bought it to the actual product itself.
Unlike other forms of customer feedback, UGC is almost always constructive and meaningful in its focus – whether it’s related to a specific product or your entire customer experience. Whether positive or negative, it typically includes extremely powerful, actionable and context-rich recommendations and suggestions for improvements.
UGC is a datasource with incredible potential but has up to now been completely underutilized. It’s time to unleash it.
What makes UGC Analytics a big deal?
We built UGC Analytics with input from today’s top brands and retailers. Over the past year, as we were building and improving upon this suite of analytics products, we asked for feedback from our customers — who also knew their review data was a goldmine of incredible insights just waiting to be discovered.
In fact, we did a thorough analysis of what other vendors in the space are able to offer. UGC Analytics is superior for a number of reasons. Check out our capability comparison chart for a deeper dive.
Here are a three things UGC Analytics does that no other UGC vendor does:
Benchmarking: Enables consumer sentiment comparison at the product, product category and brand level. Any product, any product category and any brand.
Product-Level Sentiment: Understand sentiment at the individual product level. Analysis of your entire product catalog in granular detail.
Potential Syndication Partners Insight: Provides exceptional guidance on who you should partner with to ensure you maximize the reach, value and impact of your UGC content.
UGC Analytics is a reporting and text analytics suite powered by AI and Natural Language Processing that enables you to drive positive change across your business. These include:
Optimize your overall product catalog and drive individual product improvements
Brands and retailers typically have extensive product portfolios. Knowing exactly where and how to make adjustments – both to individual products and at a more holistic level – to drive meaningful business impact is a huge challenge.
More specifically: how do you know how each product resonates with shoppers? What exactly do they like about each of your products? What don’t they like? Is the information provided at point of sale both accurate and detailed enough to generate realistic expectations?
UGC Analytics enables you to mine all the insight-rich customer feedback captured via your UGC program for the most actionable and impactful improvement opportunities. Our pilot customers used it to build specific evidence for their merchants about modifications they needed to make, make adjustments to product descriptions on their site and considered dropping entire product lines.
Benchmark product and website performance against competitors
To become a market leader, you need to know what you’re up against. How exactly do you compare to your competition?
But most brands and retailers are unable to compare product and brand performance in the detail they need and with the precision required to make the desired impact.
This information – in the form of UGC – is all over the internet. It’s on your site, your competitors’ sites and a whole host of big box retailer and ecommerce marketplace sites. And trying to combine all of this data (which is usually structured differently depending on its source) gets overwhelming very quickly.
UGC Analytics enables you to analyze all this UGC data from your site, your competitor’s sites and any other third-party site this information exists on. It then enables you to compare consumer sentiment at the product, product category and brand level.
For example, say you make razors and Gillette is your main competitor. UGC Analytics enables you to see how your brand stacks up against the overall Gillette brand, as well as compare any of your models to any Gillette model. Extremely powerful stuff.
Understand, dissect and improve consumer path to purchase
As we mention above, User-Generated Content (ratings, reviews and visual media from customers) is proven to have a huge impact on the online shopping journey. Often, it’s the driving factor in converting browsers to buyers along the path to purchase.
But most are unable to size or even define this impact. They have no way of knowing the extent of consumer interactions with UGC content and the precise nature of it.
What type of UGC content results in better outcomes? Does consumer imagery or video make purchasing a product more likely? What about product Q&A content? How big an impact do different star ratings have on purchase decisions?
UGC Analytics enables you to answer all these questions and more. How? By capturing very precise insight about how consumers interact with this content, along with their subsequent actions (i.e. do they go on to purchase or not).
For example, across all our data, we have established that online shoppers that interact with some form of UGC are 103% more likely to convert. Q&A is the most impactful content (153% increase in conversion), followed by reviews (115% increase in conversion) and imagery (81% increase in conversion). UGC Analytics enables you to understand UGC’s tangible impact on your specific buyer journey.
