According to our recent survey of 1,000 U.S shoppers, asking their opinion(s) on private label brands, 43% of respondents say private label quality has significantly improved, offering comparable or even better quality than national brands in many categories. 

Some of the biggest names in retail like Target, Sephora, and Walmart all invest in the development and marketing of their private label products — and see massive success. 

The retailers that push the limits of their private label branding will be the ones that continue to elevate their status and change the generic stereotype. To do that, you’ll need to focus on branding, value, quality, and insights. Discover what your retail business stands to gain from offering store brands and how to develop a winning strategy.

Chapters:

1. What are private label brands?
2. The private label branding opportunity
3. How to create a thriving private label brand in 6 steps
4. Private label brand strategy examples
5. Improve your private label branding with customer insights

What are private label brands?

Private label brands, also known as store brands, are products owned by retailers and sold along with other brands in their product catalog. The retailer is often the sole developer of the brand and its products, or it may come from a third-party wholesale partner.

Some of the most successful private label brands include 365 by Whole Foods Market, Amazon Basics, and a ton of Target brands. 

The private label branding opportunity

The newfound interest in private label brands directly correlates with a struggling economy, an influx of higher-quality store-owned products and options, and an increase in private label-based rewards programs.

Consider these stats from our private label research:

• 40% of respondents say their perception of private labels is positive, they offer good value and they trust the store branding — another 42% haven’t noticed any significant differences in quality between private labels and national brands
• 36% of respondents plan to purchase more private label products next year compared to previous years
• Over half of respondents (56%) have switched their preferred brand for a private label product based on a loyalty program or reward

That’s to say, when it comes to the private label branding opportunity, it’s no longer a “nice to have.” The overall increase in positive sentiment, value, and quality, have made them difference makers for any retailers bottom line.

In terms of specific industries, the most popular categories for private label products are:

Besides a thriving private label branding market, there’s other business benefits for retailers who offer store brands. Some top advantages include:

• Product ownership: In addition to literally owning private label products, retailers also have control over the product design, materials or ingredients, and other manufacturing details
• Higher profit margins: Because retailers own their private label brands, they don’t have extra supply chain fees or higher cost of products from a national brand. This makes their product costs lower, allowing a bigger profit margin — not to mention the added benefit of keeping customers happy with lower prices
• Branding: Just as it owns the product design, the retailer also has creative control over the private label branding, from the aesthetics to the voice and promotion

Leading retailers are leaning into the private label apparel category specifically and partnering with luxury designers, like Walmart’s collaboration with Brandon Maxwell.

How to create a thriving private label brand in 6 steps

Now that you know the potential of private labels, find out how you can breathe new life into your owned brands, or successfully launch new ones, with the following tactics.

1. Build a strong retail brand identity

To have a thriving private label brand, first, you need to have a strong overall retail brand. 

When you earn brand loyalty and the positive public perception that comes with it, consumers will naturally trust and gravitate to your owned brands. 67% of the respondents to our private label research strongly or somewhat agree that the quality and range of a retailer’s private label products positively affect their overall perception of the retailer’s brand and reputation.

So, how do you build brand trust and loyalty to attract customers to your private label products? Some essential methods include:

• Appealing to your target audience’s values and interests
• Providing great customer service
• Offering deals and discounts

But, of course, these community-building efforts will only work if your products are unique, valuable, and serve customers’ needs. Our own research validates this approach, given that the top two reasons shoppers gave for selecting private label products are that they love them and they are well-priced. 

With the right practices in place, your customers will come for your retail experience and stay for your private label brands, creating a sustainable cycle that propels your business forward.

2. Devise a smart product strategy 

Once you have a solid foundation for your retail brand, you can begin to develop your own private label products. Your products need to meet the essential criteria to hook shoppers from the beginning and keep them coming back for more. To make your store brand the preferred alternative to the national name brands, make sure its value proposition is unique.

a) Develop your concept(s)

The formula for creating your store brand concepts is simple. Find the gaps in your inventory selection — what missing products could fulfill a customer need, price point, or variety? That white space will determine what and how many private label products to develop. This will guide your entire product strategy. The process could look something like the following steps:

1. Start by sorting your target customers into different segments and define the needs of each one
2. Research the price points and product features that make sense for each industry category
3. Research your competitors’ products in each category
4. With those insights, analyze your current product catalog to find what’s missing
5. Determine what alternative products your retail business can produce at a lower cost but that are equal to or better quality than the name-brand options

If your business is new to private label branding, you might want to start small with one to a few options within your bigger product categories to test the performance. Once you’ve decided which products to pursue, define the guidelines for your supplier and company stakeholders to follow.

This will ensure that your costs are accurate to fit your price point and profit margin — and that the materials used, functionality, and quality all meet expectations. 

b) Pricing and variety

Since value is the top consumer driver of store brand sales — lower price compared to national brands is the main purchasing influence for 72% of shoppers, according to our private label research — the key is to offer a price that is lower than your competition, while maintaining your target profit margin.

Identify the leading competitors in your store-brand product categories to base your pricing and quality criteria. 

In addition to pricing, variety is a key component of your product strategy. What flavors, pack sizes, format sizes, and other differentiators can you offer in each category? Use an internal system to keep track of your pricing and variety architecture so you can gradually fill in gaps with your store brand offerings.

c) Packaging

Early private label branding strived to mimic the presentation of its national brand rivals. But now, the industry leaders are aiming to stand out rather than blend in. Packaging plays a huge role in purchase decisions, so this is an important area to focus on. The design should ideally be distinct and include the unique and attractive features of the product, whether that’s easy functionality, sustainable ingredients, or something else. 

For example, the packaging for retailer ShopRite’s store brand, Bowl & Basket, stands on its own with a prominent font, clean design, striking product photography, and a pleasant and soft color palette. It has a simple and clear product description that draws the consumer in. 

d) Innovation

The best way to generate interest in your private label brands and be a progressive outlier in the space is to consistently innovate. To pull this off, you need to leverage your store brand as the solution to your customer’s wants and needs.

If you look at leading private label brand retailers, many of their owned products are “value-added lifestyle items.” This is a niche to focus on that will lead to innovation, like Trader Joe’s iconic Everything But the Bagel seasoning.

Sourcing is another point of leverage for innovation. For example, locally sourced ingredients that benefit underserved communities can help your products stand out and satisfy consumer preferences.

3. Collect authentic reviews of private label products 

Product reviews are one of the most effective ways to win consumers’ trust. According to the 2022 Bazaarvoice Summit, 94% of shoppers report needing at least 10 reviews to “consider the product credible.

The recency of reviews is also a top decision-making factor for most (85%) of shoppers. So, you need to actively source reviews to grow your volume and keep them up to date. Luckily, there’s a variety of different ways you can generate authentic reviews. Just ask your customers!

• Request a review with a review request email
• Send an SMS message after a customer’s order is delivered
• Direct customers to leave reviews via your social media channels
• Offer customers a discount on a future purchase in exchange for a review
• Utilize a sampling campaign and exchange free product samples in exchange for honest reviews 

Ratings and reviews don’t just have a huge impact on e-commerce but on in-store sales, too, based on the 40% of shoppers who claim to read online reviews before buying offline. Helpful, descriptive, and substantial reviews are essential, but those featuring media can go even further. Customers’ photos and videos of product purchases make 62% of shoppers more likely to buy.

Reviews also have great search engine optimization (SEO) value because they contain a lot of the same descriptive keywords that shoppers are searching for. So, not only will reviews increase conversions when shoppers land on your e-commerce site, but they can also be the vehicle that gets them there. 

Reviews communicate the value that customers find in your products and the features that are important to them. They give your customers a platform to express their own opinions about your brand, which resonates with other shoppers.

4. Grow awareness and interest with targeted product sampling

Whether you’re launching a new private label brand or product or rebranding an old one, product sampling can help it take flight. We’re not just talking about a taste of kombucha in a paper cup or a cheese cube on a toothpick, but a custom product sampling package delivered to your target audience.

Renowned brand Petco recently rolled out a sampling campaign specifically to bolster review volume for its private label brands and increase SEO impact.

To date, the campaign has led to a 48% increase in revenue per visit (driven by a 28% increase in conversion rate and 15% increase in average order value) for sampled products and an 80% increase in clicks from organic search. Not to mention, that data that sampling provides.

We’ve really seen a positive impact on visits, conversions, and improving the discoverability of new products. From a results standpoint, it’s been a positive experience to see that we can get 10-15 reviews for new products quickly

Hannah Kredich, Category Specialist at Petco

First-party customer data also provides tons of useful information you can use to plan a product sampling campaign. Let’s say you notice customers buying a lot of the same national-brand products in one category, you could send them a sample of your store-brand alternative or a complementary product from your store brand. 

And if you’re starting from scratch with a brand-new product launch, sampling is a great upfront investment. In a survey of over 6,000 Influenster members who have been recipients of a product sampling campaign, 63% purchased the product they sampled. Many also reported buying additional products from the brand and recommending the product to family and friends.

Lastly, another huge benefit of product sampling is the user-generated content (UGC) it can produce in the form of product reviews, images, and videos. This is especially important for new product releases so you can be equipped with the customer reviews necessary to give other shoppers confidence right from the launch. 

5. Optimize your product pages for conversions

One common concern for retailers is the lack of rich content, including product reviews, across all of their product pages on their e-commerce websites. This can be particularly challenging for retailers with an extensive product catalog. This is why it’s crucial to encourage customers to write reviews so you can enhance your product pages with UGC. 

