Optimizing your entire digital shelf — your virtual store where people find and buy your brand online — is essential for providing customers with a great shopping experience. It’s how your brand shows up online, stands out from competitors, and encourages shoppers to make purchases.

Chapters:

1. What is product page optimization?
2. 5-point product page optimization audit
3. Product page optimization examples
4. Take your product pages to the next level

What is product page optimization?

Product page optimization is the process of improving all aspects of your product pages so potential customers can find exactly what they’re looking for and make informed purchasing decisions. It goes way beyond just inserting keywords and some witty copy, it’s about displaying authentic imagery, writing compelling descriptions, and using the voice of the customer.

In essence, product page optimization is about enhancing the entire user experience to make the buying process as seamless as possible.

An optimized product page is a page that first and foremost meets customer needs and achieves company goals. Traditionally, this refers to a product page designed for higher conversions and/or search engine optimization (SEO).  You also need to factor in the technical side too. Page load speed for example — nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer. 

Think about the last time you bought something online. What did you need to know from the product page in order to make it all the way through to check out? Just the specs? No. You probably needed a lot of different information to make a confident purchasing decision. Most customers want to know: 

• Is this product good quality or value?
• How does this product look in real life?
• What do other people think about this product?
• Is there anything else I need to buy to make this product work?
• How are other shoppers using this product?

And with only 2% of e-commerce website visits converting into a purchase, it’s clear that online merchants can do a better job of providing information and experiences that meet shopper needs. 

5-point product page optimization audit

During the recent iteration of the Bazaarvoice Summit, Brandon Klein, Senior Product Manager at Bazaarvoice (and expert on all things product page), outlined a 5-point audit for perfecting your product pages. Here’s what he recommends.

1. Product page SEO optimization

You’ve spent a lot of company time and resources optimizing your product pages for higher conversions. But that’s all for nothing if shoppers can’t actually find your product pages through search — that’s where product page SEO comes in. Brandon highlights this point in this short clip from his Summit presentation below:

Expanding on that, product page SEO is the optimization of your product pages so the content on the page is found by search engines like Google. Search engine algorithms prioritize pages that are most relevant to the search query based on criteria like keyword matches and quality content. 

Here’s some of our favorite ways to use keywords naturally: 

• Include keywords in your page’s title tag and meta description, and make sure the page’s actual copy matches what you promise
• Use headings to break up copy and organize your page. Try to include a keyword in at least one of the headings, but only if it makes sense
• Include keywords throughout the page, like in product names, descriptions, and reviews 
• Incorporate keywords into an image’s alt-text if it naturally flows with the rest of the alt-text copy 
• Add internal links to any other related content on your site

The easiest way to boost your SEO though is by featuring user-generated content (UGC) like customer reviews, which can increase page traffic by nearly a third.

Customers writing reviews typically use long-tail keywords. So when someone else searches for the same terms found in product reviews, product pages linked with them appear in search results. Petco for example utilized UGC to boost their SEO standings and guess what happened? They saw a:

• 67% increase in number of pages ranked organically
• 140% increase in impressions from organic search
• 80% increase in clicks from organic search

In total, this led to a 48% increase in revenue per visit.

Product page SEO optimization isn’t just about ranking higher on Google and getting more site visits. The main goal here is to create a better user experience and give customers the exact information and visuals they need to make a confident purchase.

2. Put UGC front and center 

We know UGC is great for product page SEO. But it’s also what shoppers want to see when they’re browsing your digital (and physical) touchpoints. According to our recent survey, 74% of shoppers say they trust UGC more than branded content on product pages, and 55% are unlikely to buy a product without shopper content to inform their purchasing decisions.

UGC works because it provides the social proof shoppers need to inform decisions. According to Sabine Kaufmann, Head of e-commerce Operations Dining & Lifestyle, Villeroy & Boch, “user-generated content is one of the most trustworthy types of content a brand could show to their customers.”

Best Buy does a great job of displaying star ratings and review counts at the top of its product pages to help customers make confident purchasing decisions. On this listing for an iPad, shoppers will see that more than 3,400 customers have reviewed the product, and it has an average rating of 4.8 stars. 

Seeing an overall positive customer sentiment right away takes some of the risks out of buying an expensive item.

When it comes to collecting this UGC, diversifying your efforts is key because you’ll need a lot. You should consider leveraging review request emails and text messages, social media sweepstakes, and community requests. The most effective method for collecting UGC is product sampling, where you provide product samples in exchange for honest reviews or images. We surveyed 6,000 sampling recipients, and of those:

• 63% purchased the product they sampled
• 97% purchased at least one additional product from the brand

But according to Brandon, your best bet is using a range of solutions. These different strategies can kick-start your collection efforts, ensuring a constant supply of UGC across various methods simultaneously.

3. Respond to negative reviews and proactively address product shortfalls

Customers don’t mind if you have a few negative reviews for a product. They actually prefer it. We’ve seen that products with one or more negative reviews are perceived as more authentic and have higher conversion rates than those with a perfect 5-star rating or zero negative reviews. 

People also like responses to their negative reviews too — 54% of shoppers expect a response from the company if they write a negative review. The most successful e-commerce retailers use negative reviews as an opportunity to engage with customers, and identify potential product page improvements. The latter part is something Brandon called out specially in his presentation.

Negative reviews provide insights for improving products, which you can then update your product pages with. For example, several shoppers may leave a review saying that a pair of pants they ordered in their normal size ended up being too big. This negative feedback would allow your brand to update that product’s description to include helpful language like, “for a perfect fit, many customers prefer to size down.”

Children’s toy manufacturer KidKraft are pros at this. Watch Heather Stables, KidKraft’s Director of Consumer Engagement, explain how they use customer feedback to improve products and market messaging:

After recognising insights, the brand works on product page optimization to ensure copy matches the new product updates. They’ve since seen product improvement leading to an increase in sales.

Not only does utilizing customer feedback help consumers feel empowered to make better purchase decisions, but it can also prevent future negative reviews related to product description accuracy.

4. Distribute your content everywhere

Shoppers want a seamless transition as they engage with your brand through multiple channels, whether online, mobile, or in-store. 75% of shoppers expect a consistent brand experience regardless of channel, according to our Shopper Experience Index. Taking an omnichannel approach integrates your various channels to provide a consistent brand experience, letting you interact in the most convenient way.

Not having a robust omnichannel strategy is now a key barrier to success

Ainslie Fincham, Marketing Director, Urban Barn

An omnichannel strategy allows for quick adaptation to changing consumer preferences. It lets customers switch between channels without friction or loss of service, improving customer satisfaction and fosters loyalty.

Once you have this valuable content, it’s crucial to showcase it in all the right places — on social, in ads, on your product pages, and even in-store. You can do this by working with the right content syndication partner. By syndicating your content across all digital touchpoints, you ensure that customers can see it wherever they shop, maximizing your content ROI.

5. Make social content shoppable

Lastly, but certainly not least. Making your social content shoppable is by far one of the most important ways to increase your product page optimization. Social media is often the first place most shoppers will discover your brand, with 54% of consumers saying they often discover a product or service through social media. (That number rises to 73% for 18-24 year olds!)

They aren’t just scrolling past your products either, they’re making purchases. While the younger generations are leading this charge, even a quarter of shoppers aged 65+ purchased through social last year.

50% of all shoppers have purchased products through social media in the past year. So make sure that you’re turning social content into shoppable experiences that drive sales wherever your shoppers are. 

Shoppable content tools such as Like2buy turn your Instagram and TikTok Feeds into sales channels and Bazaarvoice Galleries brings authentic visual content from social into your website for you. For example Dreams, the UK’s leading bed specialist, uses Bazaarvoice Galleries to bring social UGC into its product pages and beyond, and has since seen a 200% lift in conversion rate.

Social is a great way to curate fresh, original, and authentic content that already exists, and has been created for you. But a recurring point Brandon makes around product page optimization is that channels shouldn’t be siloed. Put your social content across all channels and encourage purchase decisions everywhere your shoppers are.

4 product page optimization examples 

Let’s take a look at some of our favorite examples of product pages that convert. Note: Your product descriptions need to be easy to digest, especially because most customers are shopping from their mobile devices. By 2025, mobile e-commerce sales will account for 44% of retail e-commerce sales in the U.S. 

Iconic London

When it comes to makeup, authenticity reigns supreme. Shoppers want to see how different shades look on people who look like them, not in heavily curated brand imagery. Iconic London knows this and so brings in carousels of visual UGC from their community right onto their product pages.

Why it works: 

• The average star rating and number of reviews at the top of the page provides proof that this is a well-loved product
• Large imagery puts more social proof front and center
• Authentic visual UGC from real customers using the product(s) at home helps shoppers understand what the product is and how it fits into their existing skincare routine

Neutrogena

Cosmetics is a product category that really requires detailed product pages because customers can’t see or swatch the item in person. On this product page for Neutrogena’s MoistureSmooth Color Stick, the company takes a UGC-first, product-second approach.

Why it works: 

• A prominent design element halfway down the page includes a star rating and a quote from a customer about how the product feels in real life and how it works for their skin texture
• The gallery of social media images from real customers provides more information about how the product works in action
• The gallery encourages customers to “Share Your Glow” by tagging Neutrogena on Instagram or Twitter to be featured on the website
• The “Most Helpful Reviews” callout highlights one positive and one negative review that other shoppers have found useful

Nourison

Buying an area rug online can be a challenge because it’s difficult for shoppers to understand how it will look and feel when it arrives. Rug brand Nourison helps ease customers’ minds by incorporating a lot of great UGC on its pages. 

Why it works: 

• A gallery of social photos shows how customers have used this rug in their actual homes 
• The brand encourages future customers to share how they styled their rug at home by posting a picture on social media with the hashtag #Nourison
• The page displays the average rating for the product and number of reviews at the very top to signal that hundreds of others have bought and loved this rug
• The company uses short but detailed product descriptions and includes specs that tell customers where this rug would be best in their homes (a heavy-traffic area vs. a less-trafficked area)

Under Armour 

Our last example is a product page for an Under Amour shoe. The brand uses several tactics to help shoppers choose from the hundreds of shoes on its site. 

Why it works: 

• Shoppers get a complete, 360-degree view of the shoe, so they know there won’t be any surprises when they receive the product 
• Shoppers can filter reviews by rating, athlete type (casual or avid), size, and locale to see reviews that are more personalized to how they may be using the shoe 
• When a shopper starts to scroll on the page, the “Add to Bag” CTA becomes a sticky banner so customers can quickly put the item in their cart once they’ve made a decision 

Take your product pages to the next level

Product page optimization may seem like a tedious task, but in the end, it will be well worth it. If shoppers have all the information they need to make a successful purchase, you’ll set yourself apart from your competitors and see much higher conversion rates across your digital shelf.

With the rise of digital, product page optimization has become critical for consumer attention and conversion. Watch our full on-demand masterclass outlining the 5-point audit for optimizing your product pages, covering key topics like organic search, social commerce, user-generated content, and insights.

FEATURED RESOURCE

Perfecting your product detail page: A 5-point audit

Watch here

Picture this: You’re walking through the store, your stomach is growling, and you’re looking for the perfect thing to eat. Then, out of nowhere, a person shouts, “Free samples!” and hands you a hot bite of pizza just oozing with melted mozzarella cheese. And hey, it’s dinner time…you want more! *Add to cart.*

Now, replace that pizza with anything else — wine, ice cream, a handheld vacuum. Once customers try it, they’re more likely to talk about it, buy it, and share it. That’s why, despite the costs, product sampling marketing is one of the most effective ways of collecting authentic content and increasing conversions on your e-commerce site, social pages, and beyond.

Chapters:

1. What is product sampling?
2. When should you launch a product sampling campaign?
3. Why you should launch a product sampling campaign
4. Product sampling strategies
5. Get started with product sampling

What is product sampling?

It’s the practice of offering goods or services to your audience in exchange for increased brand awareness, brand loyalty, reviews, feedback, and other revenue-boosting user-generated content (UGC). This is a form of experiential marketing because consumers are able to completely absorb and engage with the product prior to buying it.

Quick history lesson: Product sampling is a tried-and-true marketing strategy dating back to the 1850s. Benjamin T. Babbitt, a soap manufacturer, was one of the first people to hand out samples to his fan base. As time passed, the power of this marketing strategy was realized by others and has since become popular in a variety of industries.

Today, there’s several different product sampling methods:

• Traditional sampling means giving away free product samples to customers, so they will feel more confident buying the product
• Digital product sampling is a sustainable sampling method, where customers buy a product in a store or online with a provided coupon, or receive money back after uploading the receipt — no samples need to be shipped meaning no unnecessary packaging waste
• Sampler packs include small or trial-size products. If the customer likes the sample, they are more likely to buy the product at full size
• Mail drops are when you mail free samples directly to customers’ homes
• Limited time samples are free only for a specific amount of time, such as three days, a week, etc. This adds excitement and plays to the psychological fear of missing out (FOMO!)
• Virtual sampling is when consumers are able to try out a product online without visiting a store or receiving something in the mail. This type of product sampling campaign relies on technology like an app or artificial intelligence

When should you launch a product sampling campaign?

You should launch a product sampling campaign when you need to boost word of mouth or get feedback on a new product.

• You have a high-quality, effective product ready for people to test. It’s important to make sure you’re delivering something genuinely good before people’s opinions start flying. A bad product will be all the more maligned by product sampling
• Your budget can handle sampling costs. This includes the cost of the samples as well as shipping, handling, staffing, and marketing. Note: Digital product sampling alleviates a lot of fulfillment costs!
• You need increased brand awareness for an existing product. If your brand isn’t well-known but you have a great product, you need positive word of mouth to increase brand awareness and fill your sales funnel. Just make sure expansion is feasible for you based on your current business model
• You have a new product to launch. Product sampling will help with product development, as well as create some additional buzz. People who sample your product and love it are more likely to buy it, tell their friends, and even create shareable content about it

Why you should launch a product sampling campaign

Product sampling marketing helps brands boost feedback, conversion rates, positive reviews, and social content for both small and enterprise brands alike.

