The Growing Importance of Consumer-Submitted Visual Content
Visual content has become an integral part of the lives of today’s consumers — and it’s changing the way they shop, too. PowerReviews research found that nearly all (97%) of shoppers seek out visual content prior to purchase.
And while brand-provided images and videos have their role to play in satisfying a consumer’s need for visual information, increasingly, consumers are specifically seeking out content submitted by others like them. Consumer images and videos fill in product gaps that a brand missed or could not properly showcase in a written description or specification overview. From texture to scale, consumers’ content plays an essential role in answering conversion driving questions and boosting confidence. The same study mentioned above found that 88% of consumers specifically look for visual content submitted by other consumers prior to making a purchase. This visual content helps the end user connect with a product. In fact, 72% of shoppers are more likely to buy a product that has reviews that feature photos and videos in addition to written text.
Clearly, visual content plays a large (and growing) role in the path to purchase. And it’s an important tool when building shopper confidence and ensuring a product is the right fit to prevent returns. This is especially true when consumers are shopping for products that are visual in nature — including apparel, footwear, and health and beauty items. Because consumers want to connect with a person like them to decide whether a product will fit their specific needs, it’s key for brands and retailers to make it a priority to start collecting and displaying more visual content from shoppers.
How can you start collecting more of the conversion-boosting photos and videos that your customers are actively seeking out? Read on to learn five ways to start collecting more visual content from your shoppers today.
1. Collect Photos and Videos Natively
Displaying consumer provided photos and videos as part of your reviews helps build buyer confidence. And confident shoppers are more likely to convert. Remember, 72% of shoppers are more likely to buy a product that has reviews that feature photos and videos in addition to written text!
The best way to generate more visual content as part of reviews is to make the process as easy as possible. Today’s user has their best content in the palm of their hand. Literally. Allow your consumers to submit photos and videos directly on your website from the camera rolls on their mobile phones — rather than through YouTube or other third-party sites. That way, you’ll generate more photos and videos and keep shoppers on your website.
2. Integrate Your Write-a-Review Form With Social Media
According to data from Statista, the average internet user spent 135 minutes per day on social media in 2017. If your customers are anything like the average consumer, they’re likely spending a good amount of their time on social media, often posting photos and videos to share with their friends. And some of these photos and videos likely include your products.
So in addition to allowing consumers to upload photos and videos from their camera rolls, be sure they can also upload this content straight from their Instagram and Facebook profiles, where this content already lives.
3. Prioritize Visual Content Collection
Traditionally, consumers think of reviews as star ratings and written text. But if you’re focused on generating more visual content as part of reviews, you need to make it clear to your consumers that you want them to share photos and videos of your products.
Ask your ratings and reviews provider if they offer a visual content collection feature, which enables you to send a post purchase email that specifically asks your shoppers to provide an image before you ask for a review. At PowerReviews, our customers have seen a 144% increase in images collected with an image-first call to action. And more than half of purchasers continue to write a review after submitting an image through the visual content collection form.
4. Collect Content from Instagram
Instagram is one of the most popular social media channels today, with more than 800 million monthly active users and over 95 million photos shared each day. Chances are, there are plenty of “real life” photos and videos of your products already living on Instagram. If you’re not collecting this content, you’re missing out on a big opportunity.
Your ratings and reviews provider should make it easy to leverage the content that already exists on Instagram — then display this content directly on your product detail pages. For example, Social Collection from PowerReviews allows brands and retailers to collect Instagram content generated by hashtags and @mentions, and then gather visual content rights from the person that posted the content. Then, the brand or retailer can display this content directly on product display pages and in marketing campaigns to boost shopper confidence — and conversion.
5. Syndicate Visual Content
Once you’ve started collecting visual content from your customers, the next step is to get that content in front of future shoppers, regardless of where they shop. If you’re a brand, make sure you’re syndicating user-generated photos and videos (both from social and the content you collect natively) to your retail partners. That way, you’re getting this conversion-boosting content in front of more consumers, whether they’re shopping directly through your website or through one of your retail partners. If you’re a retailer, start accepting syndicated visual content from your brands. By doing so, you’ll benefit from displaying a higher volume of visual content — without having to collect it yourself.