Understand how your customers talk about your products so you can ensure your messaging and branding is on point
UGC Analytics analyzes every single piece of ratings and reviews content submitted about each of your products anywhere on the internet.
Due to its NLP-powered text analytics capabilities, it’s therefore able to take all this data and then surface very specific trends and insights to the forefront.
As a result, you can very quickly understand how your product and brand messaging is resonating with shoppers. Are there expectations of your products accurate? Or do your products end up disappointing more often than not? What exactly is it that doesn’t hit the mark?
UGC Analytics enables you to establish answers to all these questions and more. In doing so, it delivers highly actionable insights that drive informed and strategic improvements – whether for an individual product or on a broader basis.
How can you credibly say it’s “the best UGC-dedicated analytics platform on the planet”?
Put simply, because it is. We knew this was a huge gap in the UGC marketplace. As we talk about above, UGC is an incredible datasource that most brands and retailers are simply not leveraging as they could for maximum benefits. But there’s no other vendor in the space that is enabling them to fully realize this incredible potential.
UGC Analytics stacks up favorably to all other analytics platforms offered by our direct competitors. Here are the main reasons why:
Today is a proud day for us at PowerReviews. We are excited to offer brands and retailers the opportunity to maximize the huge potential impact of their UGC data to drive broad and meaningful business change.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has gripped the US, consumers shifted nearly all of their buying online. According to Adobe’s Digital Economy Index, U.S. ecommerce jumped 49% in April, compared to the baseline period in early March prior to shelter-in-place restrictions.
User-generated content around ecommerce has also exploded. This includes consumer reviews, responses to those reviews by other consumers and brands, along with a marked increase in the posting of Questions and Answers and other content, to help inform consumers and support browser-to-purchaser conversion.
Proactive management of the reviews process is an essential element of both ecommerce and – more broadly – brand reputation management. In today’s digital world, it only takes one consumer and one negative review to bring down a brand’s reputation and inject fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the collective digital consumer consciousness.
In a recent webinar with my co-host Sri Rajagopalan, I had the opportunity to discuss the heightened need for proactive customer engagement with Jon Jessup, CEO of Reputation Studios. I have formulated a list of key takeaways and best practices for proactive reputation management.
Brands’ Responses to Reviews are Nearly as Impactful as Consumer Reviews.
Many organizations understand the importance of landing great customer reviews to influence sales. But a best practice reviews management program necessitates monitoring and responding to reviews and the brand’s response can influence buyer behavior as well.
In fact, a Consumer Review Survey conducted in December 2019 shows that 73% of consumers say they “always” or “regularly” read brands responses to reviews. And 71% said they are more likely to do business with brands that have responded to existing reviews.
Customers Expect Timely Responses from Brands.
How long is too long to respond to a customer online? A timely response should come in a day, but theoretically a customer will accept a slower response if a review is posted over the weekend or on a holiday. There’s also a bit more leeway if a customer posts a 5-star review saying they loved the product.
The response time window is dictated, in part, by the platform used for the review (i.e., Google reviews or Twitter).
Additionally, the exact response time depends on the product, category and the type of review – positive or negative.
If a consumer has an adverse reaction to a product applied to the body or ingested, there are FDA requirements dictating the timeliness of the response and specific process to be followed.
Negative Reviews Require More Urgency.
There’s more urgency to respond to negative reviews 1) to satisfy the customer and 2) to protect the brand reputation.
Typically, a customer expects a response on a negative review in three to five business hours or less. But even this timeframe can be too long if a customer posts something negative on Twitter or via Facebook Messenger.
If brands don’t respond to a negative review in a timely manner, the reviewer can become even more vocal, alerting other followers to the brand’s lack of response. However, brands that respond quickly and address a customer’s needs can reap rewards – as a detractor can become a strong brand advocate.
Q&A Forums Augment Product Details.
Q&A forums have become a common feature on most ecommerce sites. The Q&A section of a site can be exceptionally strategic in helping to fill the gaps in customer product knowledge.