Get valuable product feedback

Product sampling is a way to connect with and get feedback from your audience.

According to Ryan Stewart, a marketing expert and the managing partner of WEBRIS, “We normally ask them questions about their experiences with our services, show how they use them, or even invite them to take part in an online contest that involves using our services.”

You can also use surveys to collect quantitative and qualitative data. This feedback can help you further develop the product into something your audience will love.

Boost sales and conversion rates

Sampling a product makes customers want to buy it. It’s wired into our psychology. Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University, knows samples create desire. “If I gave you a tiny bit of chocolate,” he says, “all of a sudden it would remind you about the exact taste of chocolate and would increase your craving.”

Take Costco, for example. An oft-cited study about Costco revealed the grocery store saw a significant boost in revenue thanks to its free food samples. And Stewart confirms sampling is a solid way to increase sales. He asserts, “People who feel like we value their opinions are more likely to buy from us when they need something similar in the future.”

Gathering UGC and reviews from shoppers also gives brands a significant boost in sales. Absolution Cosmetics wanted to support product launches, build brand awareness around their healthy skin care messaging, and boost customer loyalty and engagement to ultimately increase sales. The brand implemented a dual review collection strategy, combining an evergreen sweepstakes on their website, ensuring a constant influx of fresh UGC and reviews, and targeted product sampling campaigns to support new product launches.

As a result, in just a six-month period, Absolution increased its revenue per visitor from 14% to 123%, customer engagement from 28% to 61%, and earned $107K directly attributed to ratings and reviews.

Encourage positive reviews due to a sense of reciprocity

Free samples encourage potential customers to play into the idea of reciprocity. In other words, people who receive the sample want to do something for your brand in return — like posting a positive review on social media.

This by no means every review is going to be positive of course. Neither should that be expected. Product sampling isn’t “we’ll send you a product sample in return for a positive review.” By contrast, reviews should be honest regardless of the sentiment. And even negative reviews provide added authenticity for your brand.

But one of the reasons sampling does yield such positive results is because the right provider (like Bazaarvoice ) can create campaigns for a hyper-targeted audience across demographics, behaviors, preferences, and more. When the recipient is the exact target audience the product is for, the review is much more likely to be positive. Just make sure your sampling provider can accommodate this.

“Product sampling allows us to get our audience involved in the creation of our content, which gives them a sense of ownership over what we’re sharing,” says Stewart.

For instance, after TTI Floor Care North America allowed top brand loyalists to sample Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners for free, they saw an 86% response rate and more than 700 reviews full of positive, authentic UGC. As a result, Dirt Devil product reviews went from 2.8 to 4.5 stars. These reviews not only filled TTI’s own webpage but were also syndicated on major retailers’ sites.

Supercharging brand awareness with social content

You probably already know that social content is an important way to reach consumers. Combining the reach of social media with the effectiveness of sampling gives you a unique marketing campaign powerhouse.

Most Bazaarvoice Sampling customers are brand managers who use sampling to generate and feature content on social media.

“Linking sampling to social is a core tenant of any e-commerce plan,” says Kerry Bridge, Global Director of Advocacy at Bazaarvoice. “You need to be able to collect that great content from social in order to populate your product pages. Plus build your community.”

We’ve pinpointed a few different reasons why social content and sampling go hand-in-hand:

1. New product launches benefit greatly from large amounts of recent UGC. 89% of shoppers check reviews before making a purchase, and 60% of shoppers feel more comfortable making a purchase if they can see product images or videos first. A great way to collect this valuable UGC is to employ sampling
2. Entering new markets helps you expand your reach. Each demographic is different, and over 70% of shoppers are looking for perspectives that reflect their own. Product sampling can help you get your foot in the door and provide UGC that speaks to these new markets in a relatable way
3. Supporting your core SKUs with product sampling allows you to collect quality content at scale. Your core products are hot sellers for a reason — get them in your fans’ hands through a sampling campaign and encourage them to create content. Data from our Bazaarvoice Network of over 12,500 brands and retailers found a 135% increase in conversion rate and a 164% increase in revenue per visitor when shoppers engaged with social content from their peers
4. Working with the right content creators can help you skyrocket your brand awareness and success. Creator collaborations add to your content volume, and by sharing with their own engaged audiences, they also extend your reach

Relaunch your products

There may be times when you want to shift your brand strategy and reformulate or reinvent your product. With the introduction of the FTC’s 2023 review hijacking legislation, reformulating your product isn’t just about tweaking its features — it’s about ushering it into the market as if it’s an entirely new line. It’s a unique challenge, with the daunting task of resetting your review count and content collection to zero. But sampling can help you rapidly rebuild from this new starting line.

• Relaunch your product with fresh advocacy: Successfully relaunch your reformulated product by targeting the right audience, providing an experience, driving UGC from day one, and gaining actionable insights from product samplers
• Combat misleading reviews with authentic content: If the reformulation means the product is “substantially different” in “one or more material attributes” from the prior version (as per the FTC), it would be deceptive to continue using existing reviews. A sampling campaign can generate fresh reviews and customer photos quickly and effectively so you have an arsenal of new social proof you can show off to shoppers

Product sampling strategies

Ultimately, all sampling campaigns help your potential customers get a preview of what you’re selling while helping you get more visibility for your product and brand overall. The individual strategies can take several different forms, from in-store food samples (Costco) or mailed glasses to try on (Warby Parker). The details depend on your business model and campaign goals.

Here’s seven examples from the masters that you can imitate when you craft your own campaign, including the relevant sampling program they used.

Costco nails the traditional sampling strategy

Costco is famous for the traditional, in-store, free sample method. People have gone so far as to tour the sample tables at various Costco stores. The more samples people try, the closer they get to a free lunch. Personal finance and food bloggers have picked up on this idea as well and have even written articles encouraging the practice.

Costco’s store sampling draws people to its stores, thanks to one key message: Going to Costco is fun (and yummy!)

While you might be nervous about handing out “freebies,” the benefits far outweigh the costs. In fact, according to the College Marketing Group, “Interactions — the company that handles Costco’s sampling — found that their efforts led to a 71% increase in sales of beer and a 600% increase in frozen pizza.”

Traditional sampling works especially well for supermarkets like Costco, as well as other brick-and-mortar stores like makeup counters. Just remember that the goal for this type of sampling is to increase sales and positive word of mouth. You probably won’t get a lot of usable content out of it.

L’Oréal gets personal with virtual sampling

Since its target market is focused primarily on beauty, personalization and creativity are everything for L’Oréal. That’s why L’Oréal’s special offers and promotions are tailored to this demographic’s specific preferences and needs in the form of virtual sampling.

Customers simply select a product like hair dye or blush. Once they grant L’Oréal access to their camera, a small window shows them what they would look like wearing that product. It’s kind of like Zoom + the Sherwin-Williams ColorSnap Visualizer. But instead of paint, it’s a beauty product.

Virtual sampling is attractive because it’s incredibly scalable, not to mention germ-free. Brands aren’t limited by physical space in stores or the cost of making or shipping the product. Instead, consumers are able to instantly get a good idea of what the product would be like for them without the hassle of applying the sample color to their wrist (eww), applying to a program, handing over their personal info, or potentially wasting a product if they don’t like it.

This technique is also sometimes more helpful and realistic than physical store samples because the tool takes into account different product combinations and how they affect each other. For example, if I dyed my hair bright red, would that red lipstick look good? Hmm… maybe a more subtle shade would be better.

Brands can use virtual try-ons to fill their social media calendars. If you have a tool like this, inspire your customers to post a photo of themselves on social media “trying on” your product. Then collect, store, and track that content using Bazaarvoice’s AI-powered Media Library.

Warby Parker masters the mail drop

Warby Parker prides itself on its choice selection when it comes to new, stylish, and comfortable eyeglass frames. It provides a quiz to help customers determine exactly what type of frames will best suit them and then a personalized selection based on their responses.

After completing the quiz, customers can choose up to five frames that are delivered right to their homes, where they can test them for five days. After finding that perfect pair, customers can buy what they want and ship the rest back. The return shipping is free with Warby Parker’s return label.

For something you have to wear all the time (like glasses), comfort and style are paramount. Warby Parker helps customers feel assured that both needs will be met because customers can literally see the results for themselves at home before buying.

For brands that want a turnkey sampler program, Bazaarvoice offers a white-labeled sampling program to help retailers get their product samples directly into the hands of their community and start generating UGC.

Neuro optimizes product development

Sampling isn’t just to market and sell existing products. Kent Yoshimura and Ryan Chen, co-founders of wellness company Neuro, explain in this podcast one of the key ways they achieved their success: making sure Neuro Gum was as perfect as possible before they jumped into product activation. They gave out free samples of the gum to family, friends, and co-workers to test a variety of key details such as:

• Different ingredients (20 milligrams of caffeine to 80 milligrams of caffeine)
• New flavors
• Different sweeteners
• Hard chews vs. soft chews

After perfecting the product, Yoshimura and Chen surpassed their crowdfunding goal in just three days and ended up selling over 12 million pieces of Neuro Gum. And those people who sample the product became loyal customers.

“Once we introduce that product to somebody, the repeat purchase rate can be up to about 40, 45%,” said Chen. “Our challenge is getting people to try the product. Sampling is a really big opportunity for us.”

Neuro ensured it had a good, high-quality product and an active community of fans, thanks to product sampling. According to Chen, “We’ve grown such a loyal group of customers that they give us feedback all the time. It’s built a community which has been inspiring for us and has given us the motivation to keep going.”

After their initial success, they continued sampling with specific cohorts like the CrossFit community. They’ve also shipped product samples to new distributors to explore a potential new market in Africa.

Using samples and collecting customer responses is the most effective way to get meaningful feedback about your product, so you can improve it and launch with confidence.

Bazaarvoice’s sampling programs can help you learn from sampler feedback and expand into new markets via our robust, global Influenster community.

Home Depot doubles conversion rates with Managed Sampling

Home Depot Canada wanted to increase the volume of UGC, particularly reviews, its brands get on its product pages. So they partnered with bazaarvoice to create the Home Depot Seeds Sampling program.

“UGC is becoming increasingly important. It’s no longer a ‘nice to have.’ It’s a necessity. We see our site as a research tool, so even if people come into the store, they still use their phones to see ratings and reviews and make a final decision.”

Gabriela da Silva, Senior Brand Advocate Analyst, Home Depot Canada

Seeds Sampling is a review-seeding program that puts a brand’s highest priority products into the hands of its shoppers, in exchange for honest reviews on HomeDepot.ca. Since the program’s inception, it’s already led to some brands doubling their conversion rates on HomeDepot.ca.

It’s not just legacy products either. WiZ, a brand featured on HomeDepot.ca, used Seeds Sampling to generate buzz for new products and earn that UGC before they’d even launched. 

It worked, too. The conversion rate for the products used in Seeds Sampling was 68% higher than products not part of the program. Not bad at all.

Home Depot isn’t the first retailer to turn to Bazaarvoice for a Managed Sampling program. We’ve built sampling programs for Walmart, Target, and Sam’sClub, to name a few. And you could be next.

Get started with product sampling

Ready to experience the power of product sampling marketing in your own business? Bazaarvoice makes it easier than ever to get your products into the hands of the perfect customers, leading to a surge in reviews, social media buzz, authentic word-of-mouth, and sales.

You can learn more about Bazaarvoice Sampling here, or get started directly below.

LEARN MORE

Buyer’s guide: Find the perfect product sampling partner

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Because creating every piece of content from scratch isn’t always a feasible option, especially if you’re working with limited time and budget. Even if one of your teammates is an eight-armed octopus, easy access to plenty of authentic, fresh, and relatable branded content isn’t the reality for most companies.

What is a content curation tool?

A content curation tool is an application that makes it easier for your brand to find and share relevant, authentic content.

Content curation — sharing content from other sources on your own channels — is an ideal solution for this conundrum. But this strategy goes beyond just reposting great content. It involves finding, organizing, and sharing the best and most appropriate bits in a way that adds value to your brand narrative and engages your audience.

Best content curation tools to refine your digital e-commerce strategy

Let’s look at 12 of the best content curation tools that will help you get the job done successfully — in no particular order.

1. Feedly

• Specialty: Trend monitoring and industry insights
• Top features: AI-driven content curation and powerful organizational tools for feeds and boards
• Pricing: Pro: $6/month and Pro+: $8.25/month. Enterprise plans are available upon request

Feedly offers an AI-powered platform that filters and prioritizes content from a diverse range of online sources, including blogs, news sites, YouTube channels, and more. The tool adapts to your content curation preferences over time, so the more you use it, the more tailored your content feed becomes. This level of personalization allows you to stay ahead of trends and keep a finger on the pulse of what’s relevant to your audience.

With customizable news feeds and the ability to organize content into collections, Feedly becomes a centralized hub for all your curated content, that you can then pull from to add your own perspective.

2. ContentGems

• Specialty: Automated content curation and distribution
• Top features: Intelligent content filtering based on interests and keywords and integration with social media for easy sharing
• Pricing: A free version is available. Other plans include Pro: $10/month, Premium: $99/month, and API: $299/month

Much like other content curation tools, ContentGems uses keywords, social signals, and other filters to help you find relevant content. The tool’s standout feature is Workflows — with ContentGems, you can create customized workflows that let you share your favorite pieces of curated content with your audience, whether that’s through your social networks or an email newsletter. 

Adding your brand’s personal twist (an opinion, a clever twist, or relevant insights) is a key step in content curation. ContentGems knows this, and the Workflows feature allows you to include whatever context you wish to the content prior to sharing.

3. Flipboard

• Specialty: Engaging visual content aggregation and personalization
• Top features: Custom magazine-style layouts for content, smart content discovery with personalized recommendations, and social sharing capabilities
• Pricing: Free

Flipboard stands out for its unique magazine-style interface, which allows you to create personalized “magazines” or collections of articles, photos, and videos. This visually engaging format makes it easy for you to navigate and discover content that resonates with your audience and aligns with your brand voice. Plus, it’s completely free!

