When you’re shopping online, you may not necessarily trust what a company is saying about the product. You want a customer’s perspective.
You want someone using the product to tell you what their experience was like. That’s exactly what user generated content provides, giving brands the ability to drive conversions and generate social proof.
Examples of user generated content include reviews, testimonials, photos, videos, social media posts, unboxing content, product demonstrations, and any other content type that isn’t explicitly created by the brand itself.
It can be a vital source of marketing and sales fuel for an ecommerce business looking to gain the trust and confidence needed to turn website visitors into paying customers.
Why UGC Marketing Matters
UGC marketing involves the use of user generated content for marketing and sales purposes.
Companies that use UGC marketing know that customers want authenticity – and customer-generated photo galleries, videos, testimonials, reviews, and other content fulfill that need effectively in a way that branded content typically never could.
There’s a reason customer reviews are so dominant on product web pages. Customers need to hear from other customers: Does this product actually work? Is it high quality? Does it look nice? How is the fit? Does it deliver value? All of these are questions that can be answered through the use of UGC.
6 Tips for Boosting Conversions with User-Generated Content (UGC)
1. Add Customer Reviewsto Product Pages
The best type of UGC, when it comes to driving conversions, is reviews.
People want to understand what they are purchasing – and detailed, nuanced, in-depth reviews will give them that. Reviews shouldn’t be overlooked or put on a separate page either: they should be accessible, easy to read, and as helpful as possible.
Whenever possible, display more than star ratings. Again, when shopping online, people need details. While it works to some extent to display that a product has a five-star rating, a written review will be much more effective at providing information as to why someone gave that rating.
For those who need to physically see what the product looks like before buying, add a visual component by allowing customers to submit photos and even videoreviews.
2. Highlight Customer Photos and Videos
Your customer-generated photo galleries and videos add authenticity. Customers love to see other customers looking happy and positive while using your products.
Displaying them helps show potential customers that people are actually buying your product and using it.
For an ecommerce business, it’s easy to use customer photos and videos to its advantage.
Add a “customer” tab or section on your website that displays these visuals.
If you sell clothing, use photos that look authentic. You can add sections as simple as “See It In Real Life” or “Loved By Our Customers,” and display images of customers, or photos of your own team using the product. Again, authenticity matters – so consider the value of showcasing a regular customer using your products.
For video reviews, keep it simple. In many ways, a customer simply filming while using a product can be more valuable that a professionally edited short-form video – again, because of authenticity. Customers trust their peers more, so the use of UGC has tremendous power in building trust and credibility with consumers.
3. Make UGC Shoppable
Make those customer galleries actually help shoppers while boosting your website’s conversions by making UGC shoppable.
By including links in the UGC, you can essentially make shoppable videos and images.
Imagine if your potential customer sees a customer using a pair of shoes and immediately wants to know where to purchase them.
If those shoes are a product you sell, it should be a simple click or tap for them to find out where.
By creating a “shoppable” UGC gallery, you can ensure the entire buying journey – browse, find something, love it, buy – happens on your website, and make it simpler for customers to make a purchase through a “Click to buy” link
4. Use UGC Through the Entire Customer Journey
Customer testimonial videos aren’t the only form of UGC that can be used for marketing an ecommerce business.
At different points in the customer journey, different content will be required. The types of UGC you would need to showcase will change depending on where the consumer is in his or her journey.
Use different customer content for each step, such as:
Awareness: customer videos and social media posts
Consideration: reviews, testimonials, comparative content, product demonstrations
Decision: written reviews, product photos, ratings, testimonials
Remember to always assess what doubt a person is facing before purchasing your product and address those concerns through customer content: if fit is a concern – show customer photos that detail sizing. Use videos to show product quality and use. If an aspect of the product just isn’t clear to someone, allow consumer-generated content to explain it.
5. Invest in a UGC Platform
As your business scales, the ability to manage and collect UGC will also require scaling. A UGC platform can help you organize content and collect it across social media, review sites, your own website, and more. It lets businesses build a library of content, organize it, and ultimately leverage it to drive engagement and sales.
Some platforms offer tools you can use for permission management, moderation, shoppable galleries, and more – and it may help your business invest less time trying to organize and sort UGC manually, or dedicate resources to it.