However, the content must be accurate, and this requires monitoring. A consumer who thinks he or she knows the answer may offer an answer, but the details may be wrong. The brand can – and should – comment on another person’s answer, and especially so if it is incorrect.
In this respect, it’s vital to give this responsibility to individuals who actually know the right answers and who are well-versed in customer and consumer engagement.
The need for timely response applies for Q&As as well. If a question posed remains unanswered, customers can question the brand’s lack of a response.
According to one research study, 82% of consumers look for an immediate response from brands on marketing or sales questions. This near immediate need for response was deemed “important” or “very important.” And overall, nearly two-thirds of buyers expect a response within 10 minutes to any marketing, sales, or customer service inquiry.
Staying abreast of Q&A content can also help brands understand the customer experience and opportunities for improvement.
Embrace automation. But not too much.
Automation can help brands manage an influx of customer reviews. But authenticity is key. So the role of technology should be to assist humans so they can respond to the customer quickly and efficiently. For example, populating reference and phone number information for reviews.
The first step is to consolidate everything from all channels into a single response platform. You can then provide automated responses for the simplest reviews. More complex issues can be filtered and routed to the right people internally for response.
If, for example, a customer leaves a 1-star or 5-star review on Google, but with no explanation, an automated response asking for further details is acceptable.
Similarly, if a customer leaves a 1-star or 5-star review of a product citing a particular feature, automation can filter those responses based on context and sentiment intent. They can then be forwarded to the right customer care agent to formulate a response in the brand’s “voice.” Rating-specific and channel-specific response templates can help customer care agents answer customers quickly and efficiently.
Having the Right Data and Analytics to Uncover Insights Pays Big Dividends
Brands typically capture a ton of data about their customers. But few leverage UGC insight in the same way they do survey or CRM data. The truth is it represents fantastic information to drive key product and organizational improvement.
How can companies use the data to make their products better? How can they use the data to better target customers?
Even analysis of your UGC program can have big impact. Which products need more reviews? How does interaction with your UGC drive purchase activity? And beyond that, you can analyze response volume and quality to ensure your reputation management processes are as effective as possible.
Liberate Customer Sentiment to Inform Your Business.
The best way to gain 5-star reviews is to have a 5-star product. The next best thing is to listen and respond to customer feedback to create a 5-star product and/or a 5-star experience. Too often, customer engagement is siloed and the Voice of the Customer isn’t flowed throughout the organization. This is a mistake, as insights from reviews can be invaluable in informing and guiding business improvements from product development to customer service to site content.
Brands should collaborate often to review feedback from customer reviews to respond to trends. Some brands discuss customer sentiment monthly, which isn’t nearly enough. Consider meeting a few times a week to enable a more proactive means to understand and respond to any shifts in consumer sentiment and proactively manage the customer experience and brand reputation.
In the latest guide from PowerReviews...
Learn How to Grow Sales by Showcasing Your Ratings & Review Content to More Shoppers
UGC offers compelling validation and social proof during the buying journey. Generating this content in plentiful volumes across your portfolio is tough. But – once you’ve done this – how do you ensure you then get it in front of shoppers in a way that will generate the most sales?
Today, nearly all consumers rely on user-generated content such as ratings and reviews, Q&A, and customer-submitted photos and videos to make informed purchase decisions. In fact, our research found that a whopping 97% of consumers consult product reviews prior to making a purchase. And 88% seek out photos and videos from other shoppers before buying.
Consumers purchasing food and beverages are no exception.
In this post, we’ll explore why leading food and beverage brands are making user-generated content a priority and how your food and beverage brand can leverage UGC to attract and convert more shoppers, boost loyalty and improve products.
Why Food and Beverage Brands are Prioritizing User-Generated Content
Traditionally, food and beverage purchases took place within the four walls of a brick-and-mortar store. And today, the majority of these purchases still happen in physical stores.
But food and beverage ecommerce is certainly growing. A study from TABS found that in 2019, 56% of US consumers made at least one grocery purchase online, compared to 38% in the prior year.