With Flipboard, you can follow topics, influencers, or even specific publications, ensuring you have a diverse and comprehensive stream of content at your disposal. This content can also serve as inspiration for marketing campaigns, social media content, and even product development, making Flipboard a versatile tool in the arsenal of any e-commerce manager and digital marketer.

4. Scoop.it

• Specialty: Efficient content discovery and knowledge sharing
• Top features: Robust content suggestion engine based on your selected topics, easy integration with social media and blogging platforms, and analytics to track engagement
• Pricing: A free version with limited features is available. Pro: $14.99/month and Plus: $67/month. Enterprise plans are available upon request

Scoop.it provides a platform where you can find relevant content across the web, organize, and share it with ease. You start by creating topic-specific pages, where the different types of content (articles, images, and videos) will live. 

Scoop.it’s advanced content suggestion engine then scours the internet for content based on these chosen topics, delivering a curated selection of high-quality content. The tool also lets you share knowledge internally, so all team members can contribute to amplifying the amount of curated content available to share on your marketing channels.

5. Buzzsumo

• Specialty: Real-time insights into what content types and topics generate the most engagement
• Top features: Tools for finding key influencers in your industry and alerts for brand mentions or keywords
• Pricing: Content Creation: $199/month, PR&Comms: $299/month, Suite: $499/month and Enterprise: $999/month

Ensuring that your content curation strikes a chord with your audience is key — a tool like Buzzsumo is an ally in this regard. It allows you to search for the most shared and engaging content on social media platforms based on keywords, hashtags, topics, or domains, providing a clear view of what’s trending and what’s not. Based on these insights, you can prioritize which content from your curated library to share according to its relevance and virality potential. 

Working with influencers is another content marketing strategy for e-commerce businesses to acquire content from a non-branded source and keep their social media feeds fresh. In addition to trends, Buzzsumo also helps you find the best influencers to work with by identifying the most active and engaging accounts relevant to your brand.  

6. Quuu

• Specialty: Personalized content suggestions
• Top features: Curated content library of personalized suggestions and seamless integration with social media platforms
• Pricing: Pro plan: $5/month and Business plan: $15.83/month. Agency plans are available upon request

Quuu’s shining star is its AI assistant, Robin. Trained by the human team that once hand-curated content for Quuu’s users, Robin searches the web every day to send you relevant news articles, podcast episodes, blog posts, and more. 

It seamlessly integrates with popular social media marketing platforms like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Hubspot, and you can choose what to share to your social media accounts manually or allow the auto-pilot to post for you.

7. Curated

• Specialty: Streamlined and user-friendly newsletter creation
• Top features: Quick capture of interesting content to add to your newsletters 
• Pricing: Price varies based on the number of newsletter subscribers — consult the pricing page for a complete breakdown of the cost

Running low on ideas to spice up your email newsletters? Curated’s got you covered. This curation platform was built specifically to streamline the process of creating, curating, and sending newsletters. 

With the Curated Chrome extension, you can easily collect and organize articles from various sources that you think your audience will find valuable. When it’s time to assemble your newsletter (using Curated’s library of templates), you can choose the best links, add them to the newsletter, and include summaries or comments about the content you’re sharing that add your brand’s perspective to the mix. 

8. Huzzaz

• Specialty: Video curation and enhanced video sharing experience
• Top features: Embeddable video collections for websites and customizable video gallery layouts
• Pricing: A free version is available, and the Pro version is $9/month

In the visually-driven world of e-commerce, video is king. Huzzaz is a tool designed for video content curation, allowing you to create video collections that can be shared and embedded on different platforms, including your website and social media channels.

With Huzzaz, you can curate video content from sources like YouTube and Vimeo, and use customizable video galleries to showcase products, tutorials, customer testimonials, and other video content in an organized and visually appealing way.

9. Content Studio

• Specialty: Unified content marketing and social media management
• Top features: Advanced content discovery tools and workflow automation for planning and publishing content
• Pricing: Starter: $25/month, Pro: $49/month, and Agency: $99/month

Content Studio is an all-in-one social media management platform, but one of its standout features is content curation. The tool lets you set up a library of curated content that can be filled out automatically, by following popular topics of interest, or manually, by filtering content based on keywords, domains, and other factors. 

This content curation software shows you how each piece of content is performing, and you can then automatically distribute your favorite and most successful pieces across social media channels, directly from the platform.  

10. Buffer

• Specialty: Streamlined social media posting and analytics
• Top features: Ability to schedule and share content across multiple platforms and detailed analytics for tracking content performance
• Pricing: A free version is available. Other plans include Essentials: $6/month for one channel, Team: $12/month for one channel, and Agency: $120/month for 10 channels

Successful content curation isn’t just about finding and sharing the right content. It also involves efficiently managing it across platforms. Buffer is an excellent answer to this need, as it offers an all-in-one solution for scheduling, publishing, and analyzing social media content.

Keeping track of what to post, when to post, and measuring the impact of both curated and original content can be overwhelming. Buffer streamlines this complexity with a single platform from which you can manage all your social media profiles and activities.

11. Pinterest

• Specialty: Inspirational image discovery and bookmarking
• Top features: Powerful visual search engine and curated boards for key themes
• Pricing: Free

Pinterest is a one-stop shop for users everywhere to find and curate inspirational visual content. It’s a user-friendly way to create and share collections of images, videos, and GIFs, known as pins, that can be organized into thematic boards.

Pinterest’s guided search feature makes it a breeze for you to find content that is aligned with your brand themes, guidelines, and aesthetics. And since pins usually link to the original website, the platform also functions as a gateway to find other fresh content sources that are relevant to your brand and target audience. 

12. Bazaarvoice

• Specialty: Collecting and amplifying user-generated content (UGC) to build brand trust and authenticity
• Top features: Creator Partnerships, ReviewSource, Sampling, Retail Syndication
• Pricing: See pricing page 

User-generated content (reviews, photos, videos, or any content created by your audience) isn’t just a fantastic source of engaging content for your marketing channels — it’s the backbone of consumer trust. The Bazaarvoice platform offers a multitude of solutions, but collecting and amplifying UGC is at the core of what we do — you can watch a demo here.

Bazaarvoice specializes in collecting the most engaging and brand-safe UGC on your behalf, and then distributing it across your marketing channels to boost visibility and make the content work harder. 

Through our Influenster community, and partnerships with nano, micro, and mid-tier content creators, Bazaarvoice also helps you generate fresh and relevant UGC, so you have a steady stream of authentic content to populate your social media channels and website.

Your customers are the most valuable content curation tools

Out of all the engaging and brand-relevant content swimming around the internet, none is as powerful as the voice of the customer. If you want to keep your marketing channels fed through a constant source of authentic content that also impacts your bottom line, authentic UGC is the way forward.

Tap into the power of UGC and put your customers to work. To get started, read our e-bookDownload our e-book and learn how to build a digital content supply chain with user-generated content at its core. 

When consumers post about these purchases on social media, they’ll usually tag your brand, helping others shop for and purchase these same items. This user-generated content (UGC) fosters a peer-to-peer recommendation cycle that continues attracting new customers and benefits brands and retailers in many ways. 

Most shoppers check social media and read reviews before buying anything. 78% of consumers feel more confident purchasing when they view UGC, and during tough economic times like today, 35% depend on it even more, according to the Bazaarvoice Shopper Experience Index. 

Shoppers are already posting about you and creating buzz for your brand on social media, whether you realize it or not. Everyday shopper communities like the Influenster community add over 500k new pieces of UGC monthly. So it’s crucial to tap into these conversations, learn what they’re saying, and collect this untapped UGC.

With so much social UGC created and shared each day, it’s impossible for brands to use everything that comes through in their campaigns. It might seem like it just funnels into the void — but this untapped UGC still has a profound impact on a brand’s reputation, awareness, discovery, and sales.

How untapped UGC still works for you 

Brands can get a ton of mileage out of UGC, even if you don’t or can’t directly use every piece of content your customers generate. Not all UGC works for every campaign or purpose, but it’s still valuable in many ways. Here’s all the ways untapped UGC benefits your brand. 

Introduces new customers to your brand 

Everyday social media users see other people talking about and sharing photos of your products. This fuels conversations between users about your brand. 

For example, someone might comment, “I love your shirt! Where did you get it?” And a consumer will tag you or send a link to the item. Another shopper will click and add it to their shopping carts, browse the rest of your website, and complete their purchase. 

Consumers trust content produced by real people. 100% of consumers — yes, every shopper! — say they’ve purchased a product based on the recommendation of someone they saw online.  

Social media is also where almost 60% of consumers go to discover new products. They typically follow their favorite brands, interact with them, and increasingly purchase directly from social platforms (so, it’s always a good idea to make your content shoppable!). 

Educates through trusted voices

Shoppers are likely to discover your products from UGC on social media. The platforms also serve as educational tools. Consumers can learn how a product will meet their needs and see it being used in real-life situations. 

The ability to see how something looks and works from photos and videos of real consumers builds trust. In fact, 78% of shoppers trust everyday social users just as much — or more — than they did five years ago, according to a June 2023 Bazaarvoice study of consumer and influencer communities. 

To help educate shoppers about your products, highlight UGC that showcases how the item can be used. This might include makeup tutorials, outfit-of-the-day (#OOTD) posts, and recipes. 

Shoppers want to learn from UGC. Our Shopper Experience Index shows that 62% use UGC to ensure they’re getting good value for their money, 50% to understand the quality of materials, and 44% to see whether a product matches a description. 

Build your brand’s identity 

Consumers who align with your values or vibe will naturally gravitate towards your brand. Tap into the growing creator economy, which is now valued at $16.4 billion, to find everyday consumers who are the biggest fans of your brand — and the largest pool of untapped UGC.

These content creators will produce the most authentic UGC — 69% of marketers are working with smaller creators these days. 

You don’t need a big marketing budget to tap smaller creators to produce content that effectively markets your brand. Ideally, 1% of your most engaged shoppers could produce about 90% of your content in a cost-effective way. 

UGC produced by everyday social media users has higher engagement and builds trust and authenticity.

Tracks your engagement and informs your strategy 

To meet your marketing and UGC goals, it’s crucial to continuously manage, measure, and optimize your creator marketing strategies. Use the content that you see from social media users as a baseline for measuring who’s engaging with your brand — examine demographics, their opinions, and the content they’re sharing. 

This can help you decide how to best interact with consumers effectively and meaningfully. Tracking engagement will drive future strategies. Powerful Social Commerce solutions let you identify top creators and content that performs best.  

The social butterfly effect

UGC collection is never a one-time thing. You need to engage customers all the time and encourage them to post about you on social media. This social butterfly effect encourages more UGC. 

Product sampling is one way to get your products in shoppers’ hands and generate conversations about them on social media. Bazaarvoice can help you hyper-target your ideal customers by giving you access to the Influenster community.

These UGC creators produce photos, videos, and reviews about your products from their own experiences — and you can share this valuable UGC on your social media channels, product detail pages (PDPs), and retailers’ websites. Plus, consumers who sample products are more likely to purchase them in the future and recommend them to friends and family.

When Petco launched a sampling campaign, for example, the pet supplies retailer saw a 48% increase in revenue per visit for sampled products, a 28% conversion rate boost, and a 15% higher average order value. 

How you can tap into the vast web of social UGC

Don’t let untapped UGC go to waste. Consumers are already sharing photos and videos of their favorite items and commenting and sharing product-related posts from others. Tapping into this robust network helps you leverage the true value of UGC.

Create a branded hashtag

Make it easy for your shoppers to start and join conversations about you by setting up branded hashtags. This can work wonders for consumer discovery, especially for creating buzz around a new product launch. 

Hashtags let you collect content about your brand all in one place, making it a go-to spot for UGC. This helps you grow brand awareness and drive traffic to your social pages and website, ultimately enabling social commerce. 

Dreams, a U.K.-based bedding specialist, has a winning hashtag strategy — its #mydreamsbed campaign attracts photos of real customer homes, which the brand incorporates across its social channels.

When customers interact with UGC, Dreams has seen a 200% increase in conversion rates and a 62% increase in average order value.

Comment on users’ posts 

When you organically come across a photo of one of your products or someone mentioning your brand on social media, make sure to leave a comment — whether the post is negative or positive. Responding to this feedback shows that you care about consumer feedback. Shoppers will respect your brand and feel valued, making them more likely to consider  your brand for future shopping sprees or treat it as a go-to. 

Consumers enjoy producing content and will create UGC when you ask them to, but they expect you to engage with their content quickly. Our Shopper Experience Index shows that 54% of consumers expect a response if they write a negative review, and 58% want an answer to a question they post in your Q&A on the same day. 

Display social UGC on your website

Spotlight your real customers by showcasing social UGC in a gallery on your website and product pages. This approach creates a positive sentiment for your brand — essentially, it shows how much you value your customers. 

American Eagle encourages customers to share photos of themselves wearing its jeans using hashtag #AEJeans. The photos are then displayed in a gallery, and when you click on a picture, you can go right to the product page to buy the exact jeans. 

Just about everyone researches what they buy online before completing a purchase. Consumers read reviews and search social media to see what their peers have to say or how real people use the item. This in turn drives sales for brands.

For example, The Body Shop showcases authentic photos and videos from real customers. The UGC is featured on product pages to inspire shoppers as they browse.

After integrating Galleries, the brand saw a 13% increase in average order value and a 28% jump in product page conversion rates. 

Recognize the impact of untapped UGC 

UGC is the most valuable content you have — it’s cost-effective to generate and highly effective at creating buzz, building brand awareness, and increasing sales. But, using every piece of UGC you collect in specific campaigns is tough — there’s just so much of it! Still, untapped UGC serves multiple purposes, including: 

• Introducing new shoppers to your brand
• Educating consumers about your products
• Building and boosting your brand identity 
• Encouraging social conversations about you
• Informing future campaigns 

There’s several ways to tap into untapped UGC, such as creating hashtags, participating in conversations, and featuring UGC everywhere your customers go.

Bazaarvoice’s end-to-end UGC technology can help you collect valuable content that fuels your media mix, effectively target your ideal customer profile globally, and get the most return from every piece of UGC. Learn more by exploring Bazaarvoice’s solutions.