You can set up those reviews to post directly on the product pages they correspond to, which will make a huge difference in sales — nearly 40% of shoppers won’t make a purchase if UGC is absent from the product page. And that includes visual UGC too. As part of our recent Shopper Experience Index, we asked 7,000 shoppers:

Additionally, almost half of shoppers specifically look for customer photos on product pages when considering purchases. Encourage customers to upload their own photos and videos of their purchases to your product pages with a hashtag campaign.

To optimize your private label product pages to their full extent, include: 

• Star ratings 
• Review categories based on product features, positive reviews, and negative reviews
• Detailed product descriptions that highlight your product’s best attributes
• Professional product photos
• Customer-submitted product photos and videos 

6. Attract more customers on social media

Whether it’s Gen Z on TikTok, millennials on Instagram, or older demographics on Facebook, social media is a critical marketing tool for your private label growth. 

Social media content supports a more modern, cutting-edge, approachable, and innovative perception of your store-brand products. Consumers come to social media to discover brands and be entertained, and there’s a ton of features and content types you can leverage to appeal to them. That includes short-form video like TikTok and Instagram Reels, quick and temporary content like Instagram Stories and Snapchat, and even livestream shopping on a number of different channels. 

Influencers have proven extremely successful for brand marketing, and social media is the perfect platform for an influencer partnership. Collaborating with influencers to promote your store brand is another way to drive demand through a public figure whom consumers trust. 

You can also use social media as a tool to generate more visual UGC that you can feed to your product pages. Encourage your followers to share their purchases on social media and tag your brand profile. This will supply you with more content and introduce your products to a wider audience.

Not only can you market your private label products on social media, but you can also sell them, too. With social commerce features such as Like2Buy and social media shops, you can upload your products and sell them directly on your social media channels. 

Private label brand strategy examples

As private label brands have evolved over the years, there’s plenty of retailer examples to draw inspiration from. Take notes from some of these trailblazers who are shaking up the store-brand category. 

Target’s Future Collective

Target might just be the pinnacle of store-brand potential, neck and neck with Amazon. Target has multiple private label brands, but as the retailer says, their Future Collective brand is the “first of its kind.” This fashion-forward apparel brand is “co-designed with a rotating roster of style and cultural influencers with diverse points of view in fashion.”

This innovative approach enables Target to leverage different guest designers and influencers to bring in different perspectives on fashion, while offering a continuous stream of fresh variety for customers. The brand is dedicated to inclusivity, offering something for everyone.

Thrive Market

Thrive Market is a successful e-commerce retailer that specializes in health-conscious products, including name brands and its own store brand. 

Not only is Thrive an excellent private label brands example, but also a great example of how to develop products that meet the needs of target customers. For example, one of its best-selling private label products is its coconut milk. What makes its particular coconut milk unique is that it leaves out a commonly used ingredient, guar gum, which isn’t Paleo diet friendly.

This solved a problem for its Paleo customers, who make up a big chunk of its clientele. 

Foxtrot

Foxtrot, a fast-growing specialty convenience store chain, is another example of a retailer going above and beyond with its owned products. Foxtrot’s goal for its store brands is to beat the well-known national brands in all categories, not just price. 

Just as Target partners with influencers for Future Collective, Foxtrot partners with industry leaders for its food and beverage products. As an example of this, the company has a hot chocolate mix developed by an acclaimed pastry chef and a bourbon made in collaboration with a beloved local Chicago cocktail bar. According to the Washington Post, Foxtrot’s profit margins for its private label products are 10 – 15% higher than those of its external brands.

Improve your private label branding with customer insights

One of the most important steps you can take as a retailer to grow your private label brands and business as a whole is to listen to your customers. Pay attention to the insights revealed in your product reviews, customer satisfaction surveys, customer support conversations, social media interactions, and anywhere else you can find them. 

What do your customers like and not like about your products? What are they saying they need that you don’t currently offer? This invaluable information can help you make store-brand product modifications and improvements that will provide more value for your customers. 

Once you’ve established your private label branding, it’s time to take it to the next level. Learn how to position your private label for continued market success with our new on-demand masterclass: How to leverage new customer insights for private label success.

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4 strategies to achieve private label success

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If you’re wondering exactly how to compete with Amazon, look no further. In this article, we explore four powerful and effective ways for retailers and brands to compete head-to-head with large marketplaces.

4 ways to compete with Amazon

From embracing social commerce to removing shopping friction, these strategies can help your company build awareness and loyalty in the face of formidable competition.

1. Use social commerce to reach a wider audience 

To compete with giant marketplaces, it’s important to work on expanding your reach beyond your website or physical stores. Enter: social commerce. 

Social commerce allows brands to reach larger audiences, specifically within the social media environment and everywhere social media extends to. Social media platforms boast billions of active users worldwide, offering an enormous potential customer base for your brand. In our recent apparel-related survey, 21% of respondents said social media is one of their main channels for online apparel shopping. 

With advanced features like shoppable posts and integrated checkout processes, social media platforms are streamlining the path to purchase. Customers can seamlessly move from product discovery to checkout without having to leave the platform. These best practices will get you started:

• Be intentional with the platforms you choose to sell on. Not all social media platforms are suitable for every brand. Research and identify the platforms where your target audience frequents the most and that align with your brand’s identity. For example, on TikTok, the largest user age group is 18-24-year-olds, whereas on Facebook, it’s 25-34-year-olds 

• Promote your brand and products through UGC. User-generated content (UGC) includes social imagery, product reviews, and videos created by an individual rather than a brand. Partnering with influential personalities to promote your products can significantly increase visibility and credibility, attracting new customers to your brand. Consider creating an influencer marketing program by identifying influencers whose values align with your brand and reaching out to them about collaborating

• Make your social profiles and product posts shoppable. Many social media platforms offer built-in shopping features. Use shoppable posts, product tags, and integrated checkout options to provide a seamless shopping experience. When you use these features, and someone sees your post, they can instantly explore and purchase your products without leaving the app

When you’re able to harness the power of social commerce, you’re better equipped to level the playing field and establish a competitive edge. Then you can more successfully compete with Amazon and other dominant marketplaces.

2. Leverage first-party data to deliver personalized content

Providing personalized content and experiences has become a crucial strategy for retail businesses to gain a competitive edge against Amazon and other marketplaces. 71% of consumers expect some personalization. Moreover, companies that excel at personalization often see higher revenue than those that don’t.

The key to personalization lies in first-party data, which can offer valuable customer insights into behavior, preferences, and interests. First-party data includes various customer touchpoints — such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and interactions with marketing campaigns — and demographics. Analyzing and understanding this data gives you a comprehensive view of your customers so you can deliver highly relevant and personalized content and experiences.

To leverage first-party data, start by adopting a tool to consolidate all your customer data, like a Customer Data Platform (CDP). A CDP is a centralized system that collects and unifies customer data from different sources to create comprehensive customer profiles for personalized experiences. From there, you can collect and track insights from sources like: 

• UGC posts. UGC provides valuable insights into customer preferences and sentiments. Feedback and commentary left on UGC posts are generally authentic to real-life product experiences. Integrating UGC into marketing campaigns and product pages can significantly influence purchase decisions 

• Website analytics. Analyzing website behavior and interactions provides valuable information on customer preferences, popular products, and areas of interest. This data can be used to optimize website design and content for a more personalized experience

• Email marketing data. Email interactions and preferences offer insights into individual customer preferences. Segmented email campaigns based on these preferences can drive higher engagement and conversion rates

You can also incentivize customers to provide more data voluntarily through loyalty programs, surveys, and ratings or reviews.

3. Use loyalty programs and rewards to encourage repeat purchases

Loyalty programs are structured marketing strategies designed to incentivize and reward customers for their repeat business and loyalty. These programs typically offer various benefits, such as discounts, exclusive offers, early access to new products, or points accumulation for future purchases. 

Loyalty programs cultivate customer loyalty by rewarding repeat purchases. McKinsey found that top-performing loyalty programs see 15% to 25% more revenue annually from customers who redeem their points. Customers who feel appreciated and receive benefits for their loyalty are more likely to stick with a brand over time, reducing churn and boosting customer lifetime value and retention. 

These programs are also flexible for the brands who offer them. You can tailor the program depending on your profit and revenue. For example, Amazon offers a one-tiered paid loyalty program through its Prime Membership. Customers who buy this subscription get discounted two-day shipping on specific items plus limited free access to other perks. 

To compete with Amazon and other marketplaces, you can develop your own loyalty program to encourage customers to keep coming back and bring in a recurring revenue stream:

1. Define clear objectives. Set specific goals for the loyalty program, such as increasing customer retention, average order value, or overall revenue 
2. Design the program structure. Once you set the objective, you can structure the program to meet it. For example, if your objective is to increase overall revenue, consider using a points-based structure where the more customers spend, the more points they get. Or you can offer tiered paid subscriptions where one option is free and the others are paid  
3. Choose the rewards. Determine the types of rewards that will appeal to your target audience. These could include discounts, free products, access to exclusive content, or early product releases
4. Simplify the enrollment process. Make it easy for customers to enroll in your loyalty program, either while they’re checking out or through a simple registration process. If there are too many steps or you ask for too much information, they may be deterred from signing up 

Once you’ve established your loyalty program internally, create awareness about it across different platforms, including your website, email newsletters, social media, and on packaging. Then continuously monitor the program’s performance and gather feedback from customers to improve and optimize the program over time.

4. Remove friction to make shopping more convenient 

One of the reasons it’s so hard to compete with Amazon is because they’ve mastered the art of removing friction from their shopping experiences. With an intuitive app interface, one-click ordering and reordering, and quick delivery options, customers can shop at Amazon with ease. 

