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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Research tells us that over half of consumers would be less loyal to a business if the e-commerce experience isn’t as enjoyable as in-person and 55% of customers claim they’d stop purchasing from a brand altogether after several bad experiences. Another 8% would end their relationship after just one bad experience.

An exceptional e-commerce experience is no longer just a surprise-and-delight bonus for customers. They’ve come to expect it. And their standards are higher than ever! Especially now that more people are shopping online and new technology keeps evolving. So for brands to remain competitive and attract and retain customers, they must emphasize the overall experience as much as they do the transaction.

Learn the criteria for an outstanding e-commerce experience and how top brands deliver it for their customers so you can emulate their success.

Chapters:

1. Benefits of a strong e-commerce experience
2. The traits of a superior e-commerce shopping experience
3. 6 brands acing the e-commerce experience
4. Measure the success of your e-commerce experience

Benefits of a strong e-commerce experience

The individual components of a successful e-commerce strategy all have their own benefits — together they create an overall winning customer experience. When you design your e-commerce strategy to exceed your customers’ expectations, they’ll show their appreciation. Customer experience is an important purchasing decision factor for 73% of consumers.

Just like going to the movies, people are willing to spend money for a better e-commerce experience. According to McKinsey, a positive customer experience results in a 10-15% increase in sales-conversion rates. In particular, 43% of consumers would pay more for greater convenience.

Customers are willing to volunteer their own data in exchange for a better experience. That data, including their email address, birthday, gender, location, preferences, and other information, fuels the very personalization that improves the experience. 

The traits of a superior e-commerce shopping experience

The key to creating an amazing e-commerce experience is supplying what your customers want and need. Focus on what will be most convenient, appealing, engaging, and user-friendly for them to guide your action plan.

Accessibility

Making your website accessible is fundamental to a high-quality e-commerce experience. Having an accessible website means that anyone can easily understand and navigate it, regardless of skill level, age, or physical capability. 

While this seems like common sense, a staggering 94% of the highest grossing e-commerce sites don’t meet accessibility requirements. Considering this reality, if your site is fully accessible, you’ll be an outlier among your competitors.

You also won’t risk losing customers and sales because of a poor or difficult website experience — inclusive marketing should be the bare minimum. So ensure your e-commerce site is accessible for your customers by following these standards:

• Optimize images with alt text and descriptions for visually impaired users
• Label hyperlinked images for visually impaired users
• Use adequate color contrasting on linked text for colorblind users
• Form fields should be sufficiently marked up with descriptive labels and prompts
• Videos should have captions for deaf and hearing-impaired users
• Your website should be operable using just keyboard navigation and be mobile optimized

Product recommendations

A wide range of potential customers visit online stores. Some people know exactly what they’re looking for, while others prefer to browse. Product recommendations are one of the most important social proof tools to help shoppers make decisions. They also drive discovery, as shoppers can find similar products or see products they might not have found otherwise. 

There’s a variety of ways to leverage your data when recommending products that can increase your sales. For instance, you can showcase items that are frequently purchased together or even highlight items that other people with similar product views rated highly.

Personalization

Personalization is another critical part of the customer experience. Personalized marketing is the practice of using customer data to deliver relevant offers and recommendations based on customer preferences and activity.

Personalization enhances and improves the customer experience because it delivers what shoppers are looking for: convenience, product discovery, or content that appeals to their curiosities and interests. It’s a growing priority for consumers, and has a significant business impact for e-commerce companies. 

Twilio Segment’s State of Personalization report found that almost half of the 3,000+ consumers surveyed would likely become repeat customers after a personalized shopping experience. Conversely, 62% of consumers claimed that they’d stop being loyal to a business after an un-personalized experience. Out of the business leaders surveyed, 80% say that customers spend an average of 34% more when their e-commerce experience is personalized. 

Augmented reality (AR) is growing as an immersive personalization trend — 74% of consumers are excited that brands are enhancing shopping experiences with AR. AR is a type of technology used in marketing that allows shoppers to virtually try on and experience products.

Snapchat and TikTok filters are examples of popular AR features from the past several years. Major beauty, apparel, and home decor brands leverage AR to let customers interact with and visualize products before making purchases.

Customer support

E-commerce sales, including mobile purchases, are increasing at a higher rate than brick-and-mortar sales for U.S. consumers. More consumers are drawn to online shopping each year because of the convenience and ability to browse, discover, and compare brands and products easily.