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How to tap into UGC with creators and communities

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Social media and search algorithms reward fresh, relevant content and frequent posting. That’s great news if you have a lot of content and resources to work with. Not so much if you don’t.

Saturated digital spaces and higher standards for content put pressure on brands to elevate and increase their production. The time and effort needed to regularly create and distribute engaging content across channels is substantial. 

Forming a content curation plan is a game-changer for streamlining the production process and supplementing original content creation. Learn how to conquer the challenges of curating authentic content and how to implement a successful strategy.

Chapters:

1. What is content curation?
2. How does content curation benefit e-commerce brands?
3. Hurdles to curating authentic content
4. 8 tactics for curating quality content and distributing it across channels
5. Continue to evolve your content curation strategy

What is content curation?

Content curation is a way for e-commerce brands to share content from outside sources, including individuals and organizations, on their own marketing channels.

Effective content curation sources relevant and authentic content, and shares it with helpful context on appropriate channels. You should have an intentional strategy for content curation to bring value to your audience and drive results. 

Examples of different types of content you could curate include visual social media like images and videos, articles, data reports, podcasts, TV or film clips, and customer reviews. You can share curated content on your most active customer touchpoints, including your product pages, blog, social media channels, and emails. 

How does content curation benefit e-commerce brands?

Content curation offers a range of benefits to e-commerce brands regardless of size or maturity. Some of the top advantages include:

• Eases workflow: Curating content reduces the pressure, time, and effort required to regularly create original content. Instead of ideating, writing, filming, shooting, and designing content from scratch each time, you can supplement by sharing the content that someone else produced 
• Reduces costs: Because content curation reduces the time and in-house or outsourced talent that original content creation demands, it also eliminates the associated costs
• Supplies social proof: Whenever you share the kind of content that features or specifically mentions your brand and products, you’re providing social proof. When your audience sees other people recommending your products and showing love for your brand, it has a persuasive and contagious effect — this is the power of user-generated content (UGC)
• Diversifies content mix: The same type and tone of content can get boring and predictable quickly. And if the content is only coming from your brand’s perspective, that can be a turn-off. 74% of shoppers trust UGC more than brand-created content on product pages and 55% say they’re unlikely to purchase a product without consulting UGC, according to our Shopper Experience Index. Curating content allows you to share diverse voices, viewpoints, and styles of content to keep it fresh and interesting
• Increases engagement and reach: By sharing content from customers, influencers, publications, or other media and tagging those creators, you’re encouraging those sources to respond in kind. When they like, comment, or share your curated content, that’s introducing it to their own audience for further reach and engagement
• Demonstrates thought leadership: When you intentionally and thoughtfully share content, it shows you’re in tune with the latest trends and important voices. Even if you didn’t create the content originally, you can amplify clever takes and creative insights while adding to the conversation

Hurdles to curating authentic content

Content curation seems simple and straightforward enough, but to do it right, it gets more complicated. And by right, we mean consistent and authentic. It’s not just about sharing content to fill holes in your content calendar. It needs to be content created by real people voicing honest opinions that accurately reflect your brand, online community, and products. 

Understanding and addressing these challenges is crucial for e-commerce brands to establish a trustworthy online presence. Here’s some of the top obstacles to seamlessly curating a steady flow of authentic content.

Shortage of quality content

Consumers today are always-on and confronted with more content on every channel than ever. To get their attention and pique their interest, you need to express a unique style and voice along with striking visuals.

That goes for both the content your brand creates and curates. While there’s no shortage of content in every major digital space, finding the kind of quality content worthy of sharing is the real issue. Before you select and share content, you need to ensure it meets certain criteria, like it: 

• Comes from a trustworthy source
• Is accurate
• Is timely and up-to-date 
• Meets your visual and editorial quality standards
• Serves a purpose for your audience
• Reflects your brand values and identity
• Meets your content KPIs, i.e., increases brand awareness and drives conversions

Inconsistencies across channels

Customers notice when a brand’s presence across marketing channels is disjointed, and it may cause them to abandon their journey. The majority (75%) of shoppers expect a cohesive and connected experience on each brand channel. Discrepancies in tone, style, aesthetics, and messaging on different channels can compromise a consistent experience for your customers.

Content formats, audience, and language can all vary from one channel to another. All of these factors need to be in alignment when distributing curated content according to each channel’s unique characteristics. Your email newsletter has totally different capabilities and a more narrow audience than, say, your TikTok profile.

So, while you want to maintain your major brand elements on each, you also have to modify your content to fit each channel. 

Challenges in content verification 

When you’re sharing content from other sources, it’s crucial that the source and the content itself are legitimate. There’s bots, fake reviews, misinformation, and manipulated visuals at play in today’s digital arena. You need to have a reliable fact-checking and content-vetting process in place to ensure authenticity and deliver trustworthy content.

Copyright issues

Before you share content from other creators, ensure you’re not violating any intellectual property or copyright restrictions. To avoid infringement and any associated consequences, follow these best practices: 

• Check the fair use guidelines for any channels you don’t own
• Ask for permission to share the source’s content
• Properly attribute and credit the content source

Partnering with Bazaarvoice takes care of this important step for you with our automated rights-requesting capabilities. This feature enables a streamlined way to ask creators permission to use their content in your marketing materials. 

8 tactics for curating quality content and distributing it across channels

Luckily, you can easily sidestep all of those roadblocks to successful content curation and create a successful strategy by following these best practices. 

1. Understand your audience’s interests and preferred channels

How do you know if the content you curate, share, and distribute will be valuable? First, you need to understand what will help, attract, and reach your audience. Research your audience to understand what their needs and pain points are that your product solves. 

What type of content gets the most engagement? Where is your audience most active, and which of your channels has the most engaged followers? Those answers will reveal what to focus on, whether that’s tutorials on TikTok, reviews featured in email campaigns, shoppable Instagram posts, galleries of customer photos on product pages, etc.

2. Create and follow a content style guide

Establishing and implementing a content style guide is key to maintaining consistency across channels. It also provides a clear framework for your team to follow. Your style guide serves as a rulebook that includes instructions for executing your brand’s content curation strategy. These are some of the elements to include:

• Voice: The unique personality and message of your brand that represents its values and mission
• Tone: This can change depending on the situation, from the norm which could be upbeat and friendly to empathetic and understanding for delicate situations
• Format: When to use short-form and long-form content, images, videos, audio, and other elements depending on the channel
• Verification steps: The process for verifying content is authentic
• Image and video specs: The quality standards, length, and dimensions for visual assets
• Content types: What types of content work best for each platform, including educational vs. entertaining, top of funnel vs. bottom of funnel, etc.
• Tagging and attribution: How to give credit to content sources and tag them on each channel

3. Tailor content for each channel

While consistency is key, it’s also essential to respect the unique characteristics of each channel. Tailor content to fit the specific nuances of platforms without compromising the overarching brand message. Adapt visual elements, messaging length, and content formats to align seamlessly with the expectations of users on each channel.

This approach also helps broaden and diversify your marketing content mix. Different types of content have their own unique advantages, and you can track how each performs. For example, on e-commerce websites, product reviews impact purchasing decisions for 78% of consumers, and product photos taken by shoppers impact purchasing for 69%. Social media is another popular shopping source where lifestyle videos and photos taken by real shoppers thrive.

When you curate content for one channel, you can repurpose it for a different channel to maximize its reach and impact. For example, you can play clips of a podcast that mentions your brand or niche as an Instagram post and link to the episode with a written takeaway in an email campaign. Or, you can share a TikTok tutorial of how to use one of your products on your brand’s TikTok feed and also embed it in a blog post on a related topic on your website.

4. Encourage and foster UGC

You can create a steady flow of authentic content by leveraging UGC to distribute across channels. Besides its authenticity, it’s also very persuasive, giving 78% of shoppers more confidence in making purchases. 

UGC includes reviews, photos, videos, blog posts, podcast episodes, and any other content created by your own audience. UGC can come from anyone who’s purchased a product from you regardless of their online presence or from an influencer with a large following. There’s so many ways to collect and encourage UGC, including: 

• Promoting branded hashtags for users to include when posting UGC for a chance to be featured on your website or social channels
• Using customer satisfaction surveys to collect feedback and reviews
• Requesting reviews via email and SMS marketing 
• Hosting a social media contest or giveaway for followers who submit photos, videos, or reviews
• Launching a product sampling campaign offering consumers samples in exchange for UGC

FAs a good example, The Body Shop entices customers to share their social media photos using #TheBodyShop to be featured on their website gallery. Showcasing UGC galleries earned The Body Shop a 13% increase in average order value.

5. Use social listening and search engine alerts 

Social listening tools and search engine alerts are excellent content curation resources because they track content that tags or mentions your brand, industry, or relevant topics.

Social listening means monitoring online conversations across social media platforms that mention your brand or a specific hashtag you’re tracking. With social listening, you can gain valuable insights into consumer sentiments, preferences, and emerging trends. By actively listening to your audience, you can identify content to share, reveal relevant topics to focus on, and gauge the effectiveness of current content.

Setting up Google search alerts keeps you informed about industry trends, competitor activities, and relevant keywords. These real-time notifications allow brands to keep up with fresh content to share and current interests. You can set up alerts for any topic you want and receive them in your email inbox.

6. Add context and your brand’s perspective 

Merely sharing curated content isn’t enough. When you post content from other sources, add your own feedback, recommendations, or thoughts. If it needs explanation outside of its original location, provide that for your audience. Add to the conversation and tie it back to your brand’s message and content goals.

MAM Baby does a great job of this on Instagram. The brand curates relevant content from their customers and shares it on their Instagram page. They add their own message to each post, like more context on featured products or their own reactions showing their brand’s personality.

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A post shared by MAM Baby (@mambaby_usa)

They also combined their UGC curation with social commerce to make their Instagram feed shoppable, leading to increased site visits by 157% and an extra £96k in annual revenue.

7. Streamline and centralize content planning and distribution 

When you have multiple people juggling all the content for your various marketing channels, you need an easy way to manage it all. You can do that by having a content supply chain that everyone can access for all your content planning, drafting, approval, and scheduling tasks. That could be folders with multiple documents for content calendars, drafts for review, your style guide, and other resources. 

Or, you can invest in one centralized platform to access everything you need, including Bazaarvoice tools like Social Media Manager. This tool lets you create and schedule content, plus analyze performance and competitors all in one place.

8. Implement authenticity review processes

Establish a process and guidelines to ensure the content you’re sharing is trustworthy and true to your brand pillars. Make sure you collaborate with influencers who create genuine content and whose presence aligns with your brand values. Check each review and piece of content you source to make sure it’s not fraudulent. 

If you’re a smaller business, it might make more sense to vet each piece of content and its creator manually, one at a time. If you’re scaling your business or marketing efforts, you could partner with a team like Bazaarvoice that uses fraud detection technology, algorithms, and analysts to ensure authenticity.

Continue to evolve your content curation strategy

Once you have your plan and process in place for curating content, put it to the test and then measure the results. Use analytics to see what’s working and what’s lacking engagement. Then, use those insights to refine your strategy, continue what’s performing well, and address what isn’t.

Find out more about how to find, analyze, and apply consumer insights to optimize and elevate your content strategy in our guide: The smart marketer’s guide to finding and using customer insights.

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Masterclass: Fuel your content engine with quality content at scale

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Nowadays, global brands are bigger than ever before, most likely due to social media and the boom in online shopping leading to increased demand for products worldwide. The international e-commerce market is expected to total $6.3 trillion in 2023.

By marketing their products on social media and pushing customers to their international sites, global brands can sell their goods to almost anyone, which might not have been as possible 20-30 years ago. But, how can you attract shoppers when you’re only appealing to one segment of people? It’s difficult.

It’s not easy to cater to 8 billion people in one fell swoop. 42% of consumers say they never purchase products and services in other languages. So just as “one-size-fits-most” clothing fits very few people, we know that content marketing is not “one-size-fits-all” across the globe. 

This is where local content can save the day. But, how do you localize your content for international audiences in today’s shopping ecosystem? 

What is content localization?

Content localization is the process of adapting content to be relevant for multiple, local audiences. This means understanding language and cultural differences, symbols, references, colloquiums, and more before going to market globally. Content localization matters because whether you’re already a global brand, or looking to expand internationally, it’s what consumers want to see:

Not only does a content localization strategy require your business to have a strong brand image, but it also demands a rich understanding of various groups and cultures, which you can achieve through education and research. 

If these audiences aren’t kept in mind when creating a marketing strategy, it will be increasingly difficult to show up a cohesive, all-inclusive brand.

Tips for successful content localization strategy 

Are you looking to become a global brand? Or Follow these five proven tips for appealing to multiple audiences with local content and becoming the brand people associate with your product or service.

1. Get social

The more your brand can show up on social media the better — especially when it comes to reaching people far and wide. Shoppers, more than ever, are spending time discovering products, doing their research, and reading reviews on social, so take advantage of this and focus your efforts on your socials.

One way to successfully build a worldwide presence is by spreading out your content across multiple channels and even handles. For example, using different Instagram handles for various locales enables your content to last longer and live in more places. If your business has large communities in the US, Europe, and Australia, consider building separate social accounts for each segment. This way, you can get more specific and tailored with your content depending on the region.

Take Sephora for example – they manage multiple Instagram handles successfully by understanding the intricacies of their global communities. Sephora’s main account, for their U.S. market, mentions U.S. based sales, products, and services. However, their handle dedicated to Australia includes solely Australian based user-generated content (UGC), events, products, and more. By profiling Australian Fashion Week, an event that’s otherwise not very relevant in other countries, Sephora established themselves as a brand that knows how to tap into current events and appeal to their patrons in Australia. 

So, before committing to multiple handles, take time to understand your audiences. How do they shop? What content performs best? What social platforms are they showing up on? Dive deeper into your social analytics and take a good look at the data – it never lies. In doing so, you can develop your specific KPIs and objectives for each audience. 

Your followers will provide you with free market research, as long as you spend the time reading their comments, understanding where their knowledge gaps may be, looking at what gets the most likes, and more. Each region will have different priorities when it comes to shopping – brand trust, convenience of product, price, and more. 