Start Collecting More Visual Content
We know that 88% of consumers specifically look for visuals — such as photos or videos — submitted by other consumers prior to making a purchase. It’s key to provide these shoppers with the information they’re looking for — or else you risk losing them to a competitor that does.
Are you already a PowerReviews client? Contact your Client Success Director to learn more about how you can start generating more visual content today. Not a PowerReviews customer yet? Contact us to schedule a demo.
PowerReviews and SEO Compliance
Earlier this month, we partnered with Loud Interactive, an online SEO marketing firm, to complete a comprehensive test on our latest JavaScript (JS) Display to ensure user-generated content on product pages are indexed by Google. And simply put, our goal was to learn how effective our solution was for Google search results.
This is important for our clients, brands and retailers in all industries, who want their products to appear in Google search. Especially since we know that 35% of consumers begin their purchasing journey on a search engine.
Loud Interactive Findings
It was confirmed that our latest JavaScript Display is enabling user-generated reviews and questions and answers to properly render for Googlebot.
In fact, Loud Interactive ran three extensive tests to validate this. To give you an idea of the scope of these tests, they analyzed 95,196 unique review URLs from PowerReviews’ Display 4 (our JavaScript display) clients using JavaScript and rendered them in the Chrome 41-based crawler. A significant majority (98.89%) of these URLs were included in Google indexing and were ranking for a quote from the review copy — validating that PowerReviews’ JavaScript implementation is SEO-compliant. Any URLs that were not indexed were due to pages not following coding best practices.
If you want to learn more about Loud Interactive’s methodology and the results they found, check out the full study here.
Are you a PowerReviews client?
Want to learn more about our reviews and SEO approach, best practices or how your site stacks up? Reach out to your Client Success Director today!
Not a PowerReviews client?
Reach out to us today to learn about the SEO value that reviews and other user-generated content drives, and how you can ensure your pages are indexed correctly!
Winning the digital shelf
Brands and retailers understand the importance of having great user-generated and brand content for their products to succeed in a hyper-competitive ecommerce channel. Great content drives more reach, shopper engagement, conversion and sales – and is the key to winning the “digital shelf.” One of the ways retailers compete in an hyper-competitive Amazon world is to work with brands to accept their syndicated content to ensure great coverage.
Reaching one billion ecommerce shoppers
PowerReviews has had a unique opportunity over the last four years to ensure that syndicating reviews and other user-generated content remain open, accessible and affordable. We created the PowerReviews Open Network to make it possible for brands and retailers of all sizes to reach more than one billion consumers wherever they shop each month.
This open and industry-friendly approach persuaded more than 800 brands to adopt the PowerReviews platform. At the same time, more than 25 of the world’s largest retailers joined hundreds of other retailers using the PowerReviews platform to participate in an open network.
Managing the transition to an open network
Recently, Bazaarvoice announced that on September 30, 2018, they will seek to require brands using PowerReviews to sign syndication agreements and pay exorbitant, unnecessary access fees to continue syndicating content to retailers using their platform.
PowerReviews has secured direct relationships with the largest retailers in the world not using our platform. PowerReviews will match content from brands that use our platform at no cost and provide retailers with an easy-to-ingest file. These direct relationships make signing new agreements and paying extra fees unnecessary. We can add new retailers quickly and easily upon request.
PowerReviews will also add additional value to brands by providing faster setup, up to 80% increases in product matching and enabling syndication of new content types such as Q&A and images.
Should Bazaarvoice attempt to block content against the wishes of their largest clients, it would be to the detriment of brands, retailers and consumers.
To be clear, let’s review the facts:
PowerReviews has 1,000+ leading retailers and brands on our platform (including leading retailers such as Jet, Ulta, Dillard’s, Ace Hardware, and BJ’s Wholesale) accounting for billions in online sales and 500 million shopper visits.
PowerReviews signed agreements with 25 of the largest retailers, reaching 1 billion shoppers using other review platforms (including in-house platforms) 18 months ago to directly syndicate content from brands using our platform.
These retailers collectively reach more than one billion shoppers monthly, and represent the majority of the syndication network in terms of shopper visits and sales.
PowerReviews has already started sending retailers fully matched and moderated files with millions of reviews from the 800+ PowerReviews brands.
PowerReviews can onboard new retailers in 2 to 4 weeks, much faster than the current process.