Friction points can occur at various stages. Think of a complicated checkout process, lengthy account creation, slow-loading pages, or unclear product information. Frictionless shopping removes these obstacles that can impede a customer’s journey from product discovery to purchase completion. 

Frictionless shopping can even result in less cart abandonment and a boost in overall purchase rates. One report shows that 17% of shoppers have abandoned their carts due to long or complicated checkout processes. But when people can shop with your brand easily and conveniently, they’re more apt to be satisfied with their experience. 

Removing friction from shopping starts with understanding your customers’ journeys. Evaluate the entire customer journey from product discovery to post-purchase support to find where customers are experiencing the most friction. These are points where customers drop off or contact customer service for help.  

Once you’ve identified these friction points, you can work to remove them. Here’s a few ways to remove shopping friction:

• Shorten your checkout processes. Simplify the checkout process by cutting down the number of steps to complete a purchase. Offer guest checkout options for first-time buyers and enable one-click ordering for returning customers

• Make account creation easy. If account creation is necessary, make it quick and straightforward. Offer social media or Google login options so they can quickly sign up with an existing account. If third-party sign-up isn’t an option, try to keep the information needed to a minimum (i.e., name, email address, and password) 

• Optimize website and app performance. If people are dropping off before your web or app pages load, work with your web developers to ensure your website and app load quickly and are responsive across various devices and internet speeds 

• Clear product information. Provide detailed and accurate product information to reduce uncertainty and answer potential customer questions. If people aren’t able to get the information they need from a product page, they may drop off. For example, if you’re an apparel company and your product pages don’t include sizing charts, it’s hard for people to know which size to buy, and they may just opt out

Once you’ve implemented changes, track and monitor their effectiveness. Ideally, fewer customers will drop off from the specific points on your app or website and go on to complete their purchase. 

If you can’t compete with Amazon, join them 

While implementing effective strategies is essential, there’s also wisdom in the adage, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” Rather than compete with Amazon, collaborate with them and other established marketplaces to harness their vast reach and engage a broader audience. 

By combining strategic competition and smart partnerships, businesses can find the winning formula to thrive in the dynamic e-commerce landscape. 

For example, Bazaarvoice Retail Syndication serves as a powerful ally in this endeavor, enabling you to showcase your best UGC at critical decision-making moments, reaching customers where they love to shop. With content syndication across Bazaarvoice’s extensive global retailer network, you can drive channel sales, expand your brand presence, and foster stronger connections with your target audience. 

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Masterclass: Marketplace Selling 2.0: Next-level Techniques for E-commerce Success

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A well-designed channel sales strategy will deliver optimal results, helping you take your sales to the next level. Specifically, having a rich product detail page full of user-generated content (UGC) will create a higher-trafficked, more-engaging, and higher-performing product page.

And, partnering with retailers will help you reach new audiences. 

What is a sales channel?

A sales channel is where consumers meet your brand, whether for the first or the hundredth time. They’re the sales strategy for your organization, and they include direct sales channels, indirect sales channels, and distribution channels.

While an omnichannel experience boosts customer acquisition, it’s crucial to focus on the channels that work best for your brand. Developing your channel sales strategy and getting your products on retailers’ digital or physical store shelves will deepen connections with your existing shoppers and inspire new ones.

What are the top sales channels?

There’s a number of different sales channels, their importance varying depending on your type of business. Generally, the top sales channels are:

• E-commerce. Any transaction that’s completed online
• Retail. When a business sells through another store, like selling your goods at Samsclub.com
• Marketplaces. These include traditional marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy, or modern marketplaces like social media platforms or Shopify
• Direct-to-consumer. For example, buying Nike shorts directly from Nike’s website
• Wholesale. Selling your products, usually in bulk, to businesses who then retail them

How to boost your sales channels strategy for retail

If you’re a brand selling at retail, you’ll want tips on how to increase sales and drive conversion at key retailers. Here’s the top three ways to optimize your retail channel sales strategy.

1. Use visuals to enhance product detail pages

Product detail pages (PDPs) are the web pages where shoppers go when they want detailed information about a specific product on a retailer’s site. They give shoppers everything they need to know about something so they can buy it with confidence: colors, dimensions, material, shipping details, and a call-to-action, such as a “buy now” button. 

Well-crafted PDPs are where shoppers go to actually purchase. They help build brand trust, generate new customers, and minimize returns and complaints.  

Boost PDPs with UGC photos 

Visual content is a crucial component of a PDP. Professional product photos are great, but photos from real shoppers are better at connecting with consumers. Featuring visual UGC, including photos and videos, gives consumers a glimpse at how products look, work, and feel in real life. 

Based on our own research, visual UGC on product pages can generate a 45% revenue lift, a 31% conversion jump, and a 16% higher order value. And images from social media make shoppers 6x more likely to buy from a PDP. 

So, how do you collect vthis isual UGC? There’s several quick ways to do so, including review request emails, searching social media, and sampling programs.

Use sampling to fill PDPs with visuals

Product sampling — where you give consumers a product to try in exchange for a review — can really boost UGC volumes. With our product sampling campaigns, we’ve found that when they sample something, 63% of consumers purchased the product again, 50% said it became a new staple in their lives, and 87% recommended the product or brand to others. 

From a results standpoint, it’s been a positive experience to see that we can get 10-15 reviews for new products quickly

Hannah Kredich, Category Specialist, Petco

Petco’s Spotted Sampling Program, for instance, delivers crates, pet food, collars, and treats from brands to pet parents in exchange for honest reviews at Petco.com. The campaign has increased review volume by 405%, generated a 9% lift in review ratings, and brought in a slew of adorable pet photos — revving up brand and retailers’ visual UGC. 

Display UGC across channels 

Whenever you collect UGC, make sure the visuals align with your brand and resonate with your consumers across different retail channels. To maintain trust with shoppers, be sure to label any influencer content as such and establish a strategy for moderating content to weed out fake reviews. Or, you can work with a content moderating partner to help. 

Syndicating visual UGC — when you distribute reviews and photos on retailer websites — lets you reach our network of 1.3 billion shoppers with exciting and authentic content, everywhere they are. Our retailers see 20x more shopper traffic with retail syndication. 

Content syndication helps brands elevate shopping experiences. It ensures you have plenty of high-quality content on your PDPs that help shoppers make informed, confident purchasing decisions. Consumers perceive visual UGC as authentic and trustworthy, akin to getting a recommendation from a friend or family member. 

Enhancing PDPs with high-quality visuals can significantly improve your channel sales strategy by increasing conversions, building trust, and providing a better shopping experience across direct and indirect sales channels.

For indirect sales channels like retailers, providing top-notch visuals makes it easier for them to sell your product, improving your relationship and positioning with these partners. It also helps them maintain a level of quality on their platform. 

2. Enhance relationships with online retailers

Maximizing your retail sales channels depends on building and maintaining solid relationships with retailers. Digital and physical shelf space is competitive, and retailers are a crucial player in your success. Their goal is to drive sales and profits, and they do that by having a firm grasp on who their customers are and what they want. 

Remember, flexibility and adaptability are key when collaborating with retailers to maximize the benefits of your partnership.  Most already have decades of experience working with brands and know what works and what doesn’t. 

Use UGC to stand out with retailers 

UGC helps you tell your brand story and shows retailers what you’re all about. Collecting reviews and customer photos, via sampling, social media, and review request emails, helps you gain insights into what shoppers think about you and your products and demonstrates how your products perform. 

Rug and home decor brand Nourison worked to grow its retail partners by expanding and improving the content mix on its PDPs. Nourison relies on UGC to help shoppers make informed decisions, since its customers have unique needs around sizes, styles, and prices. 

Nourison syndicates UGC to 32 retailers worldwide, including Target.com, and brings major value to its retail partners. Since it’s devoted time to strengthening relationships with retailers, the brand has seen a 4x lift in conversions and a 3x lift in revenue. 

Create win-win retailer relationships

Retailer partnerships are mutually beneficial. They increase brand and retailer awareness, for one. When your fans know they can get your products at major retailers, they might pick them up on their usual Target or Walmart run. That’s a win-win. 

You’re helping bring your existing customers to the retailers. And new shoppers will find you while browsing for other things at their favorite stores. 

Another benefit is that retailer relationships can reduce customer returns. UGC influences purchases, and displaying feedback from real shoppers and photos of your products being worn by real people or used in day-to-day settings will help shoppers better understand whether an item will meet their needs. 

Co-marketing is a crucial aspect of partnerships between brands and retailers – it helps raise awareness and drive growth for both parties. It’s also a great approach for smaller businesses with lean marketing teams. By collaborating on a shared campaign, brands and retailers can leverage each other’s strengths and reach new audiences. Your customers, who already trust you, will shift some of their trust to the retailers you’ve partnered with, and vice versa.

3. Analyze and benchmark performance insights at retail

How will you know if your retail sales channel is working? You have to monitor its performance and analyze the data. Regular auditing and analysis make all the difference. The better your products sell, the more likely a retailer will keep stocking them.

Assess product performance 

Walmart helps its brands understand how their UGC and products are performing on its website. The retailer’s Content Quality Score (CQS) offers clear, objective standards for the content on brands’ PDPs, including style guides for every product category that they sell. 

The CQS measures your content against those guides, which lets you easily see what elements you’re missing. It also tells you where you can improve. These analytics can help you make data-driven decisions about how to improve your content, removing the guesswork.