Spend time both surveying and sharing content on your social media platforms. This is how you go from good to great when building a global brand.

2. Get real translations

It sounds like an obvious strategy, but content localization needs to start with translating your content. Translate it, then localize it.

Obviously, translation isn’t the only thing that companies must do to reach a global customer base, but it’s certainly one of the fastest, easiest, and most frequently overlooked.

Nataly Kelly, VP of Localization, Hubspot

Most of us aren’t experts on multiple languages — that’s just how it is. But, language, as we all know, can say a lot, and you want to make sure it’s saying the right thing. 

When it comes to creating local content or translating from one language to another, it’s important to find real people who can translate rather than relying on AI or other online tools. One mishap could cost you a lot or completely misdirect your audience. This is a simple mistake that can be avoided with quality translation. 

KFC went through a bit of a translation fail when their famous “finger-lickin good” slogan got translated into Chinese. If they were to have consulted a native Chinese speaker, this likely wouldn’t have happened and would’ve caused less of a ruckus when a passerby sees this sign. 

Although incorrect translations can sometimes be harmless, it does show you put little care in accommodating to that specific place. Why would someone want to buy from a brand that doesn’t think to even fit into their culture or language?

A good way to collect local content and talk like your customers (wherever they are) is through product reviews. Specifically, transcending borders by translating your product reviews. Your customers are already talking in their own language so they’ll be there ready for new customers in a new location to find.

Brother International, for example, used translated reviews to expand into seven new markets and found that customers who interact with these reviews are 2x more likely to click a call-to-action.

3. Learn social norms

The key part of content localization is, obviously, making your content local. Once you’ve spent the time doing your due diligence on social media, you’ll discover there’s social norms that are quite specific to a region.

Just think about simple phrases that are wildly different in New York versus London — tired vs knackered, elevator vs lift, trash vs rubbish, etc. Or the fact that red is generally a negative color but in Chinese culture is considered lucky. Even time and date formats differ the world over. Specific content localization items to think about include:

When brands are hoping to show up globally, it’s crucial to acknowledge that some content may work in some places and not others. Businesses must carefully consider the visuals of your UGC and promoted posts before going ahead and posting them. 

For example, McDonald’s, arguably the world’s most recognizable fast-food chain, doesn’t reuse ads or marketing assets for all their audiences because, for example, promoting Big Macs with cheese to people in Israel isn’t necessarily appropriate or fitting.

If you go to any McDonald’s around the world, you’ll find region-specific food in each one, and this is something they’re proud of. This is why you’ll see, across their social media, ads, promotional videos, and more, they acknowledge the intricacies of the community.

However, it’s important to educate yourself first before jumping on what you may assume is a social norm. In reality, that social norm could actually be a stereotype that’s dated or inappropriate nowadays. It’s better to loop in a regional source when building your global marketing strategy than just simply guessing. 

4. Tailor UGC on regional sites and marketing campaigns

If it’s winter in Australia, Australians don’t want to see swimsuits and flip-flops, which makes total sense. For this reason, make sure to be tailoring your content accordingly. 

If your e-commerce site is full of UGC and brand-owned content, you’re most likely already seeing incredible lifts in average order value, time on site, and conversion. But, if you’re using the same content over and over across your regional sites, you may be missing out on lots of revenue. 

You can easily distribute and display specific content on some sites and not others with Galleries Localization. Peloton is a fantastic example of this:

Their German website caters to their German audience with unique UGC across their site, including a full page dedicated to their community’s images and videos not found on the American site. 

Galleries Localization can easily be accomplished through the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce platform, and it’s something that will save you time and money. It will help those sales skyrocket because your audience will feel seen and heard wherever they are.

5. Analyze success by region

Monitoring your marketing strategy’s performance enables you to uncover what’s working and what’s not working. When you look at metrics regarding social content, such as engagement, likes, followers, and more, you can determine what’s successful in each region. This goes for content performance and the number of reviews on site, as well. These are all performance metrics that will help you analyze your audiences better.

One thing to note is that different regional strategies can be aimed at achieving different things. It’s all about meeting your customers where they are, and that’s not going to be the same place for all communities. Don’t just evaluate total engagement rate for each localized IG account and call it a day; remember your KPIs for each locale when determining success and return to those KPI’s when you go astray. 

Get global success with content localization

Working across the globe is no small feat, especially as it means understanding more places than just your home or culture. But, showing up globally as a brand can take your business to the next level – it’s all about just knowing how to do so. 

Knowing when to enter into a new region and how to successfully pull that off will pay off in the end. Remember, 72% of consumers said they would be more likely to buy a product with information in their own language. All you need to do is learn how to localize your content. We know — the biggest global brands work with us. 

If you’re looking to expand globally, the best way to get started is with UGC. Learn more ways you can use it engage global shoppers with local content on our dedicated content localization page.

LEARN MORE

The retail marketer’s guide to global expansion

Read here

Get ahead on planning your perfect timeline with this guide to every season. Looking to nail your holiday shopping season? Jump to our winter campaign timeline. Not sure how to plan for Halloween? Skip to our fall campign timeline. Or for the perfect marketing timeline for every season, just dive right in.

Chapters:

1. Winter campaigns: How to plan a marketing timeline
2. Spring campaigns: How to plan a marketing timeline
3. Summer campaigns: How to plan a marketing timeline
4. Fall campaigns: How to plan a marketing timeline
5. Nail your marketing timeline strategy with Bazaarvoice Sampling

Shopping never stops. Consumers are always browsing for something they need or just want, whether it’s a new outfit, fresh home decor, holiday merchandise, or gifts for loved ones.

24% of consumers say they shop weekly, and 9% shop every day. Most consumers shop both online and in stores. 

While shopping is always-on and available everywhere at the tip of your finger, consumer behavior shifts from season to season. So, what does that mean for you? Being tasked with juggling marketing campaign timelines year-round to attract shoppers with the right content at the right time.

What they’re looking for is your branded content mixed with user-generated content (UGC), which includes ratings, reviews, photos, and videos. It’s considered more authentic and trustworthy because it comes directly from real people. 

One of the best ways to collect UGC quickly is via product sampling, where you send consumers samples of products to try in exchange for honest reviews.  

To develop successful sampling campaigns, you’ll need to change things up every season. Use these guiding timelines to rock your seasonal marketing campaigns. 

Winter campaigns: How to plan a marketing timeline

Shoppers are making their naughty-and-nice lists and stashing away gifts earlier and earlier, especially as budgets are being tightened. 

So, you need to be ready. For the best results, you absolutely can’t wait until November 1st to kick off your holiday campaigns. Start months ahead to lure shoppers during this time of hustle and bustle.

Early planning and preparation also ensure you’ll be ready for anything unexpected like supply chain issues, pressures from inflation, or delayed product launches. We’ve created a helpful marketing timeline to set yourself up for a joyous holiday season. 

March/April 

Right after the previous holiday season is the best time to solidify your budget and map out an internal timeline for getting ahead of next year’s holidays. And that should include a budget for UGC.

Collecting UGC and adding ratings, reviews, and customer photos and videos as early as possible means the difference between a successful sales season and a lump of coal in your stocking. 

Best-in-class sites containing UGC see up to a 190% revenue lift per visitor and up to a 145% increase in conversion rate. A few other things to do during this time include: 

• Contact other brands to initiate partnerships for must-have winter holiday products
• Secure places on in-person and digital retailers’ shelves
• Decide which ad campaigns to run 

May/June

With the holidays about six months away, lock in your advertising and sampling campaigns. Product sampling is an excellent way to pack your product pages with fresh UGC. 

Just look at Kraft Heinz. They use sampling to drive awareness for new products and have seen massive success. Campaigns for Kraft Dressings Vinaigrettes, Twisted Ranch, and Bitten brought in 20,000 reviews and 39 million impressions.

“The campaigns over-delivered on our targets for the program, delivering 2x the product reviews we expected, and the earned media was over 5x our program investment,” Kraft Heinz Associate Brand Manager Elizabeth Northrup said.

That’s because new UGC is crucial. 80% of shoppers say review recency factors into their purchasing decisions, with most shoppers saying they’d rather buy something with fewer reviews if they’re recent. 

July 

Known as “Black Friday in July” thanks to Amazon Prime Day, this has become the unofficial holiday shopping season kickoff. 

Prime Day is an amazing opportunity to organically collect UGC, even if you don’t sell on Amazon. Use email and text messages to encourage consumers to leave reviews with these best practices: 

• Use a simple, catchy subject line
• Keep your ask short and focused on the review request 
• Give shoppers time to receive and experience the product

MeUndies for example grew review volume 218% simply by asking shoppers to leave a review. After optimizing review request emails, submission rates and page views jumped drastically. 

“Customers trust the volume of reviews that they see,” said Ross Houslander, senior retention lead at MeUndies. “Bazaarvoice allows us to collect reviews and create consumer trust. It also allows us to do things like offering consumers a quick way to write reviews themselves.” 

Long story short, UGC drives sales on Prime Day. 88% of shoppers said they relied on ratings and reviews to complete a purchase during the event. More shoppers are relying on visual UGC, too. Our surveys show that 74% base Prime Day purchase decisions on photos and videos from other customers — just 18% look at written reviews alone.  

August/September

If you haven’t started your sampling campaigns by August, now’s crunch time. But don’t worry — there’s still enough time to collect UGC before Cyber Week in November. Sampling also isn’t the only way to go: 

• Identify gaps in your UGC coverage
• Run a social media campaign or retarget customers for feedback on their purchases to boost on-site and syndicated UGC
• Take note of reviews and questions without responses — 69% of shoppers who write a negative review expect a response, and responses to positive reviews go a long way in building trust with shoppers

October 

It’s almost showtime. October is when most people start holiday shopping. So, it’s a great time to make sure your team and systems are ready to handle shopping spikes. Here’s how: 

• Firm up any planned code freezes, increase staffing, and have a plan in case a system breaks or goes down when people are browsing and buying
• Add social content that you’ve collected from sampling campaigns before your code freeze. This will inspire shopping decisions and increase sales, as 75% of shoppers want to see visual and social UGC on product pages when they shop 
• Keep responding to reviews and questions. It’ll build relationships and help shoppers buy with confidence

November 

The holiday season is officially here! Go ahead and put up your twinkle lights and Christmas tree, and get your holiday playlist on repeat. 

Once Halloween is over, consumers really start thinking about holiday gift shopping (if they haven’t already). If you started prepping in March, you’ll have a solid UGC strategy in place to be ready for Thanksgiving week, including Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. You’ll see shoppers flocking to your website and filling their shopping carts.

December 

Holiday shopping is still going on, and there are plenty of last-minute shoppers hitting the stores digitally and in person. 

Learn from your Cyber Week successes and failures, and finish the holiday shopping season strong. Think about ways you can tweak product descriptions or bring fresh content to your social content galleries. 

And keep engaging with shoppers — it’s a crucial time to continue responding to UGC. 

3 examples of winter seasonal marketing campaigns 

Here’s some of our favorite examples of brands that perfected their marketing timelines, jumped into the holiday spirit, won over shoppers, and boosted sales.

1. Fresh

The all-natural beauty brand used Bazaarvoice Review Syndication to launch limited-edition products, including holiday gift sets. By the time the sets launched, Fresh had a trove of reviews and visual UGC on its product pages.

The brand consistently drives a 10.7% conversion rate when shoppers engage with UGC. 

2. Albertsons Retail Media Collective & PepsiCo 

PepsiCo debuted a social-focused cashback campaign, rewarding shoppers when they posted photos and comments about Tostitos chips and salsa on TikTok and Instagram. 

The campaign generated 7.3 million social media impressions, and about 90% of consumers said they’d recommend PepsiCo/Tostitos to their family and friends. 

3. Patchology 

To boost awareness for its All Eyes on You kit ahead of the holidays, Skincare brand Patchology created a custom Influenster VoxBox and sent it to 1,000 millennial skincare enthusiasts.

The campaign resulted in over 1,700 reviews and 6.3 million impressions. 

Sampling gives your winter campaigns a boost 

Is your brand ready for the holiday shopping season? Read our full winter marketing timeline guide to help you get ahead and set yourself up for a joyous holiday season.

Spring campaigns: How to plan a marketing timeline 

Flowers are blooming, birds are chirping, and the chill in the air is starting to fade. Springtime brings so much newness, and it will inspire consumers to shop. 

The season also encompasses many events and holidays — think: Easter, Passover, Mother’s Day, spring cleaning, and the first barbecue of the year. Shoppers will be looking for new outfits, gifts, and items to spruce up their homes and outdoor spaces. 

If you’re thinking about hopping into spring with a vibrant sampling campaign, late summer is the best time to start. This marketing timeline will help you get ahead and set yourself up for a beautiful spring campaign.

August/September 

As summer winds down, start thinking about springtime. It’s a good time to finalize your budget and think about what resources you need well in advance. 

Establish a UGC budget. Collecting ratings, reviews, and shopper photos and videos and adding them to your product pages will give them a refresh for spring. Remember, 89% of consumers always or mostly check reviews before purchasing something. 

If you have ideas for springtime partnerships with other retailers and brands, get in contact now. This will give you plenty of time to develop something exciting for your customers. And, don’t forget to secure your spot on store and digital shelves and start thinking about your spring marketing strategy. 

October/November

Spend time in the fall, before the holiday hecticness, to settle on your advertising strategies and activate your sampling campaign. 

You’ll have plenty of time to send out samples and bring in a fresh crop of review content before March. New, relevant content inspires shoppers. They care more about how recent a product’s reviews are than how many reviews an item actually has. 

Retailers should invite brands into their UGC programs by encouraging review collection and syndication — McPherson’s is a great example. The consumer products brand uses sampling campaigns to boost reviews on its e-commerce platform and syndicates them to partners to drive excitement for new product launches. About 20% of its new reviews come from sampling. 

December 

With consumers busy holiday gift shopping, it’s time for you to focus on spring. The influx of holiday sales makes it an optimal time to collect organic reviews. 

Send an email or text message to consumers after their purchases to ask them to share feedback — just give them enough time to try out their items first. And keep the messages short and sweet!