The COVID-19 pandemic has only sped up this growth. A report from Fabric predicts that online share of grocery sales will approach (or even exceed) 10% this year. That’s four years sooner than previously forecasted.
Online shoppers are actively seeking out user-generated content for various food and beverage products. And this content is positively impacting their purchase behavior. Our own research found that 72% of online grocery shoppers are more likely to purchase a grocery item they’ve never bought before if there are reviews for that product.
Food and beverage shoppers are also turning to user-generated content when they’re making purchases in a brick-and-mortar store — especially when they’re considering an unfamiliar product. Our research found that 52% of in-store shoppers are more likely to purchase a grocery item they’ve never purchased before if there are reviews for that product.
User-generated content gives both online and in-store food and beverage shoppers the confidence they need to try new (or new to them) products. And collecting and displaying this content has a positive impact on the brands that sell these products, too.
UGC Increases Traffic to Food and Beverage Product Pages
In an ideal world, a shopper would navigate right to your website when they were in the market for a food or beverage product you sell. But the reality is, 70% of shoppers start the purchase journey on Google or Amazon.
The good news is, user-generated content like reviews and Q&A makes it easier for shoppers to find your product pages, even when they’re not starting their search on your website. By continuously collecting user-generated content, your site’s content remains fresh and relevant with keyword-rich, permanent assets on your product pages. Search engines can crawl this content, which helps more shoppers find it. At PowerReviews, we’ve found that brands experience a 20% traffic lift from organic search when displaying user-generated content.
UGC Boosts Sales of Food and Beverage Products
Once a shopper lands on a food or beverage product page, user-generated content (or the lack thereof) helps determine what happens next. If there’s user-generated content on the page, the shopper is more likely to purchase the product in question.
At PowerReviews, we’ve found that brands can experience a 65% increase in conversion when reviews are displayed on a product page. And they can expect a 6X sales lift when a customer’s question is answered via Q&A.
UGC Enables you to Better Serve Customers
The content your shoppers submit is full of insights that can help you improve not only your products, but the overall experiences your shoppers have with your brand. This, in turn, will boost loyalty — and sales.
For example, perhaps you notice many shoppers rave about the taste of an energy drink, but many complain about the cap being difficult to open. This could be an opportunity to work with your supplier to improve the packaging. You can also respond to reviews mentioning the tricky cap to let shoppers know you care about their feedback and are taking action to resolve the issue.
How Food and Beverage Brands can Leverage UGC to Boost the Bottom Line
User-generated content helps food and beverage shoppers make confident purchase decisions. And it helps food and beverage brands attract and convert more shoppers.
Let’s explore a few ways you can leverage UGC to boost your business results.
Collect and Display Reviews
Reviews are important at the best of times. But in the wake of COVID-19, consumers rely on reviews even more. Our recent analysis found that consumer interaction with online reviews (think sorting, filtering, etc.) has almost doubled compared to pre-pandemic levels.
If you’re not already, now’s the time to start collecting product reviews from your shoppers. The most effective way to do this is to send a follow-up email to your shoppers asking them to submit reviews. Also, be sure the entire collection process is easy for your shoppers to compete on any device.
Once you’ve started collecting reviews, display this content in a way that’s easy for shoppers to find and consume. Make reviews front and center on your product pages and throughout your website.
Collect and Display Customers’ Photos and Videos
Professional photos and videos of your products are important. But for many shoppers, they’re not enough. As mentioned earlier, our research found that 88% of shoppers specifically seek out visual content like photos and videos submitted by other customers before making a purchase.
Food and beverage shoppers use customer-submitted visual content to better understand product characteristics like size and texture — and to discover new ways to use a product. For example, Canyon Bakehouse collects customer-photos and videos, many of which show unique ways shoppers are using their gluten-free bread products.
Start collecting visual content both natively and through Instagram. Then, display this content on your product pages and throughout your website to engage and inspire your shoppers.