Another way to assess your performance is via Bazaarvoice’s Premium Network Insights, which includes sentiment analysis, UGC performance tracking, social analytics, and competitor insights. You can optimize your retail sales channels by better understanding and monitoring what customers are saying about your products. 

Uncovering insights can help you drive higher click-through rates, product discovery, and, ultimately, purchases.

U.K.-based retailer Argos uses sampling to generate UGC quickly. Allowing shoppers to test new products before they launch helps the retailer collect and feature reviews before a product is even available to purchase. 

The sooner Argos can collect UGC, the sooner it can identify opportunities to improve products and marketing messaging. When online shoppers interact with UGC, Argos sees conversion lifts of 53% on mobile, 51% on desktop, and 45% on its app. 

Analyze and optimize data 

Examining data from your UGC campaigns can tell you how consumers feel about your products and brand as a whole. You can learn which products are performing well and which need improvement.  

You can keep track of how shoppers are engaging with UGC and other features of your PDPs, and identify how it affects sales. We’ve found that across our network, brands see a 136% conversion rate life when shoppers interact with UGC on best-in-class sites.

You’ll also see which PDPs lack adequate review coverage, so you’ll know when to beef up your UGC collection strategies, whether it’s via sampling or sending post-purchase emails.  

Petco collaborates with the brands that it sells to collect content and engage with shoppers — syndication accounts for about 80% of the retailer’s total review volume. 

The revenue-per-product rate for dog food products with one review is 20% higher than no reviews and 43% higher when a product gets at least five reviews. Overall, conversion rates are 8% higher for consumers who engage with reviews on Petco’s website, and revenue per visitor is 15% higher. 

How to optimize UGC to boost your retail sales channels

Building a robust channel sales strategy for retail is not just an option for brands — it’s a must. Understanding and optimizing key elements such as enhancing PDPs with compelling visuals and other UGC, fostering meaningful relationships with retailers, and regularly analyzing performance metrics, can unlock your retail channel sales’ full potential.

These best practices will not only put products in front of shoppers but also build trust, deepen engagement, and create a holistic shopping experience that turns first-time buyers into loyal customers. With the right strategy and tools, you can scale your reach, boost revenue, and secure your place as a favorite among new and existing shoppers.

Bazaarvoice’s unique retailer programs are a great place to optimize your UGC strategy and boost your retail channel sales. Click the retailer(s) you sell at to learn more:

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Embracing constant change and delivering an outstanding omnichannel experience with the best selection of products is critically important for retailers. Especially in the face of today’s increasingly informed and always-on consumer.

A retail merchant’s key focus is understanding the customer. In order to understand the customer, you must keep up with trends in the industry and ensure that their merchandising strategy is aligned.

There’s a lot of different factors that go into managing an online business, on top of keeping up with the latest trends. Every decision has to be made carefully in order to grow the business profitably and for a retail merchant to hit their ultimate goal: their OTB (open-to-buy) plan. 

Today, merchants at online retailers need to find ways to optimize and improve user-generated-content (UGC) — reviews, images, videos, and questions created by individual users — in their categories so they can drive more conversion and sales. Here’s some of the best practices to drive business success. 

What should retail merchants focus on to hit their plan?

Simple – creating product description page (PDP) content standards for your category of business.

While things like product, price, and place still play a big role in winning at retail, content is still king. And in today’s e-commerce world, UGC is the patriarch of the content family. That doesn’t mean neglect branded content, it just means you need to level out the content bias in favor of UGC.

Without being able to touch and feel products sold online, shoppers are tremendously relying on each other to get approval that a product is a good fit for them. Especially during the pandemic. Globally, 48% of shoppers say they’re reading reviews more now than they were prior to the pandemic. 

Whether it’s in the form of ratings and reviews, social images, or Q&A, shoppers want to know more about the product than what’s written by the brand before purchasing them. 85% of shoppers find UGC  to be more authentic and more influential than content made by brands, and it’s 5x more likely to convert compared with branded content.

And shoppers aren’t buying if there isn’t UGC on a PDP for something they’re looking to buy. Over 80% of shoppers say they won’t buy if there aren’t written reviews and 66% say the same for customer photo content. And if you can find a way to incorporate video into e-commerce, you’ll have even more chance of inspiring purchases.

Simply put, UGC directly influences purchasing decisions and drives conversion.

How does UGC benefit a retail merchant?

A strong, holistic UGC strategy offers a multitude of benefits for a merchant and their category of business. The top three benefits are supporting an increase in conversion and sales, developing an understanding of the customer, and reducing return rates.

Increase conversion and sales

Capture shoppers’ interest and empower them make confident purchase decisions — there’s no online content shoppers trust more than others’ opinions. In fact, we found that there is a 136% increase in conversion rate when shoppers interact with UGC on the Bazaarvoice Network. 

Better understand your customer

By leveraging direct customer feedback that comes from UGC, you’re able to get insight into the customers’ minds. With this, retail merchants can make better business decisions and plan better to hit their buying plan.

Reduce return rates

With customer reviews, you’re able to easily identify why some customers are choosing to make returns and can make adjustments to the PDP or to your buying plan accordingly.

Now, how do you reap these benefits? Create a UGC strategy for your category.

Why having a UGC strategy for your category is so important

Retail merchants who see the most success and growth in their business by focusing on UGC are able to do so because they make it part of their merchandising strategy.

When you’re implementing (and enforcing) a strategy that focuses on UGC, the process becomes seamless and vendors will start helping you get more UGC. It’s a win-win situation where both you and the vendor benefit from the conversion lift and additional sales.

5 step UGC strategy for retail merchants

1. Set benchmarks for your category 

Content standards drive results. The ultimate driver for UGC success is when a retail merchant creates and enforces PDP content standards for their category (some refer to it as a vendor scorecard). When you implement standards, you’re able to hold your vendors accountable for helping to provide that content.

Without standards, it becomes a bit more difficult to enforce to your vendors that they need to be participating in UGC for their products. Examples of UGC benchmarks:

1. All items should have at least X number of reviews or
2. X% of the whole assortment must have at least one review
3. All items must have at least a X-star rating
4. All new products must launch with reviews 

2. Engage your suppliers and hold them accountable

Now that you have your content standards for your category, communicate that to your vendors. Start enforcing them and let it guide how you prioritize products and placement.

Check to see if your UGC stakeholders have materials they can provide you to leverage when discussing content strategy with your vendors.

Again, following a UGC strategy is a win-win situation for both retail merchants and vendors. The more robust a vendor’s UGC you can get on your product pages, the more $$$ you both will see as a result.

3. Focus on areas that need review coverage

What areas in your business have low review coverage? Or zero review coverage?

These should be big areas of focus. Online shoppers are very hesitant these days to purchase a product that has a small amount of reviews, and especially a product that doesn’t have any reviews.

Use reporting tools to easily identify these areas, vendors, and SKUs and ask that your vendor work with their ratings and reviews provider to find a solution that can help them increase review coverage at-scale.

4. Launch all new products with reviews to help kickstart sales

A really important aspect of a solid UGC strategy is making sure that you’re keeping in mind any new products scheduled to launch in the upcoming months.

In order to capture the customer’s attention and validate that the new product (or brand) is right for them, it’s crucial that your vendors think ahead and collect reviews so that it’s on the PDP ahead of launch.

Product sampling is how you can achieve that. With sampling, your vendor is able to send their products to a curated community of shoppers in exchange for high-quality reviews pre-launch. This allows vendors to collect reviews for specific items and ensure that the content is ready on the PDP the moment it goes live.

5. Incorporate visual and social UGC

Inspire shoppers to purchase more by providing them with images of real customers experiencing the products. Text reviews are important, but these days customers are increasingly searching for products that have visual UGC in order to know what a product truly looks like. In fact, 66% of shoppers think visual UGC is important when they’re making a purchase.

Retail merchants biggest pain points solved

We know that as a retail merchant, you have seemingly endless pain points. But you can solve nearly every single one of them with UGC, effciently and cost-effectively. Learn how below.

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The top 5 problems UGC can solve for retailers

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As insights technology continues to innovate, retailers have no shortage of analytics to glean from the UGC collected across their e-commerce site. Data from UGC can tell you how consumers feel about different your products and brands, which products are performing best, and which products are in need of improvement.

UGC program insights

From product review coverage to overall customer sentiment, these are the five types of insights retailers should consider regularly monitoring through analysis of their UGC program data. And that’s irregardless of whether you’re a Bazaarvoice client or not.

1. Measure the conversion impact of UGC on your site

Your UGC program data should be able to show you exactly how it’s impacting your bottom line and what types of UGC increases conversion rates. 

You want to be able to identify key UGC drivers on your product detail pages (PDPs). You’ll gain valuable insights when you can monitor how shoppers engage with UGC and identify how it affects sales on your e-commerce platform. For example, across the Bazaarvoice Network, we found a 136% lift in conversion rate when shoppers interact with UGC on best-in-class sites.

By measuring shoppers engagement with different UGC, you’ll discover the difference between:

• How customers convert when there’s no content
• When there’s content but they didn’t actively engage with content
• If they passively or actively engaged with content

If you’re a Bazaarvoice client, you can keep close tabs on this UGC program data with the Conversion Impact Report. This report allows you to easily monitor how shoppers engage with UGC and identify how that affects sales on your e-commerce platform.

2. Evaluate product coverage

Evaluate product coverage to see where you can improve your PDPs by seeing which pages lack adequate review coverage. By regularly identifying products with high page views but low review volume, you can better understand popularity and gaps.

You want the content that performs well — which UGC does — to be in as many places as possible. Especially where you know you customers will see it. 