December is a great time to launch your sampling campaign (if you haven’t already). Identify products that need more or fresh reviews. Then, ask consumers to try out those items and leave a review or post photos of themselves using the product on social. 

Take time to respond to existing UGC and answer any questions that shoppers left. They expect brands and retailers to respond to positive and negative feedback, and doing so builds trust. 

January/February

It’s a brand new year! Consumers are celebrating Valentine’s Day and shopping for cards, candy, jewelry, and flowers. 

But, spring is just around the corner. Now is a terrific time to spring clean your website. Revisit old content, revamp product descriptions, evaluate core pages, clean up your shop’s data, and respond to new reviews and questions. 

And incorporate social content and other UGC you collect from your sampling campaigns. It’ll instill trust and build authentic connections with consumers. Shoppers want to see how products look and work in real-life settings — 62% of shoppers are more likely to buy a product if they can view customer photos and videos

March

You made it to spring, and all your hard work is paying off. Consumers are researching and getting ready to shop for the season’s most-wanted items. They’re looking for green ahead of St. Patrick’s Day, plus grills and outdoor accessories as the weather starts to warm up. 

Start running promotions ahead of Easter, and you’ll see shoppers buying their chocolate bunnies, baskets, and pastel dresses early. 

April 

What worked well and not so well in March? This month, take stock of your early spring strategies. Look for product pages that need a few tweaks or fresh social content that you can add to a gallery. After all, shoppers are more likely to buy products when visual UGC is featured on product pages. 

It’s crucial to continue engaging with shoppers as your spring campaigns wind down. Responding to UGC, including reviews on your website or social media posts featuring your products, lets shoppers know how much you value their feedback. 

3 examples of spring seasonal marketing campaigns 

Below are a few brands that launched stand-out spring campaigns thanks to a stellar marketing timeline. 

1. Kärcher 

Cleaning equipment company Kärcher uses Bazaarvoice Sampling to target customers with new product launches and generate high-quality reviews quickly. Ahead of one of their first product launches with sampling, 98% of consumers who received samples left a review.

Kärcher also features UGC on its product pages, which increases conversions and deepens its relationships with retailers. 

2. Clarins

Sampling helps Clarins collect fresh UGC for existing products and leading up to new product launches. One campaign brought in 138 reviews in 36 days, and the luxury beauty brand sees a whopping 111% increase in conversions when shoppers read reviews on its website. 

3. LG UK 

For new product launches, LG UK uses sampling to pre-populate product pages with reviews before the items are released. Every consumer who receives a sample usually leaves a review, and the company averages a 4.9 rating.

LG UK also uses review syndication to ensure reviews pop up wherever consumers shop.

Spruce up your spring campaigns with sampling 

Are you thinking about hopping into spring with a vibrant sampling campaign? Our sampling community is your content engine. Read our full strategic marketing timeline to help you get ahead and set yourself up for a blissful spring shopping season.

Summer campaigns: How to plan a marketing timeline 

The summer retail season is one of the busiest: School’s out, vacations are booked, pool days are the norm, and consumers have a lot to shop for. Father’s Day and Prime Day also drive summer purchases.

To ensure your summer campaigns are sizzling hot, start planning while your holiday campaigns are in full swing. This will set your summer retail season up for success. Use this proven marketing timeline to help.

December 

Kicking off a UGC campaign now is the best way to get ready for summer. Decide which products need more reviews and more recent reviews. Starting to collect UGC now means you can help shoppers make the most informed decisions by the time summer rolls around. 

Consumers trust UGC just as much (if not more) than recommendations from friends and family. They especially appreciate seeing fellow shoppers wearing and using items in real life. It’s no wonder that 62% of shoppers are more likely to buy something if they can see customer photos and videos. 

Also, don’t forget to reach out to brands that you want to partner with on summer products or campaigns. Talk to retailers about securing shelf space for your products. 

January 

Launch your sampling campaigns now! This will get new and relevant reviews flowing in, which shoppers rely on as they’re browsing for things to buy. 

Consumers love freebies and appreciate opportunities to try something and provide feedback. Sampling inspires loyalty, as many consumers start buying the items they’ve tried out. Plus, you reap the benefits of word-of-mouth marketing, as 87% also recommend the product and brand to friends and family. 

Sampling also provides a wealth of UGC that you can display on your product pages to instill confidence in consumers as they shop. This UGC can also be syndicated on retailer websites to reach even more shoppers. 

February 

Valentine’s Day means love is in the air, and consumers are shopping for their significant others, friends, family, and pets. Use these holiday purchases to drive your UGC collection efforts. 

Sending an email or text after Valentine’s purchases will spur organic review collection. Just keep your message short and focused on the review request. Don’t forget to give consumers enough time to receive and try out the product before asking for a review. 

As an example, Petmate increased review volume by an impressive 380% after activating In-Mail, which enables shoppers to rate and review products directly in their email, and Multi-Product Submission, where they can review all recent purchases in one submission form. 

“The moment we enabled these two features, our review volume skyrocketed,” said Chad Siegert, Director of Consumer Marketing, Petmate. 

March

March is the last call for sampling campaigns to collect new UGC before summertime and back-to-school season kick off. But, there are other ways to boost review coverage, too. 

Identify your top-selling summer products and see which product pages need a refresh. Run a social media campaign or target customers who’ve purchased those items to ramp up UGC collection, especially visuals. Shoppers are more likely to buy products with consumer photos and visuals. 

While you’re reviewing your product pages, pay attention to reviews and questions that haven’t been addressed and respond to them. Shoppers expect retailers and brands to respond to both negative and positive reviews — it shows that their feedback is valued. 

April 

This month, finalize your summer plans. This will free up your marketing teams so that they can relax over the summer. 

It’s a good time to make sure your website is mobile-friendly. With so many people traveling in the summer, you want to make it easy for them to browse, shop, and buy from your store on their mobile devices, wherever they are. 

More and more, consumers take an omnichannel approach to shopping. According to our research, 63% of consumers use their phones while browsing in stores to compare prices and look up product reviews, and 36% have purchased something via mobile shopping while in a brick-and-mortar store. 

Here’s some other things to add to your April to-do list: 

• Add social content from past sampling campaigns to your website
• Keep responding to existing reviews 
• Answer questions that your customers have posted 

May 

Memorial Day, the unofficial beginning of summer, is just ahead. Consumers are getting ready for the season by shopping for swimsuits, sunscreen, patio furniture, and pool floaties. Start running promotions on these items to get shoppers in a summer state of mind. 

Leverage social media by featuring some of the visual UGC you collected from the sampling campaigns over the past couple of months. Social commerce inspires purchases. Just make your posts shoppable — 54% of consumers are more likely to buy a product on social media when they can click on the post and get info right then and there.

June 

It’s officially summer! Your summertime campaigns are making a splash, but the work doesn’t stop there. Engaging consumers is a year-round business. 

Keep an eye on your product description pages. Add UGC to your galleries and respond to reviews that flow in. These minor tweaks will help you stand out and let customers know that their feedback is your number one priority. 

3 examples of summer seasonal marketing campaigns 

These brands hit it out of the park with their summer campaign marketing timelines. 

1. Samsonite

Last summer, the iconic travel brand Samsonite encouraged consumers to “Take What’s Yours” and use up their paid time off. The campaign incorporated social media posts and hashtags.

The brand also uses Bazaarvoice Galleries, which has helped them increase conversions 4x, time spent on product pages by 5x, and average order values by 254%.  

2. The Athlete’s Foot

The Athlete’s Foot created a hub to help parents shop for their kids’ back-to-school shoes. To encourage sales, the brand leverages Bazaarvoice Ratings and Reviews and Review Syndication.

The combo of the two helped the brand collect thousands of reviews and more importantly, boost conversions by 26%. 

3. Fresh

Beauty brand Fresh used sweepstakes to increase engagement during the summer. They asked consumers to leave reviews for their favorite products from their Rose collection and enter to win a $100 gift card.

The fun campaign brought in 145% more reviews than normal and a fresh set of review content for evergreen products. 

Heat up your summer campaigns with sampling

Do you know what you should be thinking about in the midst of winter? Your summer shopping season plans. Put some sizzle into your summer campaigns with our full summer marketing timeline below and set yourself up for a successful summer season.

Fall campaigns: How to plan a marketing timeline 

Pumpkin spice lattes, jack-o-lanterns, crisp air, and colorful foliage — fall is hands-down the coziest season. There’s a lot of shopping going on, too. Consumers are looking for Halloween costumes, Thanksgiving cookware, festive decor, and trendy new clothes. They’re also starting to think about holiday gifting. 

To capitalize on the increase in consumer spending, you’ll need to start planning in February. Here’s a specific marketing timeline to help prepare for a bountiful fall season. 

February/March 

The early part of the year is the optimal time to gear up for fall. Get a timeline and budget in place for UGC. 

Ratings, reviews, and customer photos and videos can zhuzh up your product pages — which can mean the difference between a successful fall and a flop. Best-in-class websites with UGC see up to a 190% boost in revenue per visitor and up to 145% higher conversion rates. 

Set up partnerships with other brands for must-have autumn products. Discuss your fall plans with retailers to ensure you have a place on their shelves and identify which campaigns to run. 

April/May 

Spring is the best time to start a sampling campaign to increase UGC volume for fall. Sampling campaigns are a surefire way to impress your retail partners. 

Sampling drives product discovery and spurs UGC collection. It also encourages customer loyalty. Shoppers that try samples often buy the product again and again, buy more things from the brand, and recommend it to friends and family. 

Consumers love sharing their thoughts with you. So, sampling brings in an influx of reviews and freshens up UGC content. Seven in 10 shoppers would rather buy a more expensive product with higher ratings and reviews than a less expensive product with fewer reviews.

June 

Pride Month is celebrated globally in June. Diversity and inclusivity are a core part of many retail campaigns during the month. 

It’s a good time to capitalize on any summer or Pride-related purchases by sending texts or emails to customers asking them for a review. When you seek out reviews in this way, keep the messaging short and to the point, and make it easy for consumers to leave a review. 

There’s also still time to launch a sampling campaign before the fall. Identify your hero items for autumn and get them into consumers’ hands. This strategy will bring in fresh UGC that you can feature on product pages to lure shoppers. 

If you’ve identified gaps in your UGC coverage, another way to boost collection is via social media campaigns. Make a note of reviews and questions without responses, and be sure to respond. Shoppers have grown to expect brands to respond to all feedback, negative and positive.

July/August 

It’s almost fall! Make a plan for your team and your systems so that they’re equipped to handle anything unforeseen, especially big spikes in shopping around back-to-school. 

Setting a code freeze, increasing staffing, and having a backup plan are essential steps to be ready in case a system breaks or goes down while shoppers are on your site. 

But, before you set a code freeze, add the social content you’ve collected from your sampling campaigns. 75% of shoppers say they want to see UGC on product pages while they shop — and they’re looking at reviews, too. 78% of online shoppers trust online reviews the most, so keep responding to positive and negative reviews and questions. 

September 

This time of year includes Halloween, Black Friday, and the start of holiday gift buying — consumers are researching products, looking for fall inspiration, and gearing up to shop. 

If you run promotions early and have a solid UGC strategy in place before September hits, shoppers will start buying as soon as autumn rolls around. 

October 

Take stock of what worked well and not so well in September. What tweaks can you make to product descriptions that’ll inspire shoppers to click buy? Is there any fresh social content that you can upload into a gallery? 

These minor adjustments will draw consumers. Shoppers crave UGC in order to make informed purchasing decisions faster. So don’t forget to respond to UGC during this time — it’s crucial for increasing conversions. 

3 examples of autumn seasonal marketing campaigns 

These brands launched exciting campaigns that made a mark on fall shoppers. 

1. Petco 

To help pet parents learn about new products for their fur babies, Petco launched the Spotted Sampling Program, including themed boxes for Halloween. The program has led to a 405% increase in review volume and a 48% jump in revenue per visitor for sampled products. 

2. Land O’Lakes 

Consumers celebrate fall by gathering with friends and family, so grocery shopping is essential. To inspire shoppers, Land O’Lakes used Bazaarvoice Sampling to send butters and spreads to select customers and collected more than 1,000 reviews.

The brand has also syndicated over 30,000 reviews to retail sites across the Bazaarvoice Network. 

3. Home Depot Canada

To get high-priority products into loyal shoppers’ hands, Home Depot Canada launched a Seed Sampling program. Targeted audiences receive products in exchange for leaving honest reviews.

As a result of the campaign, the program has helped the retail giant double its conversions.

Supercharge your fall campaigns with sampling 

It’s never too early to start thinking about the fall holiday shopping season. To get it right, you need to begin prepping as early as May. Our full fall marketing timeline below will set you up for a successful fall season.

Nail your marketing timeline strategy with Bazaarvoice Sampling

Bazaarvoice Content Activation Solutions (CAS) can fuel your UGC program. You can easily tap into our sampling community of over 7.5 million shoppers and collect high-quality UGC that will inspire shoppers and boost sales. 

Our solutions help drive 3x more reviews with photos, 2x longer reviews than native benchmarks, and 5% average social engagement from sampling participants. 

We can help you target your ideal customer profile and ensure that the right shoppers and creators engage with your products and generate relevant UGC for your brand. Learn more about Bazaarvoice Sampling here. Or get in touch below to learn more.

FEATURED RESOURCE

Buyer’s guide: Find the perfect product sampling partner

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Chapters:

1. Why is requesting reviews important for e-commerce and retail businesses?
2. 8 proven ways to request product reviews (with templates)
3. Customer reviews best practices
4. Examples of brands using customer reviews and ratings to drive awareness and sales
5. Request and leverage customer reviews with a ratings and reviews platform

Ask any long-term couple or friend group the secret to their longevity, and chances are “communication” will be one of their top three answers. Just like human-to-human connections, maintaining healthy, long-term customer relationships requires communication. 

Requesting ratings and reviews — and putting them to good use — is a good starting point. Read on to learn the importance of requesting customer reviews and how to do it.

Why is requesting reviews important for e-commerce and retail businesses?