Empower Food and Beverage Shoppers to Ask Questions
No matter how comprehensive your product descriptions, shoppers will still have questions. Consider adding a Q&A tool to your website so shoppers can get answers to their purchase-blocking questions right on your product pages.
Make sure your Q&A is searchable so future shoppers can see if their question has already been asked and answered.
Syndicate Content to Your Retail Partners
If you’re like most food and beverage brands, you sell your products through a variety of different channels. If so, be sure you’re syndicating your user-generated content, including ratings and reviews, Q&A, and consumer-submitted photos and videos. That way, content submitted on your own website will also appear on product pages on your retail partners’ websites.
For example, this review for Hormel’s real crumbled bacon was originally submitted on the brand’s website. But thanks to content sharing, it also appears on the product page on Target.com.
By sharing your review content, consumers can find the content they’re looking for, regardless of where they’re shopping for your products.
Highlight User-Generated Content on Amazon
Today, many shoppers start their purchase journey on Amazon. Ensure they can find all of the information they’re looking for — including social proof in the form of user-generated content.
Of course, it’s important to collect user-generated content natively on Amazon. But to maximize review coverage, you’ll also want to ask your ratings and reviews provider if they make it easy for those who write reviews to share that content on Amazon.
In addition, look for unique ways to highlight user-generated content on your Amazon product pages. For example, you can create an image that includes text from a positive review and add it to your image carousel to entice shoppers to learn more.
Showcase UGC in Your Other Marketing Channels
Food and beverage shoppers trust the opinions of others like them. So look for ways to enhance your marketing initiatives — including emails, organic and paid Instagram and Facebook posts, and retargeting ads — with user-generated content like star ratings, excerpts from reviews, and photos taken by your shoppers.
For example, Brew Dr. Kombucha regularly showcases photos taken by shoppers on their own Instagram page.
And Silk uses the text of a customer review in one of their Instagram posts.
Make User-Generated Content Accessible In-Store
A PowerReviews survey found that 70% of consumers are interested in accessing product ratings and reviews in-store. And as mentioned earlier, the presence of this content makes a shopper more likely to try a new food or beverage product.
Ensure the reviews, Q&A, photos and videos on your website are easy to consume on a mobile device. And look for opportunities to enhance in-store displays, product signage and product packaging with star ratings, excerpts from reviews or even photos submitted by your customers.
Leverage Insights to Improve Your Business
User-generated content is chock full of valuable insights that can fuel better business decisions for food and beverage brands. But far too often, these insights remain untouched.
Start leveraging the insights from your user-generated content to identify ways to improve your food and beverage products and your customers’ overall experience with your company.
You can start by monitoring the overall sentiment for a specific product, or example, a new iced tea you just released. If you notice it’s mostly negative, you can dig into the content more to identify specific ways to improve the product — or even pull it altogether.
You can also acknowledge negative feedback from shoppers, which can help you turn negative situations around and show shoppers you are a brand that cares about its customers. This builds loyalty, which then drives sales.
Start Leveraging User-Generated Content to Drive Food and Beverage Sales
Today, food and beverage shoppers depend on user-generated content to make informed business decisions and gain the confidence they need to try new products. This is true regardless of whether a consumer opts to purchase food and beverages online or within the four walls of a brick-and-mortar store.
Food and beverage brands that effectively leverage user-generated content have a big opportunity to drive traffic and sales, uncover actionable insights, and build a reputation as a customer-centric business.
With stores not open to the public, our shopping behaviors have been completely disrupted. As widely reported, ecommerce has become the core channel for consumption. For many brands, it’s the one key aspect of their business that’s going well.
Many are looking to pivot on this COVID-19 ecommerce phenomenon to pave a path for growth. Read on to learn why building on your ecommerce success via a targeted customer engagement strategy can sow the seeds for long-term revenue growth.
A new Global Shopping Index report published by Salesforce cites some pretty unprecedented digital commerce statistics. But then again, these are completely unprecedented times.