Bazaarvoice clients can easily track the percentage of products or page views with at least one review, regardless of whether the review came in via native, sampling, syndication, or product families, and view a list of popular products with few reviews or a list of products with high page views and low review volume.

3. Track at the brand/product/category level

As a retailer, it’s important for you to know what brands are performing well and which are underperforming. By tracking UGC program insights at the brand, product, and category levels, you can quickly identify areas of opportunity and prioritize accordingly. 

Bazaarvoice clients have access to Product Performance Insights, which allows you to easily view products, brands, or categories that have a low average rating. And with a vendor scorecard, you can take those insights and score brands or products for performance with average rating, review volume, and percent of questions answered.

You can then send the scorecard to your brands to show them what they need to do to improve sales. 

4. Understand customer sentiment

Discover how shoppers really feel about your products to improve your products and/or messaging by leveraging UGC program data to identify areas of praise and complaint. An ideal customer sentiment insights strategy should analyze the lowlights and highlights, revealing what customers love and hate about products.

It should also have the capabilities to extract notable quotes in reviews that will level up your marketing strategy. Nestle Canada noticed a stream of negative customer reviews about a product. Noticing the insights provided, the team changed the recipe and the average rating increased from 1.7 to 4 stars. 

With Bazaarvoice, clients can easily access customer sentiment insights to identify Products with Lowlights/Highlights and Products with Notable Marketing Quotes. This helps you quickly identify what your customers are saying about the products you sell — especially beneficial for your private label items.

5. Track performance

On top of analyzing insights at a micro-level, make sure you’re monitoring insights from a birds eye view. Keep tabs on content collection and overall UGC program performance. A successful UGC program should have insights that allows retailers to monitor broad trends and review volume holistically. 

Retailers should also monitor the performance of post-interaction review request emails asking for reviews and track unexpected changes. For example, you should know quickly if volume drops drastically month-over-month, so you could adjust your strategy accordingly. 

Bazaarvoice clients can seamlessly monitor the performance of their review request emails with the Email Engagement Dashboard, as well as broad trends and review volume with the Program Overview and Inbound Syndication Dashboard.

Start your UGC program audit now

By monitoring these five insights, you can easily keep your finger on the pulse of the health of your business and see how your UGC program is helping your business grow. 

If you’re a Bazaarvoice client, jump down to our UGC audit masterclass to take your UGC program to the next level. If you’re not a Bazaarvoice client, you can learn more about our Insights and Reports tools here.

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A friend encourages you to accessorize your outfit because they want you to look good, not because they want you to spend more money. Likewise, you should focus on being helpful as a brand and curating the shopping experience for individual customers.

Research shows that average order value is tied to making customers feel recognized and understood. A Motista survey of over 100,000 U.S.-based consumers across 100+ brands found that customers who have an emotional relationship with a brand have a 306% higher lifetime value and will spend double the amount or more with their preferred retailers.

Increase average order value by presenting customers with thoughtful offers and recommendations they’ll genuinely love, and you’ll build trust and brand loyalty in the process.

What is average order value?

Average order value is the average amount of each transaction from purchases made on your e-commerce store.

Your average order value is one of the most important key performance indicators in e-commerce because it informs your strategy for increasing profits. Compare the metric to your customer acquisition cost (CAC) and you can determine which types of shoppers and purchases are especially valuable for your business.

You’ll also be able to evaluate whether you want to invest more in acquisition to encourage more high-value transactions.

The average order value formula

The average order value formula is monthly total revenue divided by the number of orders in that month. The same can be applied to any other set time frame.

Average order value = monthly total revenue / number of orders per month

Calculating your average order value also provides insights into what price points are most popular across your products. You can use this information to manage your inventory and create a pricing strategy around high-value orders.

How to increase your average order value

There’s a wide range of approaches to increase average order value that will intrigue customers without being pushy. Here’s the 15 top tactics to test out and help you find what resonates most.

1. Email marketing

Turn a passive customer into an active one with personalized email marketing. Increase average order value with methods like special offers and exclusive discounts. A few options include:

• Subscriber-exclusive offers: Incentivize subscribers with exclusive, email-only promotions and offers. These can include promo codes and access to early-release products and discounted products and packages
• Abandoned cart retargeting: Capture customers who didn’t complete purchases by sending abandoned cart emails that encourage them to finish the transaction. These messages could entice a second look and, ideally, a final purchase
• User-generated content: Leverage the power of user-generated content (UGC) in emails with reviews and social media posts from real people using your products. In a Stackla report, 79% of 1,590 consumers and 150 B2C marketers surveyed said UGC guides their purchasing decisions 
• SMS messaging: Okay it isn’t email, but 96% of 400 retail and e-commerce marketers credit SMS marketing with boosting revenue

Whatever email you send, use A/B testing to determine which messaging works best for your customers.

2. Shoppable social posts

Social media isn’t just for memes, food pics, and FOMO anymore. With the rise of social commerce, it’s now also for shopping — 76% of consumers have been influenced to shop on social media. And that’s not changing anytime soon. Business Insider projects that U.S. retail social commerce sales will soon increase by 34.8% to $36.09 billion.

Reap these benefits by making your social media posts shoppable. When Instagram or TikTok followers tap on featured products in posts linked to product pages, they can instantly make a purchase.

Case in point — Oliver Bonas. This fashion and home goods retailer uses Bazaarvoice Like2Buy to make their social posts shoppable on platforms like Instagram.

Now that customers engage with UGC on the Oliver Bonas homepage and product display pages, the brand has seen a 188% lift in conversions and a 26% increase in average order value. 

3. Rewards and loyalty programs

According to Accenture, 57% of shoppers spend more when they feel a sense of brand loyalty. So your existing customers their value by offering rewards and loyalty programs.

The best loyalty and rewards programs are easy to use and understand. Here’s a look at how some brands are making their customers feel special and connected to their products:

• Points system: Points-based loyalty programs have come a long way since the days of the paper punch card. No brand does this better than Sephora — their Beauty Insider loyalty program makes up 80% of their sales. With Beauty Insider, shoppers earn a point for every dollar spent, redeemable for available bonus products at any given time
• Tiered rewards: Taking another cue from Sephora, the beauty brand offers three levels of increasing rewards. Insider is the free, entry-level tier, VIB is for shoppers spending $350+, and Rouge is for $1,000+ spending members
• VIP program: Amazon Prime offers members a number of exclusive benefits — including free 2-day shipping across all Amazon products, access to TV shows and movies, and discounts at Whole Foods Market

Build strong relationships with your customers. Give something extra back and you’ll soon have loyal fans of your brand, willing to spend that bit more.

4. Customer ratings and reviews

Ratings and reviews have a powerful influence on shoppers and are a proven way to increase average order value — 88% of shoppers consult reviews before making a purchase. The power of reviews depends on their recency, positivity, and quantity. According to Womply, businesses earn 52% more revenue than average if they have nine current reviews and 108% more if they have over 25 current reviews.

Show off current positive reviews wherever you can: product pages, emails, social media, and paid ads. Tools like Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews can help you collect more reviews, respond to them, and spread them across the web. 

For example, with the help of Bazaarvoice, the Australian ever-channel retailer Officeworks acquired over 250,000 qualified reviews and product ratings to post throughout their website — leading to an increase in website traffic, conversions, and average order value.

5. Item and package bundles

Why just show a plate when you could show the whole table setting? Group multiple items in bundles and packages so customers can “shop the whole look” or create a gift box with all the accoutrements. Discounting these bundles is also a great way to move existing inventory while increasing average order value.

When shoppers have more chances to discover items, they’re more likely to have higher average order value. A study by Statista found that customers are driven to buy online purchases when they have a greater product range (47%), can compare more products (43%), or are given added product information (38%). 

Nurtured 9 knows this strategy well. While they sell individual items geared toward new and expectant mothers, bundles and gift boxes are their bread and butter.

With a preselected or curated gift set that includes four or more items, customers receive free gift wrap and a personalized, hand-written gift card.

6. Visual UGC on product pages

When shoppers land on a product page, it’s because they’re considering a purchase. Visual UGC from social media could seal the deal because it provides social proof. Aka, what real people like and buy, and how products look in the real world. Customers are more inspired to make a purchase when they can see pictures and videos of your brand in action. Creating galleries that feed social media content is an easy way to do this.

For Feelunique, Europe’s largest online beauty retailer, UGC drives more than $10M in annual sales. Through visual and social UGC on their product pages, the company was also able to increase average order value by 32%. Win-win.

By asking their followers to tag pictures of their products with #feelunique or upload their pictures to the website for a chance to be featured, the beauty powerhouse has simultaneously built brand awareness and engagement.

7. Cross-selling similar items

Cross-selling is a natural way to encourage higher-value purchases. It nudges customers toward items similar or complementary to the ones in their shopping cart. Implement this strategy by displaying products your customers would be interested in based on their shopping behavior on product and checkout pages.

What’s one of the best ways to encourage cross-selling purchases? UGC. Share authentic content from users and influencers. Display it on your site with gallery pages that feature product tags and encourage shoppers to discover new products. You’ll also show existing customers love by sharing their content. Hello, customer retention! 

But don’t just take our word for it. Apparel brand Tuckernuck experienced a 140% conversion rate increase and a 62x ROI by showcasing UGC on their home, gallery, and product pages. 

8. Live chat

Live chat is one of the best ways to personalize the online shopping experience and quickly provide informed recommendations to multiple customers at a time.

It’s one of the fastest and easiest ways to provide customer service. While chatting with customers, you can look up their profiles in your system to review past orders. You can also quickly send helpful links to encourage them to explore your website further and discover even more products.