This is a moment of truth for the market. Will Bazaarvoice defy the requests of their clients in a last-ditch effort to exert pricing control over a closed and proprietary network?
Will there be any disruption to network syndication?
Our goal is to minimize any disruption created by Bazaarvoice, particularly before the critical holiday shopping season. All retailers using PowerReviews will remain open and accessible to all brands without premium access fees. There are some retailers that are not yet accepting directly syndicated content. PowerReviews will work with any retailer to quickly onboard them at no cost on behalf of our brands and be fully transparent throughout this process.
Thank you
The team at PowerReviews is working tirelessly on behalf of our clients and the industry to ensure an open syndication network for all. Brands and retailers need a competitive and open network that delivers more content coverage, reach, and innovation. We’ve heard from many of you and I want to personally thank you for allowing us to advocate on your behalf. Here are FAQs to answer questions immediately. For any additional questions, please contact our VP of Network (Jim O’Brien) and VP of Client Success (Jessica Teji).
Matt Moog matt.moog@powerreviews.com
What is cross-network syndication?
For the last six years, PowerReviews and Bazaarvoice have syndicated content from brands to retailers using our respective platforms. Cross-network syndication originally started in July 2012 when Bazaarvoice attempted to acquire PowerReviews. It was continued by order of a federal judge after Bazaarvoice’s attempted acquisition was found to be anti-competitive and was forced to divest PowerReviews. Prior to this time, Bazaarvoice operated a closed network and did not syndicate third party content. We estimate that Bazaarvoice has charged brands at least $100 million for access to retailers using their platform.
What is the PowerReviews Open Network?
In March 2017, PowerReviews announced the extension and expansion of the PowerReviews Open Network to provide syndication of content to any retailer seeking access to millions of reviews from more than 800+ brands using the PowerReviews platform. As always, any retailer using the PowerReviews platform can accept content from any brand regardless of the reviews platform the brand uses.
In January 2018, PowerReviews announced five new syndication capabilities and in June 2018, announced the elimination of access fees. The open network approach and benefits of competition is evident, and recognized by many of the largest retailers.
What’s happening to cross-network syndication as of July 3, 2018?
As of July 3, 2018, the cross-network syndication agreement ended and PowerReviews and Bazaarvoice entered a “wind-down period” where either party could choose to accept syndicated reviews for up to a year. PowerReviews will continue to accept new content from brands using Bazaarvoice to prevent any disruption.
Bazaarvoice notified PowerReviews on July 3rd they would no longer accept cross-network syndicated content from new PowerReviews clients. On July 16th, some PowerReviews clients heard from the Bazaarvoice sales team that Bazaarvoice plans to stop syndicating all new content from PowerReviews brands to Bazaarvoice retailers starting on September 30th, 2018. PowerReviews has not been directly notified of this change.
To be clear, due to market pressures, Bazaarvoice will accept content from brands not using their platform for a “premium access fee” which will amount to millions dollars being charged to brands to appear on retailer sites. Despite claiming $7,000 entry-level syndication pricing for a brand, Bazaarvoice is already quoting fees at $50,000 or more for a single brand looking to purchase syndication alone. As explained in January 2018, Bazaarvoice continues to believe they have the right to control and profit from content syndicated to retailers using their platform. This is where PowerReviews has a fundamentally different approach, and as it turns out, so do many of the largest retailers in the world.
What is PowerReviews doing to make sure there is minimal disruption for clients?
Eighteen months ago PowerReviews signed agreements with 25 of the largest retailers in the world, accounting for $60 billion in online sales. Direct syndication enables better match and coverage rates, faster set-up times, access to a bigger network, more content types, more transparency and more control. PowerReviews will continue to operationalize direct syndication to retailers providing our clients with additional reach.
PowerReviews is committed to working with our brand clients to make their content available to any retailer using the Bazaarvoice platform. We will match content from brands that use our platform at no cost and provide retailers with an easy-to-ingest file. These direct relationships make signing new agreements and paying extra fees unnecessary. We can add new retailers quickly and easily upon request.
How is direct syndication different than cross-network syndication for retailers?