A good UGC marketing strategy should have a repeatable system and process, as well as the ability to collect and sort content effectively and efficiently. A UGC marketing platform can allow you to do this, as opposed to relying on occasional customers to provide content for your products.
6. Encourage Customers to Create and Share Content
Don’t rely on only those who submit customer content voluntarily. Ask others to submit, perhaps through a follow-up email after purchase. In addition to this, request that they might share your post on social media, or hashtag a post that they make about the product.
If you do ask customers to submit content, make requests clear but concise and not overwhelming or demanding.
Instead of asking customers to write a long-form review or testimonial about your product, ask a brief question that encourages sharing: “Show us how you’re using your [product]!”
You can also encourage engagement by offering loyalty points, discounts, reward program entries, and more. Customers need to understand how their content might be used and have the choice to opt-in or out of their content being shared.
UGC Might Even Fuel Your Advertising Content
User-generated content doesn’t only live on your product pages.
Consider using customer testimonials, photos, and videos on your own advertising. In the past, when running video advertisements, it felt unnatural to launch a customer testimonial – but you don’t need to. Customer content can actually be a compelling asset as part of your advertising content, or even part of a broader marketing mix. Use customer content in different ways, in different content types, and across a wide range of advertising formats to see which type of customer content is most effective at generating conversions for your business.
Measure Your UGC Conversion Rate
In any marketing or sales-driven strategy, it’s important to track results and understand a strong – or weak – ROI.
When it comes to your own UGC campaigns and strategy, you won’t want to simply focus on collecting massive amounts of content, regardless of the impact those contents are having on your business. Instead, consider business-facing KPIs such as:
• Website conversion rate
• Add-to-cart rate
• Revenue per visitor
• Average order value
• Engagement with reviews
• Click-through rate of UGC
• Repeat purchases
• Revenue from UGC campaigns
• A/B tests (such as comparing a product page with UGC and a page without UGC)
You should also understand your UGC conversion rate, or the rate at which you’re able to turn website visitors into paying customers using UGC. That rate will help you determine what UGC pieces and types are actually contributing to your conversions and are the most valuable assets to your marketing and sales strategy, in addition to a strong set of UGC marketing best practices.
UGC Examples You Can Use to Drive More Website Conversions
Here are a few examples of user generated content you can consider collecting from your customers:
• Customer photo reviews
• Video testimonials
• Unboxing customer content
• Before-and-after visuals
• Product demonstrations
• “How I use it” videos
• Customer stories
• Social media galleries
• Customer Q&A
• Lifestyle photos
While there are many UGC content types to choose from, you don’t have to use each of these. You can start small, and with the types that your customers are more inclined to participate and share with you – or with types that can easily be added and showcased on your website or social media pages.
UGC Mistakes You Should Avoid
UGC can only be beneficial when created in good faith – and when it doesn’t negatively impact the consumer experience.
Overloading content: A page with hundreds and hundreds of unrelated customer content pieces doesn’t do much to help a consumer. It’s clutter and distracts them rather than providing useful, relevant information. This is an example of bad UGC marketing.
Low-quality reviews: “Great product!” just isn’t useful in the same way that a five-paragraph review would be. Encourage customers to write as though they are interacting with another buyer: What experience did they have with the product they are considering purchasing? What do they enjoy most about the product?
Moderating inappropriate submissions: User-generated content means that everyone can – and should – add their voice to your brand. However, that doesn’t mean everyone will have something positive to say. Some UGC will be irrelevant, inappropriate, or even offensive to some groups – and that’s fine. It should be moderated and hidden to an appropriate audience or removed altogether.
Getting Serious About UGC and Website Conversions
UGC can be one of the best assets in an ecommerce marketer’s toolbelt. It builds trust with consumers by showing that other, real customers have had positive experiences with the product.
There are also many other UGC examples that an ecommerce marketer can incorporate into their marketing strategy to boost conversion rates and generate more sales.
The most important step is to think carefully about what customers need and want – the questions they have prior to making a purchase, the objections that they may have, and the customer stories that can help to alleviate these concerns and help turn website visitors into customers.
By strategically leveraging the power of UGC, as well as a strong UGC marketing platform and conversion rate optimization strategy, user-generated content for ecommerce businesses can be much more than useful – it can become invaluable.