Better yet, marketing automation tools make this really simple and do the hard work for you, leaving you more time to focus on the other ways to increase average order value from this list.

9. Upselling

Not to be confused with cross-selling, upselling is recommending an upgraded version of an item. The key to upselling is offering enhancements or superior products that will truly add value and improve the customer experience. Examples include:

• Product-specific add-ons: This involves upselling bonus items like warranties and product protection, batteries for electronics, refillable products like ink cartridges, and gift wrap
• More storage space: Tech companies like Apple implement this tactic by charging more for additional iPhone gigabytes (GB)
• Larger sizes: This strategy is very effective for products like televisions where bigger is, in fact, better

When you help customers win by suggesting premium products and showing them all their options, they’ll keep coming back for more.

10. Promo codes

Promo codes apply percentage or dollar discounts to purchases. They’re an easy way to execute storewide sales, holiday sales, and product-specific discounts for e-commerce brands. The beauty of promo codes? You have control over how they’re used.

Send out promo codes to email subscribers or display them on website banners and pop-ups. You might use these codes to target first-time buyers, reward guests who sign up for emails, or even promote a product launch.

11. Free shipping on minimum orders

Free shipping is a common, widely used practice these days, and for good reason. Customers have come to expect it, and it’s an easy way to increase average order value.

Engage customers and keep deliveries cost-effective by promising free shipping on orders over a certain amount. To calculate the free shipping threshold formula, take the proposed minimum order value and subtract average order value. Then, take the difference and multiply it by the gross profit margin and subtract the average shipping cost.

The shipping threshold should be above your average order value to encourage higher purchases but not outside the reasonable spending realm. For example, if your average order value is $50, a $200 minimum for free shipping is well outside the normal purchase.

12. Gamification

Gamification marketing is a fun and engaging way to attract customers and learn more about them. Requiring customers to fill out a survey for a contest entry ensures future marketing efforts are relevant and valuable. After the contest, you can follow up with targeted offers — increasing the chances of conversion.

Product discovery quizzes are another underutilized way to increase average order value. For example, coffee company Trade prompts website visitors to take a quiz for customized coffee subscriptions. The quiz asks shoppers about their coffee preferences, then recommends the perfect brew supplies for their tastes.

Consider offering contest prizes that involve your product, like gifting six months of free service or a free product. When you trust your products will sell themselves, winners will see the value of your brand.

13. Volume order discounts

Volume order discounts are for items typically purchased in larger quantities, like office supplies, stamps, toiletries, and alcohol.

“Buy X, get X free” deals are a common volume order discount. So are case discounts — like 10% off a carton of wine. These offers can easily persuade shoppers to go from 9 bottles to 12, or 3 packages of printer paper to 4. Strengthen your case by showing how much customers could save by purchasing more.

14. Trial periods and flexible return policies

Inspire emboldened purchases with flexible trial and return policies on products, especially for items that customers typically like to try out or see in person before they commit.

For example, mattress brand Casper’s risk-free trial gives customers 100 days to test out their mattresses. They accept returns within that period and even offer return pick up and packaging.

And with Warby Parker’s clever home try-on program, online shoppers can select five frames to try on at home for free before making their selection. Warby Parker turned this initiative into a marketing campaign that generates UGC and brand awareness, prompting customers to tag their home try-on photos with #warbyparkerhometryon.

Generous trial periods and return policies show confidence in the quality of your product. And this confidence transfers to the customer.

15. Innovative virtual services

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses had to pivot and go virtual to keep up with quarantine regulations. Companies that typically conducted business in person had to modify their services for the digital space.

Some businesses — like custom furniture and design company Interior Define — found this move allowed them to not only maintain sales but also boost them. When the company extended their Guideshop storefront services to the online marketplace, their average order value increased by 40%. 

Experiential marketing efforts like augmented reality, the metaverse, and livestream shopping are all fun, unique ways to innovate and win over shoppers. To adopt this concept, offer virtual versions of your services and create alternative ways to make purchases.

Increase average order value with authentic UGC

You may have noticed that UGC is a common theme throughout this list. That’s because authenticity drives results. And what’s more authentic than UGC — real people showing the real value of your products? 

To really increase average order value and win over customers, you need to master UGC best practices. Ready to build a winning UGC strategy, have a better grasp on your average order value and smash your marketing goals?

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Building on this, we wanted to take some time to break down the fundamentals around content syndication and the value it provides.

What is review syndication?

Review syndication is the distribution of a brand’s user-generated content (UGC), like customer reviews and photos, to the websites of retail partners who sell the brand’s products. Depending on whether a brand has its own e-commerce or not, the UGC may show up on the brand’s website, and then the same content is syndicated out to key retailers, where it will display on the corresponding product display pages.

Review syndication helps brands ensure their content is available wherever consumers are shopping and helps retailers deliver an exceptional shopping experience by having plenty of content on all of their products.

How does review syndication work?

While the definition of syndication makes it sound simple, there’s a lot that takes place in the background to ensure that brands and retailers can distribute and receive content.

Let’s break this down. Here’s the steps in our review syndication process.

1. Brand content is collected from customers

Brands, or third-party providers on their behalf, can collect ratings, reviews, and other UGC using a variety of methods, including review request emails, sweepstakes, social media, and sampling programs.

2. Bazaarvoice authenticates and moderates the content

UGC should represent a customer’s genuine, unbiased, and transparent opinion about their experience with a product or service. In this step, considerable efforts are made to ensure that content is:

• Free from fraudulent content

We take review syndication very seriously. With that, we prevent fraudulent content, including disruptive or ‘trolling’ behavior, commercial messages, automated submissions (e.g. bots and scripts), illegitimate or degrading content from a client’s competitor, and self-promotion.

• Free from edits

Reviews are not altered in any way by anyone other than the original author — including corrections for spelling or grammar. Reviews are not filtered, edited, or deleted simply because they’re negative or are lower rated.

• Transparent

We don’t allow companies to directly ask for positive reviews. If consumers are offered money or promotional material (such as discounts or coupons) in exchange for providing an unbiased review, then the review must note this fact.

• Moderated

Our proprietary NLP- and human-powered moderation engine ensures that content follows brand guidelines before it is displayed, with coverage in over 38 languages.

3. Bazaarvoice matches brand content to the product catalogs at retailer websites

Brands sell their products on a diverse set of retail sites. Matching hundreds of thousands of products across thousands of retailer and brand catalogs is tricky. Because of that, we take on the task of matching brand UGC to the retailers that sell their specific products. And we do this step at scale.

4. Brands’ UGC is displayed on retailer websites

Brand content, whether ratings, reviews, or photos, is displayed on the corresponding retailer product display pages. Thanks to our syndication network, retailers receive over 325 million reviews from 2,500 brand sites, and brands are able to reach over 1.3 billion shoppers across over 1,250 global retailer sites every month.

Why is review syndication valuable?

For a number of reasons. Thanks to review syndication, brands increase the reach and distribution of their content, reaching consumers they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. And retailers gain content to help shoppers make better decisions and to increase sales. Brands, retailers, and, most importantly, consumers all win.

It’s important that we’re as efficient as possible with our content. Bazaarvoice is a partner with a global network of strategic retailers that are important to our business. That really helps us to get our content on those channels, not only for ratings and reviews, but for Q&A or social media content.

G2 reviewer — Global Lead Social and Consumer Content Engagement, CPG (electronics)

That being said, review syndication is extremely complex, and that complexity grows as the scale of the retailers and brands grow. Much of this is due to inconsistency in how the e-commerce industry treats and manages catalog data. Which is where Bazaarvoice steps in.

The gist is, there’s no single way to build a catalog or one single indicator for product matching. Instead, we ingest all of the catalog data across our network, which comes to us in various stages of completeness, and then fill in the gaps to match the data piece by piece, product by product.We then build a connection between brand content and retailer catalogs and have invested in making this matching process seamless on both ends.

The result is that every product is given its own brand-identifier, authenticated, matched, routed, and ultimately displayed at each retailer.

• Retailers gain high quality, trusted, authentic content that drives SEO, sales, and engagement value, all without having to invest in their own infrastructure to gather, aggregate, and match content from the brands they sell
• Brands rest easy knowing they’re putting their best foot forward and standing up to competition in the retail channel
• Consumers get authentic product content wherever they shop and they know where that content comes from, fostering a connection to the brand, trust in the retailer, and confidence to buy

What questions should I ask of a UGC or review syndication provider?

We highly encourage you to thoroughly evaluate any UGC or review syndication solution. To be able to better understand review syndication and evaluate your options, we recommend asking any content syndication provider the following questions.

Data rights:

• What data is being captured?
• How will my data be stored and processed?
• Do I have to agree to any data privileges in exchange for a zero-cost solution?
• What are the honest and responsible costs in a zero-cost solution?

Product matching:

• How do you ensure that brand content is matched to the right product at the right retailers?
• How are you operationalizing the matching of content?

Implementation:

• Am I responsible for implementing an API?
• Do I need a second display on my page?
• If so, how does this impact load time/page speed?
• Do you require a pixel to be implemented?

Syndicate reviews with Bazaarvoice

Review syndication helps retailers and brands of all sizes to maximize the volume of their customer ratings, reviews, and visual content and ensure that UGC is accessible wherever their customers are. It can also be a powerful tool for lean marketing teams with limited time and resources.

And review syndication across the Bazaarvoice Network helps brands and retailers to significantly increase content coverage and the quality of ratings and reviews for their products. For the composite organization, from a recent Forrester Total Economic Impact Study of Bazaarvoice, this improvement leads to better conversions on products (from 2% to 4%) and average order values that increase by 5%.