This shift towards online shopping also comes with high expectations for online customer support. Customers want their questions answered and problems solved on the same platform where they shop. 

Successful customer support empowers customers to solve problems themselves without escalation, and when issues require intervention, it entails fast and effective service. The result is happy customers and better performance for brands. Customer support that mitigates problems leads to increased customer acquisition and loyalty. 

“Value enhancement” customer support increases repurchase likelihood by 82%, wallet share by 86%, and sharing positive experiences by word of mouth by 97%. This approach focuses on predicting customer behavior to tailor interactions and allocating experienced customer reps for high-priority issues.

Effective online support methods include: 

• Robust FAQ pages
• Product pages with questions and answers features
• Live chat options
• Contact pages with customer support phone numbers and email addresses. 

Omnichannel marketing

These days, shoppers use a variety of digital touchpoints to search and purchase products. Building an omnichannel strategy enables you to reach all of your customers on each platform where they’re active. That means expanding your presence beyond your e-commerce site to social media channels, text messages, emails, and mobile apps, depending on your customer demographics. 

An important part of omnichannel marketing is meeting customers at every stage of the buyer journey. For e-commerce brands, that often means:

• On social media at the discovery stage
• On product pages at the consideration stage
• In emails at the loyalty stage

Practicing an omnichannel strategy is also a valuable tool for gathering and evaluating customer data. By collecting data on every touchpoint, you can build a more detailed and accurate profile for each of your customers. This ensures that you serve them pertinent messaging at the right time. For example, if a customer leaves a poor review on a product, they shouldn’t be seeing Facebook ads about that product. Likewise, if they already purchased a particular product, they shouldn’t see ads for that product.

The final step to completing a high-performing omnichannel strategy is linking your various channels for a seamless customer experience. If someone sees an ad on Instagram and starts a purchase on their phone, they should be able to finish it on their laptop at a later time if they choose. 

By taking an omnichannel approach, you’ll have more opportunities to capture customers and sales. Plus, you’ll provide a cohesive customer experience across the multiple channels they use to browse and shop. An omnichannel presence gives customers greater access to your brand and keeps it top of mind. 

Social commerce

Social commerce is an extension of e-commerce but on social media channels. People are already on social media all the time, so it makes sense for them to be able to do their shopping there, too. It eliminates friction along the buyer journey. 

Consumers have fully embraced social media as a marketplace. According to DataPortal’s Digital Statshot Report, 75% of global internet users use social media to research brands and products. And just in the U.S., social buyers are projected to grow to 114.3 million by 2025, an 18% increase from 2021. 

Gen Z is the biggest audience for social commerce, with 57% discovering new products on social channels in recent months. Almost half prefer Instagram Stories as a source of inspiration, followed by 41% who look to short-form videos on Instagram Reels and TikTok. Facebook and YouTube are more popular with older audiences. Twitter is anyone’s guess with Elon Musk in charge.

To provide the best experience for your customers on social media, tailor your content to match the most popular types on those channels. For consumers, the most memorable content from brands includes funny content, relatable content, and product tutorials and demos. Consumers also want the brands they follow to earn their trust by raising awareness and speaking up about important social issues. Brand building is equally as important as selling when it comes to the social commerce experience.

Gamification

Many e-commerce brands use gamification, like interactive quiz and surveys, to provide an engaging experience for their shoppers, and to also learn more about their customers. Shopper information obtained this way can be used to customize shopping experiences to better meet their needs and preferences.

Make sure to add a skip button or quick exit to allow your visitors the option of omitting questions they don’t want to respond to, and avoid launching a survey the moment a visitor arrives on your site. 

Enhanced segmentation

Every customer uniquely engages with your e-commerce store. Segmentation allows you to ensure that shoppers accomplish their objectives on your site, regardless of how they interact with it!

For example, you could highlight special promotions for winter gear to visitors living in areas that are cold. Variables could include location, age, income, if they’re a new or repeat customer, and lots more. By doing this, you can maximize the aforementioned personalization and set up your e-commerce site to provide the best customer experience.

Displaying UGC

Consumers are driven by peer-to-peer decisions more than any other marketing tool — When shopping on a brand or retailer’s website, 40% of shoppers won’t purchase if there isn’t UGC on the product page.