With direct syndication agreements, PowerReviews uses the retailers’ product catalog to match content supplied by brands that use the PowerReviews platform. Previously, Bazaarvoice would perform this function for PowerReviews brands and PowerReviews would perform the same function for Bazaarvoice brands.
Operationally there is no difference to the retailer or the brand. The major change is that PowerReviews is taking on the cost and effort of matching reviews to products. The process for a retailer to receive directly syndicated content from PowerReviews is simple:
Sign a simple no cost one-page agreement.
Provide an up-to-date product catalog.
PowerReview will match the content and send the already-matched file to the retailer, and Bazaarvoice need only ingest and display the content.
What’s the average timeline to enable direct syndication to a retailer?
Previously with Bazaarvoice, implementing review syndication relationships from PowerReviews could take up to 4 to 6 weeks. However, working directly with PowerReviews, we can implement a direct syndication brand or retailer in as little as 1 to 2 weeks for initial results and 2 to 3 weeks for a full implementation.
Will there be an interruption to my reviews after September 30th?
Our goal is to minimize any disruption of content syndication by Bazaarvoice, particularly before the critical holiday shopping season. All retailers using PowerReviews will remain open and accessible for all brands without premium access fees.
There will be other retailers that are not yet accepting directly-syndicated content. Upon signing a no-cost single page agreement, they can be up and running in a few weeks. PowerReviews will work with any retailer on behalf of our brands, and we will be fully transparent through this process as we establish direct syndication relationships with retailers our clients wish to syndicate reviews to.
Can you summarize the benefits of direct syndication through the PowerReviews Open Network?
$90 billion retailer network: Over a year ago, the largest retailers in the world not using our platform pledged to continue accepting our content. This is in addition to the hundreds of retailers using PowerReviews such as Jet, Ulta, Dillard’s, Ace Hardware, Thrive Market, Zappos, Overstock, Wayfair and more.
800+ syndicating brands (and counting): In the last year alone, PowerReviews has signed more than one new syndicating brand each day to the benefit of retailers participating in the PowerReviews Open Network. Our CPG brand clients alone represent $350 billion in annual revenue, and 25% of the 2017’s Top Consumer Goods Companies.
Better matching services: PowerReviews’ combines a fully dedicated team and AI-powered matching technology to help clients drive 80% increases in products matched and 13% lift in total number of reviews syndicated.
A Growing Reliance on User-Generated Visual Content
Visual content has become a key part of the purchase journey for a large (and growing) number of consumers. And increasingly, shoppers are specifically seeking out visual content — including photos and videos — from others like them. PowerReviews research found that 88% of consumers specifically look for visuals submitted by other consumers prior to making a purchase.
Consumers seek user-generated photos and videos when shopping for products in a variety of categories. This content is especially important for those industries where you are trying to relate to apparel and health and beauty shoppers. Why? These products are visual in nature, and shoppers want to make sure the items they’re considering have worked well for others like them. For example, a particular pair of pants might work better on some body types than others. Or one type of makeup works especially well for a specific skin tone or type.
Read on to learn how collecting and displaying user-generated visual content helps shoppers make confident, informed purchase decisions — and helps brands and retailers improve their bottom lines.
Visual Content Builds Trust
You work hard to foster trust with your shoppers. And for good reason, consumers are more likely to purchase from brands they trust. Research shows that 65% of shoppers are more likely to trust products that have user-submitted photos or videos in their reviews.
The good news is that collecting and displaying visual content from your shoppers can help you build trust. By displaying photos and videos taken by your customers, you’re adding a layer of authenticity to your site, showing future shoppers that they can trust your products and your brand.
Visual Content Fills in Gaps
When shopping online, consumers actively seek out visual content to gather as much information about a product as possible before making a purchase decision. For example, if you’re a health and beauty retailer like our friends at Ulta that sells a particular bottle of face lotion, your consumer wants to understand qualities such as the scale of the bottle and the texture of the lotion. Or if you’re an apparel brand, your shopper wants to understand what a dress looks like from several different angles.
Baymard research finds that the typical consumer wants to find between three and five images of a product to better understand the product’s features and scale. But most ecommerce websites only provide two images.
User-generated content helps you fill that gap — and provides shoppers with additional product information they need to make decisions. For example, if you’re the beauty retailer I mentioned earlier, your customer might submit a photo of herself holding the lotion bottle — which provides future shoppers with a better idea of how large the tube is. Or if you’re the apparel brand, you can display images from several of your shoppers wearing the same dress — all taken at different angles.