If you’re a current Bazaarvoice client, we know that review syndication is top of mind for you. For any additional questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your Bazaarvoice account team.

If you’re not a Bazaarvoice client, get in touch below and see how we can help.

We’re going to talk through the benefits, challenges, considerations, and tactics for brands who want to expand to an online marketplace, so you can see if they’re for right for you or not.

Chapters:

1. What is an online marketplace?
2. Benefits of online marketplaces
3. The top online marketplaces for e-commerce brands
4. 5 tactics for selling on online marketplaces
5. Meet your customers everywhere they are

Out of the top 15 U.S. companies with the highest e-commerce sales growth in 2021, many were online marketplaces. While a direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategy is also important, online marketplaces dominate the e-commerce market, with the global top 100 earning $3.23 trillion in sales in 2021.

This speaks to the importance of having an omnichannel commerce strategy to scale your e-commerce business, with a crucial component being selling on online marketplaces.

Besides the increased revenue opportunities, there’s various other benefits to partnering with an online marketplace. But there’s also special considerations and brand management tactics you need to be prepared for to get the most out of these behemoth sales channels.

If you’re thinking about venturing beyond your e-commerce site to an online marketplace, learn all the details you need to know and how to plan your strategy before taking the leap.

What is an online marketplace?

An online marketplace is an e-commerce platform that sells products from a range of different third-party brands. Amazon is the most popular online marketplace in the U.S. by far, followed by eBay, Walmart, Etsy, and Target. It’s the online equivalent of a supermarket, where you can find a wide variety of items at competitive prices.

Benefits of online marketplaces

There’s a range of incentives for brands to expand their e-commerce business to online marketplaces. The most obvious and likely attractive one is an additional revenue stream. Considering that marketplaces make up two-thirds of e-commerce sales worldwide, the ROI potential is solid.

Another major perk for brands is that the marketplace manages the transaction. The retailer just has to fulfill and deliver the order. And depending on the marketplace, they’ll also offer fulfillment and shipping services, like Fulfillment by Amazon and eBay Global Shipping. This requires even less work for the retailer, other than supplying the product and packaging. 

Brands also have the opportunity for increased exposure to different, broader audiences. The top online marketplaces receive millions of monthly website visits, so there’s a lot of opportunities to increase brand awareness and attract new customers. 

Speaking of customers, there’s plenty of reasons to shop on online marketplaces. And what’s good for your customers is good for your brand. In a 2021 marketplaces report, 72% of respondents identified both price and convenience as the top motivations for shopping on digital marketplaces. Delivery options were another top factor, cited by 47% of respondents, which also impacts price and convenience. Delivery timing and cost are among the top priorities for delivery options. 

Furthermore, almost half of consumers go directly to online marketplaces for shopping, partially due to the wide variety of products and the ability to compare different options and prices all in one place. 

A swift launch is another notable advantage of selling on online marketplaces. Whenever you’re ready, getting started is quick and relatively easy. Some marketplaces require approval to be a merchant, but it’s an efficient process.

The top online marketplaces for consumer e-commerce brands

There’s plenty of digital marketplaces out there for you to choose from, ranging from the mainstream to the niche. These are the leading options right now for consumer brands. 

Amazon 

Pro: As the leading U.S. marketplace with a wide range of product categories, Amazon is an obvious choice. It’s also the world’s second-largest search engine, so you can target shoppers in the discovery and ready-to-buy stages. Amazon is also an attractive option because of its fulfillment and shipping services.

Con: The major con of Amazon is the listing fees, which can reach up to approximately 20%.

Walmart

Pro: Walmart is one of the leading marketplaces, with over 400 million website visitors a month. Besides exposure to a large volume of shoppers and extensive product categories, Walmart only charges commission fees. Walmart Marketplace also has fulfillment options.

Con: One con is that you have to apply to be a seller and go through an approval process, so it’s not a guaranteed or automatic placement. 

Best Buy

Pro: If you’re a consumer electronics brand, look no further. Best Buy’s product categories extend beyond tech, as well. Major and smaller retailers alike can sell on Best Buy. It’s among the top 10 e-commerce websites according to monthly website visits, clocking in at 135 million.

Con: Interested retailers have to go through an application process and be approved to sell on the Best Buy marketplace.

Home Depot

Pro: Home Depot is among the top home goods marketplaces. Your products must fit into its niche home improvement categories, meet its criteria to become a seller, and you must apply to be a supplier.

Con: Home Depot will contact applicants within 60 days, so it may not be the fastest option for launching.

Wish

Pro: Wish is one of the newer marketplace options, and it’s mobile-only. It’s a high-growth platform with more than 300 million global customers and millions of transactions per day. Its most popular product categories include apparel, accessories, beauty, electronics, and gifts.

Con: To sell on its marketplace is by invite only, and it features “top-tier” merchants, so there’s a level of exclusivity. To be considered as a seller, you can fill out a questionnaire, and Wish will contact you.

5 best practices to follow when selling on online marketplaces

While online marketplaces can do some of the e-commerce heavy lifting, you’re still ultimately responsible for presenting your brand effectively and managing the partnership for best results. Before taking on this new sales channel, make sure you’re prepared for a smooth launch. 

1. Research the best online marketplace fit for your brand, products, and business

Which is the best online marketplace? The answer depends on a variety of factors, all of which you should carefully examine to determine the best fit for your brand and products.

• Product category fit. Many online marketplaces carry an extensive range of products, but some vary and may be more suited for your brand than others. For example, if your brand specializes in home improvement products, you would definitely consider Home Depot over Best Buy. 
• Subscription cost and fees. Before you decide on which marketplace(s) to add to your e-commerce channels, evaluate the subscription options, product listing fees, and any other charges. Many major marketplaces don’t require subscriptions but being a subscriber does come with business perks. 
• Product catalog integration. To ensure a smooth transition, make sure your main e-commerce platform can integrate with your marketplace of choice. For example, Shopify is compatible with many of the major marketplaces to make adding products to other channels a friction-free process.
• Audience location. Make sure you keep the geographic location of your audience in mind when selecting an online marketplace. The range of marketplace options is based in different parts of the world and reaches different audiences. In addition to U.S. marketplaces, others include Alibaba and Jingdong in China, Rakuten in Japan, Mercado Libre in Latin America, and Otto in Europe, just to name a few.

Besides the major marketplaces previously mentioned, there’s plenty of other niche options as well. Niche marketplaces have more narrowly defined audiences and product categories than horizontal marketplaces like Amazon, which seemingly sell everything under the sun. Their more focused approach provides unique advantages to brands, like less competition and a more captive audience that’s interested in certain types of products. So, finding the right niche marketplace can result in reaching the consumers who are the right fit for your brand, even if it’s a smaller audience.

Meeschell for example is a niche “holistic lifestyle marketplace” that focuses on brands in a variety of industries, from beauty and wellness, home goods, kids’ products, pet products, and more. The common thread tying all of its partner brands together is that they specialize in natural, organic, or eco-friendly products. So, Meeschell is a better option for a boutique brand committed to natural ingredients and sustainable practices, like Alaska Glacial Essentials.

2. Optimize product information and details

Creating thorough and thoughtful product listings is how you can best control your brand positioning and impact on online marketplaces. Besides providing value to shoppers, optimized product pages will improve their chance of conversions. Build out your product listings and pages with these essential elements to improve search results and e-commerce performance. 

Leverage keywords to boost search engine optimization (SEO) performance

There’s no use in having a snazzy product page if no one can find it. That’s where keywords come in. Integrate the search terms that shoppers use to find products in your title, product description, and key features. You can find these by entering terms in the search function of online marketplaces to see what populates or using keyword search tools. In addition to your main keywords to label your products, like “area rug,” use more descriptive long-tail keywords, like “washable area rug with geometric design.”

This is an example of an Amazon product listing that’s optimized with the main “video camera” keyword and long-tail keywords, like “color night vision” and “1080 HD indoor/outdoor video camera” in the title and product description.

Bolster your descriptions with details

Unlike your own e-commerce site, you don’t have total control over your outside sales channels, like online marketplaces. That’s why you need to make the most out of the real estate you do have on external sources, which includes adding as much useful information to your product pages as possible. 

That means writing a thorough overview of your products’ features and details, including pricing, dimensions, sizes, colors, components, variations, use cases, and anything else that makes the products special, attractive, and unique. Amazon recommends listing your product details with bullet points. Comprehensive product descriptions are the #1 online shopping feature that improves customers’ online shopping confidence based on our latest Bazaarvoice Shopper Experience Index.

Include a variety of product images

You need to complement your product descriptions with photos and videos to visually represent your products to shoppers. In addition to high-quality professional photos, images sourced from your actual customers will add a level of social proof. For 53% of consumers surveyed in the 2022 Shopper Experience Index, visual user-generated content (UGC) is what inspires them to make a purchase. With visual UGC, shoppers can visualize how products will look in their real lives, modeled by other people like them.

Collect and display customer reviews

Customer reviews are extremely influential in the online shopping journey. In fact, the top five factors that strengthen shoppers’ trust in brands are all review-related. The review criteria that matter the most to shoppers include the average star rating, number of reviews, details that resonate with shoppers’ interests and concerns, recency, and substantial length. 

More reviews mean higher customer confidence. Having at least 50 reviews can increase sales by 30%. And our research shows that 81% of shoppers value review recency as much as quantity, with less than half considering a review older than three months to be relevant. For a steady stream of reviews, you can ask your customers via email and your social media channels. Another very effective tactic is to launch a product sampling campaign in exchange for verified reviews from the Influenster community of over 7 million shoppers.