The number of unique digital shoppers rose 40% year-over-year, caused by this dramatic shift we’ve all experienced in consumer behavior from physical to digital browsing and buying. Digital shoppers drove a 20% revenue growth in Q1 2020, compared to 12% in Q1 2019.
Many brands are reporting increased order volumes in line with what they only usually only see during the holiday shopping season. Our own research backs this up conclusively, and shows brands are experiencing increased page view and purchase volumes.
As some States begin to reopen, most Americans remain uneasy about venturing out, with one study showing 67% are uncomfortable going into a retail store.Given this ambivalence, expect ecommerce to remain robust for the foreseeable future.
‘Don’t Rest on Your Laurels’
Brands have an incredible opportunity to continue this momentum by driving even more digital engagement – both in acquiring new customers and nurturing their existing/loyal customer base.
Matt Powell, Vice President and Senior Industry Advisor at the NPD Group underscores this opportunity, “Ecommerce has been a lifeline for many brands and retailers. More and more customers are shopping online, and for products they likely would have never bought pre-pandemic. I believe we can expect consumers to continue moving online as we ease our way out of the crisis. Now is the time for brands and retailers to double down on their online business. ‘Digital first’ must be the mantra of retail now. Don’t rest on your laurels, as there is always room for improvement. Make your website the best it can be.”
During this time when consumers desperately need to feel connected and assured that a brand can be trusted with their business, some are leveraging customer content to deliver the improvements Powell talks about. Customer stories offer powerful validation that build trust and authenticity by highlighting how consumers are engaging with your brand and the products you offer.
Most importantly, they are proven to help drive increased site traffic and purchases. Even a single product review can make a big difference to your bottom line.
According to our extensive ratings and review data (we analyzed 168k product pages, 28 million orders and 321 million page views), we found that the more reviews displayed for a product, the higher the conversion rate. But, even a small volume of reviews has an impact. To illustrate this point, a jump from zero to one customer review results in a 7% increase in conversion levels for that product on average. This increases steadily until you hit 50 reviews, which we consider the sweet spot. At this point, the lift in conversion rate is 21% on average… Pretty impactful numbers!
Pro Tip: Focus Your Customer Content Strategy on Mitigating Returns
Brands experiencing a high volume of ecommerce orders can typically expect at least some returns. Product returns have always been the achilles heel for retailers, and even more so now in the COVID-19 wake of shuttered storefronts and economic uncertainty.
Returns seriously erode revenues. In one study, Boston University researchers found returns cost manufacturers and retailers as much as $100 billion annually or 3.8% of revenue.
But the same study found that customer content – or more specifically, product reviews – help consumers make better purchase decisions and lead to fewer product returns. Bottom line: online product reviews are critical to enhancing strategic competitiveness, boosting revenue and reducing costs.
Why? Customer content answers questions upfront, supporting consumers’ efforts to select a product that fits their specific need. Think about it: if – as a browser – you’re faced with a product page that includes product images submitted by customers and maybe even Q&A-type content, you are far more likely to obtain the answers to any questions you have (i.e. around issues ranging from size/fit to color and plug any unconsidered gaps in the product description), while also demonstrating relatability – all in a uniquely scalable and authentic way.
This does more than sell merchandise, it can help ensure the product – once it leaves the distribution center – doesn’t come back via the returns channel.
Steal These Customer Engagement Best Practices
Over the years, PowerReviews has worked with leading brands to help them formulate killer customer engagement strategies to drive high-octane ecommerce growth. I’ve taken the liberty of making a list of these — in some cases, noting particular COVID-19 implications that make these especially relevant right now.
1. Send a follow-up email after an order is placed urging shoppers to review their purchases.
This proactive strategy generates up to 90% of review collection. Formulating your email is important. Think short and simple and be clear and concise in stating your review ask.
2. Be purposeful to collect content that is specific and actionable.
By asking for specifics, you can gather vital user information to help answer real buyer needs, such as what is the size and fit of this item? (60% of all returns can be attributed to fit issues), and, what are the best uses of this item? You should be aiming to extract existing thoughts rather than influence the content. Your typical reviewer is not a professional writer and may not even know what average customers look for. So make the writing a review process quick and easy with prepopulated tabs.