Including user-generated content (UGC) such as reviews, photos or social media posts will give your site a new dimension. Visitors can see how your products in real life by sharing images, videos, and customer reviews.

Offering a continual e-commerce shopping experience

By enabling customers to pick up where their virtual shopping baskets where they left off, you can easily reduce shopping cart abandonment. With this strategy, you can instantly notify guests of previously chosen products and preferences based on their web browsing history.

Although it’s a more intricate tactic, it can produce excellent results, and make shoppers feel valued.

6 brands that ace the e-commerce experience

There’s a lot to consider when crafting an A-list e-commerce experience. It requires smoothly integrating all the ingredients of a successful shopping spree for customers at every turn, on every channel. One good thing about a saturated market is there’s plenty of brands doing a stellar job to draw inspiration from. 

These examples show how different brands in various industries make online shopping seamless, educational, and fun at different points along the customer journey. Take notes to level up your own production value.

Plenty optimizes product pages with ratings and reviews

The volume and recency of product reviews are two of the biggest factors that influence purchase decisions. That’s why Plenty prioritizes their customer review strategy to optimize their e-commerce site for ready-to-purchase customers. Leveraging this powerful form of user-generated content UGC showcases their own customers’ feedback, providing social proof for other shoppers.

Plenty encourages reviews with a CTA for visitors to leave a review for a chance to win £100 every month. Their review collection efforts result in hundreds and thousands of reviews per product. They put those reviews to good use, analyzing the insights found in them to develop new products and marketing content.

For example, when pet adoptions surged in the U.K., so did reviews about how Plenty products help with pet clean-up. As a result, Plenty developed helpful blog and social media content for pet parents.

Samsonite inspires shoppers with customer photos

The luxury luggage brand Samsonite strengthened their omnichannel experience by funneling their social media content to their e-commerce site. Using Bazaarvoice Galleries, Samsonite displays visual UGC of customers and influencers with their products throughout their site. The images are linked with the featured products so customers can purchase directly from the gallery.

Using a social media hashtag campaign, Samsonite was able to generate 27,000 pieces of UGC to promote their products on social media and their product pages. This strategy resulted in a significantly higher dwell time on pages with galleries and a 245% increase in conversion rate. This boost in visual content supports consistent branding across channels and entices shoppers with relatable marketing.

Bemz personalizes social commerce

The Bemz business model relies on personalization, and so does its e-commerce experience for customers. Bemz makes customized, made-to-order covers for IKEA furniture. With so many product options, the brand realized it needed UGC to give shoppers an accurate representation of how their products look in real life settings.

Bemz leans on social media to collect and promote both branded and UGC media. They make their social content shoppable by enabling social commerce. By turning their social feed into a digital storefront, they increased their click-through rates on social channels by 41%.

Kohl’s innovates with augmented reality

Speaking of amazing movie experiences, remember that scene in Clueless when Cher picks out her outfit every morning with a computer program? That movie was really ahead of its time, because that’s exactly what Kohl’s AR feature does, except on Snapchat.

Kohl’s Virtual Closet gives shoppers the opportunity to mix and match different outfits from select Kohl’s products. This takes the concept of cross selling to a whole new level. With Snapchat’s selfie feature, users can also virtually try on products in the virtual closet. When shoppers find items they want to purchase, they can do so right on the app without ever leaving. 

This campaign combines augmented reality with social commerce for the ultimate e-commerce experience.

Snug brings the in-person experience online with live shopping

Snug thinks outside the delivery box regarding their e-commerce customer service. The sofa company solves the common customer dilemma of making a big furniture purchase online with their live shopping service. Their entire Live Shop program is a study in customer-centric e-commerce excellence. 

Snug’s Live Shop invites shoppers to book an appointment with a showroom consultant to get a better look at their sofas and ask any questions they have in real-time. As they outline on the Live Shop page of their e-commerce site, this feature fits into every stage of the customer journey:

1. Because you’ve just started looking
2. When you’ve seen a few different sofas
3. When you’re almost ready to buy

The landing page itself is a great customer service tool, complete with its own FAQ section, customer reviews specifically about the Live Shopping experience, and overall Snug reviews about their glowing customer service. 