An easy, seamless way to feed reviews into online marketplaces at scale is with retail syndication. With this tool, you can syndicate reviews and visual UGC to your secondary sales channels. For example, Hoover is able to distribute its reviews from its main website to Walmart.com instead of building new reviews from scratch.

3. Monitor customer questions and concerns

Online marketplaces have elevated customers’ expectations for quick and convenient service. Beyond access to an extensive range of options and competitive pricing, shoppers have become accustomed to rapid delivery and a streamlined returns process. Successful online marketplaces like ASOS provide around-the-clock live support and plenty of resources and FAQs for customers to use as a guide.  

Having ways to directly communicate with customers is critical to customer satisfaction and sales. Chatbots, live chat, and other forms of conversational commerce are the tools brands can use to connect with customers and solve their problems in an efficient way that is personalized for their needs. Brands that sell on online marketplaces should encourage their customers to contact them about product details and questions via contact forms on their website and through social media. 

You can also communicate with customers directly on online marketplaces with Bazaarvoice’s Questions and Answers tools. These tools allow customers to ask specific questions they have when considering different products that you can respond to individually, making that connection with customers. Brands that leverage these tools have seen a 98% increase in conversions.

Similarly, another communication tool called Connections enables you to address customer complaints and concerns reported in reviews by responding to individual reviews. This can lead to retaining customers and proving to shoppers that your brand is accountable and committed to resolving issues. 

Petmate is a brand that leverages this tool to answer customer questions, a service that can mean the difference between making a sale and losing the customer to another retailer. The company has successfully answered most of the 2,000 customer inquiries and concerns across its retail partner sites, including the leading pet online marketplace, Chewy.com. The following are questions that shoppers have asked about one of Petmate’s products, the Soft-Sided Dog & Cat Carrier Bag.

4. Advertise with caution

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, digital advertising rates have increased, and their performance has decreased. That doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t advertise on online marketplaces, but if you do, make sure you are strategic about it, monitor your campaigns closely, and make data-driven decisions about how to proceed. 

Online marketplace advertising may prove more effective than Google ads because customers go to marketplaces with purchase intent. Advertising is a way to cut through the thick competition of major marketplaces like Amazon. And with Amazon sponsored ads, you can measure specific e-commerce KPIs like click-through rates, conversion rates, and overall unit sales. Its ad options include product ads that appear in search results, brand ads that feature multiple products and your logo, and display ads. 

Just like with product descriptions, marketplace ads should be optimized for keywords. To make your ads stand out to consumers, include UGC to encourage clicks. Out of the shoppers surveyed in the 2022 Shopper Experience Index, 22% said ads featuring positive customer reviews would make them most likely to purchase a sponsored product. Brands surveyed also gave credit to reviews and customer photo and video content as the top two influential pieces of their advertising efforts. 

5. Promote your brand’s expansion to the marketplace 

Once you’ve selected the right marketplace for your brand and created your initial product listings, it’s time to promote it to the masses. Announce your new sales channel to your email list and social media followers, on your blog, on your podcast, and on any other appropriate marketing channels. You can even partner with influencers to build momentum and drive awareness of the new space to find your products. 

Meet customers everywhere they are

Whether it’s on your own e-commerce site, an online marketplace, social media, or your physical brick-and-mortar store, to be top of mind to your consumers, you need to be everywhere they are. And at the rate that online marketplaces are growing, you can bet that’s one place you can find them.

Not to mention, they expect you to be there. According to Klarna’s Owning Omnichannel Report, 75% of shoppers expect to access a brand’s products across multiple different channels, including online marketplaces.

So, give the people what they want while growing your business in the process. Contact Bazaarvoice to learn how to supercharge your online marketplace strategy. 

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Masterclass: Marketplace selling 2.0 — techniques for e-commere success

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We explored Walmart’s top e-commerce priorities headed into the new fiscal year, shopper behavior trends shaping the future product page experience on Walmart.com, and insights into how brands can win at retail. Here’s our key takeaways.

1. Focusing on the growth of online shopping

Online shopping was already a growth area for most retailers pre-pandemic. Walmart, for example, was seeing consistent growth in online grocery shopping, mainly because of the convenience it brought to people’s lives. Busy Mom or Dad who doesn’t have time for a grocery shop after the school run? No problem — just order online.

Walmart predicted exponential growth in this area for the next three to five years. And then the pandemic hit. As a direct result of that, Walmart’s growth predictions occurred within a month’s time frame. So it’s safe to assume this growth is here to stay.

With this increased adoption in online shopping, customers are increasingly relying on social proof, aka the opinions of other customers, to filter through the millions of items available and to make confident buying decisions. Which brings us to trend number two.

2. Leaning into social commerce

E-commerce is great at selling you products, but social commerce is great at inspiring you to purchase products you never knew existed. Customers spend 3.7 hours a day on their phone, most of which in what Thomas likes to call the “infinite scroll.” Aka, content that is constantly being refreshed. These are apps that provide an endless stream of new content at your fingertips, with TikTok being the latest and fastest growing. Consumers scroll an average of 300 feet per day, in fact.

Because of this, Walmart is looking at how to meet the customer and allow social content to seamlessly integrate with the shopping experience. Walmart knows user-generated content (UGC) has a strong impact on shopping experience and purchase intent. That’s why ensuring all SKUs on Walmart.com have an abundance of UGC is top-of-mind for the leading retailer in the new fiscal year.

Brands will soon be able to display social UGC on Walmart.com to inspire Walmart shoppers like never before.

3. Keeping breadth, depth, and authenticity top of mind

Getting more reviews on more products across the entire e-commerce site is a priority for Walmart, so Walmart has focused on continuing to build programs that drive authentic reviews. “Authentic reviews” is key here. This is by no means a quantity over quality situation. It’s quantity and quality. According to our own consumer survey, once a customer suspects a product has fake reviews, 36% wouldn’t buy the product and 47% wouldn’t trust any other reviews on the site.

When it comes to ratings and reviews, one aspect that can’t ever be overlooked is review quality. Because once you lose that authenticity you lose consumer trust, which defeats the purpose of UGC in the first place. As Thomas puts it, “…we’ll continue to build our breadth and depth across our catalogue, one of the things that we are not willing to sacrifice is authenticity.”

Individual brands also play a key role in Walmart’s UGC success. While Walmart has its own strategies to collect UGC, brands with their own UGC strategies set themselves ahead of the rest. 

4. Ongoing approach of testing and learning

It’s not enough to just have “UGC.” As in, “we use lots of UGC on our site.” Walmart understands it needs to incorporate multiple types of UGC — ratings and reviews, visual content, and social content, etc — on multiple channels. Knowing the impact of all types of UGC and tapping into the highest opportunities is essential for a positive shopper experience on Walmart.com. 

For example, it knows that often it’s easier to look at a photo to get a sense of an item, rather than read 500 reviews. So consistently testing the effect of different types of UGC is important. Walmart will never make an update just for the sake of it — decisions are based on data.

To upkeep a high shopper experience, Walmart rigorously tests all forms of written and visual UGC to gain a deep understanding of the real-time impact on conversion, basket-size, in-store and online purchases, loyalty, engagement, and SEO.

Watch our full conversation with Alyssa below to learn more.

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How Walmart is evolving its e-commerce experience

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“Without a doubt, there’s a strong correlation between customers interacting with reviews and conversion rate.”

Online shopping has, somewhat unsurprisingly, hugely increased over the last year. In 2020 alone, e-commerce sales surpassed 4.2 trillion USD worldwide. The convenience alone of being able to make purchases without leaving the house is too appealing, especially in a year where leaving the house wasn’t even an option. But there’s something online shopping can’t replicate – interaction.

Whether that be interacting with a sales associate or interacting with a product (particularly the touch and feel aspect that consumers love), interactions that persuade the customer to make a purchase are missing from the online shopping journey. Your brand’s content needs to fill in this gap instead. 

Digital window shopping

To do so, you’ll need to make your website a digital brick-and-mortar store. That’s where user-generated content (UGC), like customer ratings and reviews, comes into play.

Almost 80% of consumers say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions, and ratings and reviews are at the center of that. In fact, in 2020 a whopping 87% of consumers said they read online reviews for local businesses before making a purchase. In short, reviews matter.

One brand that knows full-well how much they matter is Appliances Online (AO).

AO is Australia’s largest online appliance retailer, with over 8,000 unique products from the world’s best and biggest brands. How did they get to where they are today? Easy – through their legendary customer service. But it’s not just how they deliver products to their customers. What really sets them apart from the rest is how they deliver content to their customers. 

AO knows that ratings and reviews, and visual and social content (like photos or videos) from other customers are the strongest ammunition in the content arsenal. Which is why getting more reviews has always been a top priority for them.

Reviews also impact how the AO website merchandises products. Every time a supplier asks AO how they can ensure the success of their products, they’re given the same answer: Grow your review volume. And they’re right to say so, given that 70% of shoppers always look at available reviews.

Reviews reviews reviews

In our latest customer success story, we look at how AO worked with Bazaarvoice to reach out to different suppliers and increase their review intake. So far, they’ve already managed to gather:

• 83,000 native reviews
• 304,000 syndicated reviews from 60+ brands
• 386,000 total reviews

We detail how AO utilizes these customer ratings and reviews to fill their product display pages and, in turn, directly achieved a 3x higher conversion rate.

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Appliances Online uses Bazaarvoice to boost sales and improve the shopping experience

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