Requesting reviews helps you understand your customer pain points and identify opportunities for improving your products and services. Reviews also provide social proof you can use to attract future business.

User-generated content (UGC) is a customer review where happy customers or product reviewers post videos, text, or photos promoting a brand’s offerings on social media.

Reviews influence purchase decisions and site traffic

Having high product ratings on relevant platforms is great, but a large number of ratings is more important for driving purchases. In our research, we found that 100 reviews lead to a 37% sales increase, and 200 reviews attract 44% more purchases. 

Beyond generating direct sales, more reviews on a product page can also lead to higher search engine rankings and more organic site traffic. Our network data shows that while one review helps boost sales by 10%, eight reviews significantly increased unpaid site traffic. 

Potential customers find recent reviews more relevant

81% of shoppers consider review recency to be just as important or more relevant than quantity, according to our research. The same research also found that 56% of customers would rather purchase products with fewer but recent reviews — written within the last three months.

So even if you already have a lot of reviews, don’t rest on your laurels — you need to keep fresh reviews coming in to boost shopper confidence. 

Reviews help you improve product quality and user experience

Beyond winning customer trust or driving sales and organic traffic, reviews also serve as relevant performance feedback. By studying customer reviews critically, you can gauge user sentiment to determine and resolve the aspects of your product(s) and service delivery that need improvement.

Ultimately, this exercise prevents customer churn and reduces negative word of mouth.

8 proven ways to request product reviews (with templates)

You know the saying, “different strokes for different folks”? It’s true when it comes to requesting product reviews. It might take some experimenting to determine which channels your customers respond to the best.

Once a customer samples or buys your product, use one or a combination of the following review request channels to get your UGC engine going. We’ve included copy-and-paste-able templates for asking for a review, too. 

1. Face-to-face

If your business has brick-and-mortar stores, you can request (and get!) customer reviews in person. The best time to request in-store customer reviews is during checkout or as they’re leaving the shop after their purchase. 

Simply have customer support staff or store attendants talk to shoppers who have just purchased an item and appear to have some time to answer a few questions about their experience.

Don’t force it, though, if shoppers aren’t receptive — you don’t want to turn their positive experience into a bad one. You can always ask the next customer. You can also leave QR codes at checkout for ease

Review request face-to-face template

Brand representative: If you have a moment, could you help us out with a review on [insert desired platform]? We love documenting this kind of feedback, and it also goes a long way in convincing potential shoppers to choose us.

Customer: Of course!

Brand representative: Thanks. [Offers to explain how to do it if the customer needs help]

2. Phone conversations

Call your customers to ask them what they think about their last purchase or overall experience with your business. If they’re busy, offer to call them back (and follow through with it). But if the person clearly expresses their disinterest, don’t push — wish them a great day and try with another customer.

Review request phone conversation template

Brand representative: “Hello [insert customer name]! My name is [insert your name] and I’m calling from [insert your company name]. If you don’t mind sharing, how’s that [insert product(s)] you bought from us [insert time period] — I hope you’ve enjoyed using it?”

If they respond well, ask them about their overall purchase and brand experience.

Brand representative: “Also, is there anything we could improve or that you liked about the purchase experience or our customer service?”

You can also slip in a review request at the end of a customer support call — especially if the person seems pleased with their experience. 

Customer: Thanks for your help! 

Brand representative: My pleasure! If you have a moment, it would be a big help to us if you’d leave us a review on [insert desired platform].

3. Emails

Bazaarvoice Network data shows that requesting reviews via email can increase product review volume 9x — and sending a follow-up review request email can boost review volume by 50%. 

Add thank-you messages to your review request emails to show customers that you appreciate them and are concerned about providing a great service experience. Be sure to include a CTA and review link within the email to make it easy for customers to respond to your request.

Review request email template

“Dear [customer], 

Thank you for purchasing [product(s)]! We hope you’re enjoying it. If you have a second, please share your thoughts with us by leaving a review. We love hearing what our customers have to say and are always looking to improve. Your review will also help future shoppers make more informed purchasing decisions. 

“Leave a review”

Thanks so much for leaving a review!

[insert your business name]”

4. SMS

Though SMS is less popular than email, it can be equally as effective, if not more: 85% of smartphone owners prefer text messages to calls or emails. So, if you typically collect customer phone numbers for SMS marketing, you can also use the platform to ask for reviews.

Text messages help you reach shoppers anywhere they are and encourage them to drop product reviews. Automate texts that go out to customers shortly after they receive a product delivery and include a link that directs them to your desired review site right from their mobile device.

Review request SMS template

Thanks for purchasing [product(s)]! Please drop a review at [link]. Reply NO to stop receiving this.

5. Social media platforms

Social media like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram are great for sourcing reviews because lots of shoppers already rely on these platforms to discover new products. 

Create a post asking users about their experience with your product(s) and watch the comments flood in. These comments will show you how buyers feel about your offerings and uncover opportunities for solving their most pressing product challenges.

Also, make posts redirecting customers to leave feedback about their past purchases outside of social media — like Google, Yelp, or directly on your product page(s). You can also prompt customers to drop reviews by creating posts that include screenshots or excerpts of past reviews, then adding a link to your preferred review platforms.

Review request social media template

“We appreciate all of our customers! If you want to show us some love and help others learn more about our brand, leave us a review! [Insert desired emoji]”

6. E-commerce websites

Your product pages are great places to ask customers for reviews. Just include a CTA on each product page prompting site visitors to “write a review.” Or add the review request to the shopping journey and make leaving a review quick and easy by prompting buyers to write a review in their order history.

You can also embed previous reviews from happy customers on your product pages to build shopper confidence and encourage others to drop their reviews.

Review request website template

“Review this product. Please note that adding a review will require a valid email for verification. Thanks!”

7. Push notifications

If you have an app or site that customers typically visit to use your product or buy from you, push notifications are a great way to request reviews.

Simply schedule or manually send real-time notifications asking shoppers how they felt about their last purchase(s) or their overall user experience. You can either send these review requests as in-app popups or device notifications — try both and see which generates the best response. 

Review request push notifications template

“Hi [insert customer name]! What do you think about the [insert item name] you ordered on [insert delivery date]? We’d like to get your feedback in a Google or Facebook review. Just click this message to drop your comments.”

Once you have the reviews you need, display them on your product pages or social media. 

8. Bazaarvoice

As an e-commerce brand or retailer, starting your review collection and distribution process from scratch can be a chore. With Bazaarvoice, you can unify your entire online review management process and leverage multi-channel UGC for recurring revenue.

First, you need to encourage customers to record or write reviews. Next, optimize your site performance and maximize the ROI of customer reviews by implementing our platform’s reviews display technology across product pages.

With our retail syndication product, you can also display testimonials across retail sites and sales channels, ultimately boosting your customer experiences. 

Even more — we offer automated content rights requests for Instagram, helping you get permission to turn user-generated content into visual galleries on your website. And our review reporting and analytics tools allow you to track and manage reviews like a pro!

See Bazaarvoice in action here.

Customer reviews best practices

Considering how beneficial it is, requesting reviews is a smart choice for e-commerce businesses — but there’s a few best practices to follow to ensure you maximize all of your customer feedback and UGC. 

Make it as easy as possible for customers to leave a review

Happy customers may be willing to leave product feedback, but if you want to build an excellent review request conversion rate, you need to make submissions as straightforward as possible. Simplify your review submission process by adding a button to your website so customers can submit reviews in just one click.

Allowing customers the flexibility to choose the type of review they prefer — text, video, or picture — also simplifies and encourages submissions, giving you a diverse library of customer feedback to use as needed.

Plus, it’s okay to request reviews for each product separately, but that process can be repetitive and tedious for customers. With Bazaarvoice’s multi-product submission form, you can collectively request reviews for everything your shoppers bought via your desired channel. The form lets customers submit reviews, ratings, questions, photos, and videos — and makes the reviewing process seamless and quick for them.

Make sure you comply with the Consumer Review Fairness Act

The Consumer Review Fairness Act protects consumers’ ability to give their honest feedback on a brand’s offerings in any forum, including social media platforms. 

Comply with the act by taking the following precautions:

• It’s okay to create a product sampling campaign (sending free items to shoppers in exchange for honest reviews), but don’t pressure people to leave positive feedback
• Don’t delete negative reviews — customers expect legit businesses to have some negative reviews (and it looks suspicious if you don’t!)
• While you shouldn’t delete all negative reviews, it’s okay to remove comments that include shoppers’ private information or are irrelevant to your brand offerings. If a review is libelous, abusive, false, or misleading, though, feel free to trash it

Learn more about the Consumer Review Fairness Act.

Respond to your reviews (especially the negative ones)

Responding to both good and bad reviews shows reviewers that you value their feedback. It also indicates to potential buyers that you care about customer satisfaction more than avoiding “looking bad.”

Say thank you for positive reviews. And in crafting replies to negative reviews, thank customers as well — for bringing the issue(s) to your attention — then explain how you’ll address it. 

Keep your tone professional, even if you’re upset. This approach helps you turn negative feedback into positive experiences that boost shoppers’ confidence in your brand.

Examples of brands using customer reviews and ratings to drive awareness and sales

Starting your review collection and distribution process from scratch can be a chore. See how these leading e-commerce brands unified their review management process.

1. MeUndies: Underwear and clothing brand

Pre-2018, MeUndies had no official UGC strategy in place. But by 2018, the brand adopted Bazaarvoice as its first UGC partner and began sending post-purchase review request emails to customers.

After a few years of only occasionally introducing new products, MeUndies launched 68 new products in 2021, creating an increased need to curate positive reviews to boost shopper confidence and generate sales. 

To solve this problem, MeUndies began sending follow-up review request emails to customers who hadn’t replied to the first mail. The apparel brand also added a “write a review” button across its product pages and began running giveaways to prompt customers to submit reviews. 

Plus, instead of limiting its strategy to customers, MeUndies added staff members to the mix by sending review requests to them as well. The result? A 218% year-on-year increase in review volume generated via emails. 

2. Le Col: Cycling gear retailer

As a high-end cycling gear brand that depends mostly on direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales, Le Col’s profitability depends on curating a premium online experience. This need led Le Col to begin using UGC as social proof to instill confidence in its product quality.

The brand began to incorporate user reviews, quotes, and images on its product pages, improving its site experience significantly. As a result of this partnership, Le Col recorded a:

• 13% increase in average order value for products with reviews
• 155% spike in revenue per visitor
• 125% boost in conversion rate when shoppers engaged with UGC

3. I and love and you: Pet food company

As a small business, I and love and you struggled to compete against larger and more established pet food companies. To stand out in its niche, the brand decided to capitalize on pet owners’ keen emphasis on the quality of food they feed their furry companions.

I and love and you knows that shoppers like to learn about and try the foods their fellow consumers feed their pets, so the brand began leveraging reviews, ratings, and other UGC. They collected this content at scale via Bazaarvoice’s Sampling product, which allowed them to send free products to a targeted group of pet food shoppers as incentives in exchange for reviews.

The sampling campaign resulted in a 92% review submission rate and generated 1,000+ high-quality reviews that were shared across Bazaarvoice’s network of over 6,000 brands and retailers. 

4. Isabella Oliver and Baukjen: Sustainable fashion subsidiaries

Isabella Oliver and Baukjen are ethical fashion brands (Baukjen is a generic sustainable fashion brand, while Isabella Oliver is its maternity wear subsidiary). Though the brands have begun selling in retail stores across the UK, Isabella Oliver and Baukjen originally only sold items via their online stores. And since they still primarily sell their items online, letting shoppers “try on” clothes virtually became important to them.

While the brands didn’t implement any virtual reality try-on technology, they launched a monthly hashtag competition for customers to take and upload pictures of them wearing the brands’ clothes to their websites. 

Isabella Oliver and Baukjen then display these visual UGC in Bazaarvoice Galleries on their website, prompting visitors to “shop their style.” When shoppers interacted with these galleries, the brands recorded a:

• 120%+ conversion rate increase
• 10%+ average order value improvement
• 3x longer time on site

Request and leverage customer reviews with Bazaarvoice

Requesting customer reviews is one thing, but what you do with the feedback you receive is another. Bazaarvoice provides a proven system for you to collect, analyze, reply to, and distribute reviews. Our platform also enables you to gather product ratings and visual UGC from satisfied customers, ultimately driving product improvement, discovery, and sales.

Ready to start curating product reviews like a pro? Try Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews. The tool removes review submission barriers, grows review volume across products, and boosts the shopper experience.

A number of factors dictate customer opinion of a review, but two of the top are “recency” and “quantity” according to our consumer research. So not only do you need to get more product reviews, you’ll need to know how to do in consistently and efficiently.

Why do I need to get more product reviews?

Product ratings and reviews play a significant part at every stage of the consumer buying process, whether on the digital or physical shelf. And the more you collect, the better the results.

From increasing search visibility to inspiring shopper confidence to lifting conversions, product reviews cast a large magical web over numerous aspects of your business. 

• Most consumers consult with reviews when shopping for new products. Reviews introduce new products, with 88% of shoppers using reviews to discover and evaluate products. Not only do shoppers look at product reviews, they care about the number of them. According to Deloitte and Touche LLP research, a high number of reviews is one of the most significant factors that sway purchasing decisions for 46% of shoppers
• Brands utilizing reviews see a significant conversion and revenue lift. Shoppers engaging with reviews from the best-in-class sites (the top 25% of our clients) can see a 138% increase in sales conversion
• Reviews give your brand an edge over the competition. According to our Shopper Experience Index, 63% of e-commerce brands say reviews improved SEO. Because reviews create more content for websites, they can add more keywords relevant to your business, boosting your SEO. (Also, Google plays favorites with brands that have positive reviews since it wants to provide users the best experience possible)
• Reviews provide authenticity for shoppers. Shoppers want to buy from brands they trust. In fact, close to 82% of shoppers refuse to buy from a brand they don’t deem trustworthy. With over 78% of shoppers using reviews to identify brands they trust, it’s essential to keep the reviews pouring in 

Brands crushing the review collection game 

Now you see the importance of a review collection, how are brands doing it? Here’s a few examples of brands amplifying the voices of their customers and building their sales conversions along the way.  