Visual Content Boosts Consumer Confidence
Consumers trust others like them. So seeing photos of other people using your products in “real life” is a great way to boost customer confidence. This is especially true when consumers are buying products that are visual in nature — including apparel and health and beauty items.
For example, let’s say a shopper is searching for a dress for an upcoming wedding she is attending. She finds a style she likes from Rent the Runway. But the model appears to be quite tall, and the shopper is much shorter. She’s not sure that the length of the dress will work well on someone of her height. Luckily, the product detail page has a gallery of images of other consumers wearing the dress. She clicks around and finds a photo of someone with a similar body type to hers — and the dress length looks great, especially paired with a cardigan from your website. Confidently, the shopper adds both the dress and the cardigan to her online shopping cart.
Visual Content Boosts Conversion
Collecting and displaying user-generated visual content is a win-win for consumers and businesses alike. User-submitted photos and videos provide shoppers with the information they need to make confident purchase decisions. And this content also improves your bottom line — by boosting traffic, conversion and sales on your product pages.
In the PowerReviews network, we’ve found that when a product adds at least one user-generated image, that product experiences an 18% average lift in traffic and a 69% average lift in conversion, compared to a product without this content.
Start Collecting More Visual Content
User-generated photos and videos play a large — and growing — role in the path to purchase. Now is the time to start collecting more of the visual content your shoppers are actively seeking out — or risk losing them to a competitor that does.
Current PowerReviews customer? Contact your Client Success Director to learn ways you can start collecting and displaying more visual content.
In March 2017, PowerReviews announced the extension and expansion of the Open Network to ensure the open and competitive syndication of product reviews collected on brand sites and syndicated to leading e-commerce retailer sites. At the time, many of the largest retailers and brands publicly committed to participating because they recognized that an open network would offer more competitive pricing, greater innovation and more opportunities for brands of all sizes to participate in review syndication.
Now, just over 12 months later, PowerReviews is pleased to announce several additional milestones that reinforce the benefits of the Open Network.
In February 2018, PowerReviews announced the availability of Brand Engage, a service that allows brands to respond to reviews and answer questions on retailer sites. For the first time, brands are now able to pre-seed questions to anticipate what questions shoppers might have about their products. In the first 60 days alone, more than 100 brands have signed up and answered thousands of shopper questions on their retail partners’ sites. We expect to have thousands of brands sign up this year.
In March 2018, PowerReviews began rolling out next-generation moderation capabilities that allow moderators to make more detailed observations about review content. Observations can determine publication and sharing rules to accommodate the regulatory, privacy and authenticity needs of our customers.
In April 2018, PowerReviews introduced our cutting edge Product Knowledge Graph to power the next-generation of Artificial Intelligence product matching algorithms that address the rapid rate of change with product catalogs, and the need to match to related products and address data quality issues. Overall, brands who work with PowerReviews have experienced an 80% increase in products matched and 13% lift in total number of reviews syndicated.
In May 2018, PowerReviews announced the availability of new and improved review and image sharing to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
In June 2018, PowerReviews made available Social Suite, a new product that helps clients pull in images in from social media, map them to specific products and request user permission to use the image and syndicate those images to retailers across the Open Network.
Greater participation opportunities for brands of all sizes
PowerReviews has recently reached the milestone of 800+ major brands syndicating content across the Open Network. 395 of those brands joined in the last 12 months, at the rate of more than one new brand added to the Open Network each day. Those 800+ brands are now collecting, displaying and syndicating reviews to more than one billion monthly shoppers across the Open Network.
Hundreds of the world’s largest e-commerce retailers accounting for $90 billion in e-commerce sales, representing nearly 50% of the non Amazon e-commerce market and approximately 80% of the retail market currently accepting syndication have signed direct syndication agreements and are actively syndicating content (reviews, images, video and questions & answers) from brands using PowerReviews.
More than 100 major brands participated in the PowerReviews’ Sampling + Syndication program that offers brands the opportunity to distribute samples to consumers to write reviews that are then syndicated to more than one billion shoppers across the Open Network.