3. Focus on images.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. When it comes to reviews, it could be worth a thousand orders. Images are particularly critical for product segments such as fashion and beauty as consumers don’t have ready access to stores where they can try things on and test things out. Consumers are scanning images to assess questions such as: Will this Perfect Passion Pink lipstick look good on me? Seeing the image of another individual with the same hair and skin color wearing this shade of lipstick (and demonstrating this shade of pink is on point) – for example – is seriously impactful. Formulate your review to ask for an image first and keep in mind the opportunity to repurpose or cross-post images by curating from social media platforms such as Instagram. These offer a treasure trove of visual content that can be collected and integrated into product pages to provide scale, plug any product description gaps and establish the buyer confidence necessary for customers to hit the “buy” button.
4. Spend extra time connecting with your followers and posting on your social media outlets.
In the post-COVID-19 era, consumers are online more than ever. Reports are flooding in regarding skyrocketing screen time in light of social distancing measures, with individuals reporting increases in screen time ranging from 35 to 68%. Take advantage of this opportunity by engaging with the community you’ve built to ask for reviews.
5. Provide the ability for users to ask questions and provide answers on your site.
Satisfy your site visitors by giving them the information they want and need without having to navigate to other pages on your site. Providing answers to consumers’ questions builds trust and removes barriers to purchase while improving SEO. On average, when a product goes from displaying no answers to at least one answer, brands and retailers see an 88% lift in traffic and an 82% lift in conversion for that product. Anecdotal evidence from many of our customers indicates that Q&A content is playing an important role during the shifting COVID-19 ecommerce landscape. For example, Tim Lakin, ecommerce Merchandising Manager at Skechers, told us: “I am definitely seeing an increase in customer reviews and questions indicating a lot of customers are shopping online who would not normally be doing so – even to the point where a customer may not know their own shoe size and would rely heavily on review information. Naturally, we want to accommodate those customers since our website is now taking the place of our retail stores in many states, and the store associates and in-store experience as well.”
6. Identify and close review sharing gaps.
Sharing the customer content you collect on your brand with retailers makes it easier for them to sell your product. This also helps with SEO, making your products easier to find thereby increasing impressions and traffic. To assess the best opportunities, look at key categories that are receiving a high volume of traffic but which are not deemed “essential” items. So think self-care, home improvement, etc., These represent “killer COVID-19 categories” where reviews and content can enhance sales and SEO.
7. Consider a sampling strategy.
One ultra-effective way to solicit customer feedback is by giving consumers the opportunity to experience a product in exchange for their input, whether through a review or on social media. PowerReviews clients typically experience an 85% response rate to sampling campaigns. Recently, however, brands have experienced issues with sample product availability, fulfillment issues, and shipping delays. So be sure to understand what, if any, COVID-19 constraints could impact your sampling campaign execution. But I can’t stress enough how the conditions caused by the pandemic are uniquely suited to sampling campaigns. Although times are rough, people are looking for things to do. Experimenting with a new (free) product may provide some welcome escapism.
8. Show empathy.
We are living in unprecedented times and now more than ever, we appreciate the connections with others – precisely because we can’t physically interact with one another. Brands have an opportunity to step up. As RSR Research Industry Analyst Paula Rosenblum has said, “It’s time to show the world what we are made of,” noting, “consumers won’t forget.” Responding to reviews or via social media to build and nurture your customer community can have a very strong and positive impact. As well, ask yourself what you can offer to help your customers at this time. Maybe that’s offering free shipping, maybe it’s a virtual try-on utility or double loyalty points.
Is your ecommerce/digital team employing any of the above customer engagement strategies? If you are a PowerReviews customer, reach out to your Customer Success Manager to discuss the best strategies to leverage our solution to achieve your objectives. If you’re not a PowerReviews customer, we’d love to hear from you.