Making lasting impressions  

Shoppers remember first impressions. Brands making a splash sway the shoppers’ experience — good or bad. That’s why the first thing you see on Carvana’s home and product pages are the rave (and not so rave) reviews. 

Once you arrive on Carvana’s homepage, visitors witness fellow shopper’s affirmations of the brand. Carvana embraces the power of all reviews and invites web visitors to check out what fellow customers have to say (the good, the bad, and the ugly). 

Bridging the gap between the user experience online and in-stores

Although online shopping is the primary way people prefer to shop, in-store shopping still provides a convenient and straightforward purchasing method. To showcase fellow shoppers’ opinions of products, Neutragena includes testimonials on all in-store displays and signage.

This way, shoppers can instantly engage with the reviews of others while trying the new product out for themselves. 

Fueling retail sales and partnerships 

Petmate enhances buyer confidence and purchasing decisions through review syndication. If not for the syndication of reviews, most of Petmate’s products would have little-to-no review content. But now, Petmate has syndicated over 8500 reviews across more than 50 retailers.

This initiative helps feed sales to the retail channels while simultaneously solidifying relationships with partners.

How to get product reviews 

We’re in the ratings and reviews business. And we have a network of over 12,500 brands and retailers combined, all of which utilize reviews, so we know what works, and what works well.

While there’s multiple ways to get product reviews from customers, these are the five speediest that we see.

1. Incentivize reviews for your products 

Waiting for reviews on products to filter in organically is like waiting for paint to dry. A great way to turn on the review water valve is to incentivize feedback. While you may think shoppers are skeptical of an incentive initiative, they actually aren’t phased. Therefore, both organically and incentivized reviews matter to shoppers. 

To encourage your shoppers, you could create sweepstakes, for example. With a sweepstake, shoppers exchange review submissions for the chance to win a prize. Sweepstakes improve submission rates, drive volume spikes, and improve a product’s average star rating.

Another option is a sampling campaign, where you provide a free sample of a product in exchange for an honest review. 

Either way, from cashback to loyalty points to coupons, shoppers drool over freebies — but who doesn’t? Not to mention people love to share their opinion about brands. But just make sure you’re transparent about any incentive, so you can continue building trust with your shoppers. We recommend including a disclosure such as,” This reviewer received a free product in exchange for their honest feedback” to any incentive reviews.

2. Review request emails

One of the best solutions to get product review submissions is to email customers asking them to review a product right after purchase. Our research shows that review request emails yield an increase of 4-9x in review content. And if you send a follow-up email, you can see up to a 50% increase in review volume.

If you collect the shopper’s email at the point of sale, you can include a link to the item in question. Roughly 80% of collected reviews on products come from a review request email that contains the product link.

If the product purchased is a mystery, you can email the shopper to pick from several items and write a product review from there. 

For the best results, don’t wait too long to interact with your shoppers. Ideally, you’ll want to send the email after the shopper has received the item and has had time to test it. Also, avoid including too many calls to action. You don’t want the shopper to become overwhelmed. Instead, stick with one call to action, like “write a review,” so that they understand the message right from the start. 

Clothing brand MeUndies turned to review request emails and grew review volume 218% year-over-year.

3. Scan social media 

Shoppers want brands to hear them loud and clear. They want to know brands care about their thoughts and opinions — 64% of consumers say they want brands to connect with them on social media

So, what’s a great way to validate their opinion and feedback? Meet and connect with them where they spend most of their time — social media.

One way to ask for a review on social media is to share recent feedback from your shoppers and directly tag them. Or if someone tags your brand in a post, comment directly asking if you can have permission to share.

In addition, you can include a link to your product page requesting more reviews from your social media audience. Another way to get a product review is to simply ask your audience to write a product review about a specific product or an assortment of products. 

You could also utilize your social media community of influencers to write a review about a product they love. If you don’t have a community of influencers, then tap into an existing one. The Influenster community for example is made up of over 7.5 million members, each willing and eager to provide authentic content about your brand.

4. Get visual product reviews 

While written reviews are great, reviews with visual content take the cake. Strong image-based content creates an in-store experience for the shopper. In addition, visuals help customers observe the product content as if it were right in front of them, creating more buying confidence. According to Bazaarvoice data, 66% of shoppers are more likely to buy a product if the review has visual content. 

Therefore, allowing shoppers to submit visual content increases the originality of each review, but it also increases sales. So actively ask customers to submit visual content too. When you run a sampling campaign or

To encourage more reviews and ultimately increase revenue, it’s essential to give customers the ability to showcase content on your site instantly. Incorporating visual reviews into your broader marketing output will transform the consumer’s online shopping experience and set your brand apart from the competition. 

5. Work with a ratings and reviews platform

You know you need reviews, but why go it alone? Managing, collecting, and updating reviews is time-consuming and cumbersome. Using proven resources like a ratings and reviews platform provides you with the technology needed to efficiently and effectively manage your UGC (including collecting reviews) at scale, as well as show you the sales impact of your UGC. 

Get more product reviews with Bazaarvoice

As the leader in the industry (according to G2), the quickest way to get more product reviews is to work with Bazaarvoice, because we’ll do it for you.

Dole Packaged foods for example wanted to give customers a voice through product reviews, so they turned to Bazaarvoice ReviewSource and gained 2.3k new reviews — and a 64% conversion rate lift among shoppers who engaged with that content.

Take the guesswork out of gathering new reviews while effortlessly elevating the voice of your shoppers and conversions. Learn more about Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews.

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How lean marketing teams can get the most out of ratings and reviews

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Whether it’s due to poor user experience or a lack of trust in the product, shopping cart abandonment is an all-too-common complaint in the world of e-commerce.

The good news: Data on digital shopping cart abandonment is vast and can help you determine ways to reduce abandonment and increase your sales. Here’s how.

Chapters:

1. What is shopping cart abandonment and why is it a problem?
2. How to prevent shopping cart abandonment
3. Reduce shopping cart abandonment with social commerce

What is shopping cart abandonment and why is it a problem?

Shopping cart abandonment is when an online shopper adds one (or more) of your products to their online basket, but then quits the process before completing the purchase. The products that entered the basket but were never purchased are considered “abandoned” by the shopper.

If you were online shopping on Amazon and you click “add to basket” on a new blender you’ve been eyeing up, but then for whatever reason you close the window without buying it, that blender is abandoned. Obviously this is a problem for many reasons (more on this to come).

Biggest of all, that’s missed revenue. Losing out on the sale of one blender might not particularly worrisome, but that same scenario can happen hundreds of times a day. And that adds up — yearly losses from shopping cart abandonment are $4.6 trillion globally.

It’s estimated that of this, around $260 billion is recoverable. Even if you’re only able to recover a small percentage of this figure, that can still add significant sums to your total revenue. Here’s how to do it.

How to prevent shopping cart abandonment

Below you’ll find reasons why your customers may be abandoning ship on your shopping carts and what you should be doing to bring them back on board.

Problem: People don’t trust your product or brand

If you aren’t sharing information about your brand and your products transparently and authentically, you won’t be able to gain consumer trust. Accenture Strategy’s Global Consumer Pulse Research revealed that in the last few years, regardless of age, customers care a lot more about the ethics behind a company.

For example, they found that those aged 55-74 years old were attracted to companies that reduced the use of plastic. And Gen Z-ers especially care more about social mobility, immigration, and poverty. 

Use this consumer insight to find opportunities where your company values or your product offerings align with these beliefs.

Once you’ve figured out your message, focus on a target market so you can create a shopping experience that builds and increases trust in your customer/business relationship. Create brand messaging that resonates, product descriptions that address pain points, and a customer service team that is easily accessible.

Improve confidence in your brand by making information readily available

Before making an online purchase, 81% of customers conduct online research. If your customers are searching for product solutions, your online presence and the team behind it should be easy to find and understand.

This means your product pages should have ample convincing (and transparent) information. From the descriptions to the product images and specs, customers shouldn’t be left with any lingering questions. However, if they are, your customer service team should be ready to answer them.

One online retailer known for its excellent customer service and customer-centric attributes is Zappos. Zappos makes it very easy to find its contact information. Once you get in touch with someone, you speak with a real human who doesn’t follow a script. Zappos is also very active on social media, where it answers customer questions and engages with its audience in a conversational and relatable tone.

Lastly, Zappos displays product videos in which its products are reviewed and modeled by real people. Videos can dramatically help businesses increase their sales. Over 60% of consumers are more likely to purchase an item after having watched a video. Zappos’ videos give the customer a clearer idea of the product they’re considering purchasing, and clarity is key for conversions.

All these factors contribute to the higher levels of trust customers feel toward Zappos. Plus, the incredible net revenues of the company. In 2020 alone, Zappos global net sales reached $629 million. Woof. But that’s what you get with less shopping cart abandonment.

Embrace user-generated content to fuel faith in your brand

User-generated content (UGC) — customer reviews, images, questions, etc. — will help you harness the power of social proof, a key ingredient to increasing confidence in your brand. According to our research, 81% of shoppers say written reviews are an important part of the decision making process

Moreover, social media and influencer marketing also play a big role in consumer behavior. When it comes to getting advice, 81% of consumers trust their friends and family over businesses.

UGC should be incorporated into your marketing strategy in order to build trust with your customers. UGC can appear in the form of social media content, reviews, and testimonials.

For example, when the fashion brand GANT was experiencing a critical return rate, they turned to UGC. The brand worked to increase their product and customer reviews and allow future customers to ask questions. 

As a result, GANT’s return rate was reduced by 5%, which led to an increase in revenue. Customers trust the reviews and opinions of other customers, especially when they have the option to ask each other questions.

Test and analyze conversion stats to meet your customers’ needs

Your customer’s behavior gives you insight into where in the buying process your customer loses faith in your products or brand. By following and tracking customer data, you can spot patterns in what makes them convert and then implement a strategy to increase trust and maintain loyal customers.

A/B testing is a great way to determine what works best for your target consumer. According to Business Insider, 45% of U.S. e-commerce sales are done on mobile devices. If these mobile users have a negative experience, they’re 62% less likely to be a repeat customer. Other examples of A/B testing include multi-page testing, photo and text swapping, search bar size and location, and using a chatbot. 

you can also regularly run a customer sentiment analysis to learn your customers feelings towards your brand. By regularly testing and adjusting your store’s online presence and features, you ensure your customer will view you as a reliable place to purchase from.

Netflix and Amazon are excellent examples of companies that use A/B testing to ensure their audience never gets bored. Amazon uses creative and updated product descriptions to entice shoppers. They also include related items their customers may be interested in purchasing. And Netflix will frequently A/B test the images used for each title to determine which images generate more views.

Problem: Consumers’ online shopping experience is less convenient than in stores

People shop online for various reasons, the top one being convenience. If your customer’s online shopping experience is less convenient than shopping in a store, consider making changes to the user’s experience to ensure excellence.

Emphasize free, quick delivery and an easy return policy

If you’re an e-commerce store, free and quick delivery is key to reducing your shopping cart abandonment rate. According to research from Oberlo, the number one reason people choose to do their shopping online is free delivery. So unsurprisingly, the number one reason people choose to abandon their shopping carts is due to high extra fees.

Almost half of online shoppers abandon their carts due to high shipping rates, taxes, or other fees. Long delivery times and return policies can also affect customer decisions. And 33% of consumers turn to online shopping for a convenient return policy, according to the same research.

The right quick commerce strategy can ensure you meet these customer wants, improving the e-commerce experience along the way.

Promote online-only discount codes

The second most popular reason to shop online is the opportunity to use a coupon or discount code. 41% of online shoppers look for deals online. Incorporating special promotions into your marketing can capture the customers who are “just browsing.”

Ensure customers have a smooth checkout process

Nobody likes waiting in line for anything, let alone to check out. That’s why 30% of people who shop online do so because of the convenient checkout process. However, 18% of people abandon the checkout process when it’s too complicated.

To optimize your conversions, it’s important to offer common and popular payment methods and options. This includes the option to check out as a guest rather than being forced to create an account with your e-commerce store.

Problem: Customers aren’t being reminded of shopping cart abandonment

Treat shopping cart abandonment as you would a flaky friend. Everyone has that friend who needs consistent reminders (and sometimes incentives) to join the party. When it comes to shopping cart abandonment, customers are just like your flaky friend. Through frequent reminders and an automated omnichannel sequence, you’ll be able to reel your customers back in.

Send automated emails and push notifications

It may seem like you’re a nuisance to your customers, but reminders about abandoned carts with creative calls to action actually work. The average open rate for abandoned shopping cart follow-up emails is at 42%. This is much higher than the average email open rate of standard marketing emails, which stands at just 18%.

It’s pretty likely your customer is regularly inundated with marketing emails, so it’s important to get inventive with your abandoned cart emails. Whether you use humor, urgency, a discount incentive, or offer more information, try to pique your customer’s interest creatively.

Use text messaging

Another channel you can use to reel those customers back to their shopping carts is SMS marketing. This is another marketing tactic that may seem intrusive. However, according to Omnisend research, SMS campaigns are 48% more likely to result in conversions.

For example, the wig retailer Divatress decided to start using SMS in their marketing campaigns, which contributed to $123,000 in sales and a higher click-through rate (8%) to their website than email subscribers (3%).

Reduce shopping cart abandonment with social commerce

Can’t have shopping cart abandonment if there’s no shopping cart. Consumers are turning to social media more and more to do their shopping. According to Hootsuite, each month over 130 million Instagram users tap on a shopping post.

Instagram has made it incredibly easy to purchase a product straight from the accounts users trust the most. According to our research, 69% of consumers have been inspired by social media to make a purchase and 54% would be more likely to buy a product on social media if they could purchase directly.

To make social shopping even more convenient for your customers, your brand can set up your Instagram account so users can shop directly in-app. Shoppers want to find what they’re looking for in three clicks or less. Rather than using Instagram as a way to get leads to your site, why not reduce the number of clicks it takes for a purchase to occur?

That’s just one more opportunity to prevent another shopping cart from total abandonment. Read more about it here.

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