Greatermarket benefits thanks to competition
In January 2018, PowerReviews announced the elimination of access fees, which ended a practice that made review syndication cost prohibitive for thousands of brands, and hurt retailers by limiting the amount of review content that could be syndicated to their e-commerce sites. PowerReviews will also accept syndicated reviews directly from brands using 3rd party reviews providers. Eliminating cost-prohibitive access fees for brands will lead to significant increases in the amount of reviews available to retailers in the Open Network.
In conclusion, we’re proud of the progress and milestones achieved around the Open Network. PowerReviews will continue to stand by our commitment to brands and retailers, and drive competition, innovation, and choice in our industry — in pursuit of a better, and more open network for all.
For more information please see our Open Syndication Network position paper andfill out this form to learn more. For current clients, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your Client Success Director.
Thank you,
Matt Moog matt.moog@powerreviews.com
We all know that things move quickly in the e-commerce space. Brands and retailers are constantly testing, learning, optimizing and evolving to keep up with consumer expectations to create better and more contextual shopping experiences. This is why PowerReviews chooses technology partners who innovate and move as quickly as their customers do.
Today, PowerReviews is proud to announce a new partnership with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the e-commerce platform used by some of the world’s best-known brands to create intelligent, personalized, shopping journeys, wherever their customers shop. This enhanced partnership offering makes PowerReviews one of the first and only integrated reviews partners vetted and certified for Salesforce’s new Storefront Reference Architecture, as available today.
PowerReviews’ enhanced integration partnership with Salesforce Commerce Cloud enables enterprise brands, retailers and merchants to quickly implement and collect ratings, reviews and questions and answers, along with native photos and videos through a fully customized review display.
Merchants who leverage a PowerReviews standard ratings and reviews and questions and answers integration as part of their e-commerce instance implement and begin collecting reviews much faster than the average customer.
Comprehensive Salesforce App Coverage:
PowerReviews has up-to-dated and approved Salesforce Commerce Cloud integrations currently used by dozens of clients, including the LINK SiteGenesis and Storefront Reference Architecture cartridges.
Review Collection & Syndication:
Display authentic user-generated content including star ratings, text reviews, questions, answers, photos, videos and more; both directly in the review display and shared to an open network of top retailer sites reaching one billion shoppers across the web.
Customization & Flexibility:
Ratings & Reviews and Questions & Answers are easily implemented and fully customized to fit the look, feel and branding of any merchant leveraging Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
Data & Actionable Insights:
Advanced reporting and metrics improve review collection and display, helping merchants leveraging Salesforce Commerce Cloud collect and analyze customer feedback to enhance products and the shopping experience.
New offerings, more value for all
We focused on partnering with Salesforce because they are consistently investing in technology to support and enable their customers, which is exactly what we pride ourselves on at PowerReviews, as well.
With a large customer base using Salesforce today, and our position as one of Salesforce’s only reviews integration partners, new and current customers will see value as we continue to enhance our integrations — and usher in a new era of partnership and collaboration with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Learn more.
In anticipation of the May 25, 2018 enforcement date of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), PowerReviews is hard at work implementing its compliance program. To learn more about the newest change in data privacy regulation and what it means for PowerReviews clients please read below.
What is the GDPR?
The GDPR ensures greater protection of personal data for people in the European Union (EU). It includes a comprehensive definition of “personal data” and any information that can be used to identify someone. Some examples of personal data include names, photos, email addresses, IP addresses, and posts on social networking sites.
Further, GDPR also ensures that people in the EU have rights to, and control of, their data. Basically, the GDPR empowers EU consumers by giving them more control of their personal data, and by requiring controllers and processors of this personal data to better protect their personally identifiable information. The fundamental rights of these EU consumers include the right of access to their personal data, the right to rectification of this data, the right to be forgotten (erasure), the right to restriction of processing, the right to data portability and the right to object.
What role does PowerReviews play in data collection?
PowerReviews is a processor of personal data. We collect and process personal data — ratings and reviews, photos and videos, questions and answers — on behalf of our clients, which are brands and retailers all over the world. Our clients are the controllers of data. They instruct us regarding the personal data that we process and control what content appears on their sites.
What can PowerReviews clients expect?
To facilitate our clients’ compliance of the requirement to have a contract with us for us to process personal data, PowerReviews is providing our clients a GDPR Addendum to their services agreement with PowerReviews. The GDPR Addendum contains all the terms and commitments required by the GDPR for compliant contracts between controllers and processors or processors and subprocessors. It’s specifically tailored to the PowerReviews platform and, when entered into, modifies your services agreement to align with the GDPR.
The GDPR requires affirmative consent on the “Write a Review” (WAR) form for EU locales. Consent is a big deal. It’s in your hands, as clients and controllers of data, to make sure that you are obtaining the appropriate consents and/or that you have other adequate legal basis to allow PowerReviews to process the data that we are collecting on your behalf. Our platform requires our clients to include a checkbox next to the privacy policy on the WAR form so the end-user can opt in to sharing this data. Clients are required to make this mandatory for end-users to submit a review. Clients have some control over the language and formatting of the WAR form, so all final versions should be reviewed by your counsel.
We suggest our clients review and update their privacy policy as necessary, to make sure it grants PowerReviews proper permissions to process data on our clients’ behalf. Please note that data will be transferred outside the EU for PowerReviews processing, so please make sure that your privacy policy takes that into account.
Cross-Border Data Transfers
PowerReviews takes privacy very seriously. We treat the data that our clients collect and use on our platform with the utmost sensitivity and employ strict policies and protections to help ensure the privacy of that information. PowerReviews is certified under both the EU-US Privacy Shield and the Swiss-US Privacy Shield Frameworks — which complement the GDPR.
The EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield Frameworks are mechanisms composed of data protection principles agreed upon by the US Department of Commerce with both the European Commission (EC) and the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner to facilitate data transfers between the European Economic Area (EEA) and the US and Switzerland and the US.
Who needs to enter into PowerReviews’ GDPR Addendum?
For any question involving the interpretation or applicability of the GDPR, you should consult with your legal counsel. In general, a client should enter into the GDPR Addendum if it:
Has an establishment in the European Union or European Economic Area, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the EU/EEA or not
Offers goods or services, irrespective of whether payment is required, to data subjects in the EU/EEA
Monitors the behavior of data subjects that takes place within the EU/EEA
A client does not need to enter into the GDPR Addendum if it does not process any personal data from Europe through its PowerReviews services.
Data Protection Going Forward
PowerReviews is — and always has been — committed to protecting the data of consumers who use our technology all around the world. It’s up to both PowerReviews and our clients to ensure the security of personal data collected and processed on the PowerReviews platform. It’s a team effort.
PowerReviews has been taking steps to prepare for the GDPR, including:
Assembling a team committed to ensuring continued compliance with the GDPR
Performing a gap assessment, which includes mapping our data, to ensure we’re meeting all business requirements. Data mapping shows us exactly what data we have and where we are sending it, so we know what, where, when and how our data is received, collected and processed
Helping our clients (the controllers) to comply with requests related to personal data of individuals in the EU in a timely manner. An example of a possible request would be if a customer asks for all of their personal information to be deleted. We do this by knowing exactly what data we have and where it’s located
Updating vendor contracts and executing addenda when necessary
Reviewing internal processes to ensure that they line up with GDPR guidelines and requirements
Staying up to date on guidance being issued for the GDPR, as it continues to evolve
Performing internal trainings for the PowerReviews team
In addition to the steps that we’re taking to ensure the compliance mentioned above, each PowerReviews client needs to do its own internal analysis and consult their own attorney to ensure they’re compliant.
Here are some of the steps PowerReviews recommends to our clients, to ensure that they’re compliant with the GDPR.
Enter into the GDPR Addendum
Have your counsel review your own privacy policy
Obtain the permissions necessary for PowerReviews to process data on your behalf
Include a way for consumers to show affirmative consent (like a checkbox) on the Write a Review form, if that is your legal basis for the processing of the data
What if I have additional questions?
Please keep in mind that this page does not cover every aspect of EU data privacy, nor should you consider it legal advice. This is meant to provide background information and help you better understand PowerReviews’ strategy to comply with the GDPR. Should you have questions about the GDPR Addendum, please contact your PowerReviews representative. Should you have questions about the GDPR in general, please contact your legal counsel.
To date, PowerReviews has helped our clients collect more than 100 million pieces of user-generated content (UGC)–such as ratings and reviews, photos and videos, questions and answers–from consumers all around the world. This content is then syndicated across the Open Network to search engines and retailers, both large and small, reaching 1 billion shoppers each month.
Collecting and displaying authentic user-generated content helps brands and retailers drive site traffic through reviews and SEO. This increases site conversion by as much as 20% and builds customer trust and loyalty. Ultimately, UGC helps consumers make confident purchasing decisions.
Over the last several years, PowerReviews developed the most advanced technologies to help our clients syndicate content at a global scale. With the help of the Product Knowledge Graph, we leverage both artificial and human intelligence to help improve the reach of UGC between brands and retailers to quickly deliver authentic user-generated content to thousands of retailers on behalf of brands.
The Traditional Approach to Syndication
Historically, the approach to matching products between brands and retailers was simple, but limited and inflexible. Products that appear to be the same across catalogs that are matched.
If a sharing agreement is in place between the brand and retailer, content is shared. There are three major limitations to this approach that lead to missed opportunities for delivering the most impactful UGC possible during a consumer’s purchase journey:
Rate of change: With the rate of change across hundreds of millions of products (especially in industries like apparel), the moment a product match is made between sites, it may already be out of date.
Related products: UGC is not only useful to consumers looking at identical products, but it’s also valuable for consumers shopping for similar or opposing products. The content with the biggest impact on a purchasing decision depends on the industry, product category or even the momentary availability of usable content.
Product data quality: Many product catalogs have incomplete, incorrect or alternative product identifications. This missing information makes it difficult to directly connect products and often requires manual data cleanup. This does not scale to the massive size of the PowerReviews product network.
In September 2017, PowerReviews became the first in its industry to create a complete Product Knowledge Graph, containing over half a billion recognized similarities and relationships across hundreds of millions of products in the Open Network.
At every opportunity to influence a consumer making a purchasing decision, the entire Product Knowledge Graph is leveraged by algorithms designed to provide the best possible UGC publishing decision for that unique situation.
The Product Knowledge Graph Advantage
Instantaneous Syndication Decisions
When the PowerReviews platform is determining what content to share or not share, it leverages the knowledge of every potential product relationship in real time. This drives a better decision of what content will help inform the consumer, made in the moment with no dependencies on previous manual or offline decisions.
With the ever-changing product catalogs in apparel, shoes, beauty and other industries, it will become imperative that the most appropriate and useful content is available for the consumer. At this time, PowerReviews is the only technology vendor in our space that makes it easy for retailers and brands to take advantage of this.
Dynamic Relationships
Graph technology allows for a rich representation of any potential similarity or difference between products, built into the heart of our SaaS platform. Those choices are not limited to a predefined “type” or constrained list.
Currently, there are over 700 million relationships between many different types of products–and the list is growing. PowerReviews can represent valuable concepts like similarity, appearance, color or any related attributes to bring related and valuable UGC for consumers to make an informed decision before buying.
This allows brands and retailers to quickly bring useful UGC to consumers considering products that have recently launched or would otherwise lack content.
A.I. Error Correction
Brands and retailers may have inconsistencies or gaps in their product data. This leads to missed opportunities to share UGC.
The Product Knowledge Graph often finds products indirectly connected to thousands of other products, overcoming the data quality challenge automatically. This is possible because we use multiple algorithms based on different aspects of the product data to find direct and indirect relationships between products.
Gaps in product data can be overcome using context learned from other indirectly connected products. You may have seen a similar concept if you use any popular social media platform.
Using similar technology, they infer you are likely to know someone if the majority of your connections also know that person. Once the possible relationship is identified, the similarities across the group (like location, age, profession) predict with high confidence that you should know this person.
PowerReviews now does the same thing–only with product data.
Using advanced algorithms, missing or incorrect data is also automatically detected. PowerReviews software evaluates the “fit” of a product across all of the directly and indirectly related products. Scoring is done to correct bad product data, to avoid incorrect content being published to a consumer.
PowerReviews continues to prioritize innovation and technology to maximize the quantity, quality and impact of user-generated content shared to the Open Network. Trusted by the world’s largest brands and retailers, PowerReviews is committed to providing our clients with the most advanced technology to increase UGC, conversion, traffic and insights.