Fresh stimulates visitors with an immersive experience

Over the past 30 years since its inception, Fresh has become a global natural beauty brand with an e-commerce experience to match the detail and care that goes into their products. One of the challenges with having a mostly online business for beauty brands is the inability for customers to try different products. There is no way to smell fragrances or feel textures. 

Instead, Fresh designs their website with interactive content and visuals for an intricate digital experience. The home page greets you with a fun and enticing “spin to win” mystery offer game. When you’ve won your prize, you can then explore product categories, curated gift sets, their sustainability practices, details on their ingredients, and much more.

Their product pages are just as rich and robust, giving a deep dive into individual product ingredients and clinical test results. Their collection of customer reviews features photo-first displays so you can see products on real people in addition to reading about them.

Measure the success of your customer e-commerce experience

After you’ve laid the foundation for a sparkling e-commerce experience, you need to track its performance. Determine if it resonates with customers and produces results by analyzing key performance indicators. There’s many different metrics you can look at to reach these conclusions, but here’s some important ones you can start with:

• Customer retention rate: The percentage of customers who make repeat purchases from your e-commerce shop. This is a great indicator of the quality of your e-commerce strategy, because if it satisfies customers, they’ll keep coming back
• Conversion rates: The percentage of website visits that result in a desired conversion, such as product clicks and orders. If your website is accessible and conveys the value of your products, your conversion rate will prove it 
• Average order value: The average purchase amount per order on your e-commerce and social commerce channels. When customers spend more money, that’s a good sign that they connect with your products, brand, and overall e-commerce presence
• Customer sentiment: Your customers’ feelings and opinions about your brand. You can measure customer sentiment by analyzing the insights from customer reviews and customer satisfaction surveys. This information provides you with specific feedback on your brand’s e-commerce experience

To get started, learn how retail giant Walmart has evolved its e-commerce experience, as explained by Alyssa Thomas, Director of Product, Content as Commerce, at Walmart.com, in our on-demand masterclass.

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Masterclass: How Walmart is evolving its e-commerce experience

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Let’s channel your inner Don Corleone and learn how you can make consumers an offer they won’t refuse.

Chapters:

1. What is a lead magnet?
2. What makes a good lead magnet in e-commerce?
3. 10 lead magnet ideas for your e-commerce website
4. Optimize your e-commerce website for better lead magnet results

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is simply a trade where you offer something valuable in exchange for contact information or another action. 

Let’s paint a picture for you: you’re browsing online, not quite ready to buy, just casually looking. Then, something catches your eye — a guide on how to choose the perfect pair of running shoes, offered for free. All it asks for in return is your email. That’s a lead magnet in action, a sweet little nudge designed to turn you from a casual browser into an engaged potential customer. 

And once you have that information, you’ll do something with it to further engage the leads and turn them into paying customers. So this interaction is also the first hello in what you hope will be a long conversation. It’s where you start to build trust and show your value to potential customers. 

What makes a good lead magnet in e-commerce?

For starters, your lead magnet should offer immediate value. People have to be able to use it right away so they can experience the benefits of engaging with your brand without delay. This immediate gratification will satisfy the desire for quick rewards (because who doesn’t love those?) and make a positive first impression.

Ideally, what you offer should also solve a problem that your audience is facing. A lead magnet that tackles a real issue provides value and also positions your brand as helpful and authoritative. For example, a “5-Minute Meals for Busy Parents” recipe book from an online food store hits right at the heart of time-crunched families.

Lead magnets should showcase your expertise or the quality of your products. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate why your brand is trustworthy and knowledgeable. Say, a lead magnet like “The Complete Guide to Sustainable Fashion” from an eco-conscious clothing brand can establish thought leadership in that space.

Finally, the best lead magnets encourage future engagement. It doesn’t just end with the download or the discount but rather marks the start of a relationship. 

10 lead magnet ideas for your e-commerce website

There’s a lot of room for creativity where lead magnets are concerned, but we have the top 10 ideas that are tried and tested to get people through your digital door.

1. Discount codes

It’s a classic for a reason. Discounts are simple, yet effective — a percentage off, a fixed amount discount, or exclusive deals in exchange for an email sign-up or another small action. Because of the instant value they provide, discounts make the decision to engage with a brand a no-brainer for most shoppers. 

Why they work:

• Everyone loves to save money. A discount code taps into this universal appeal, offering immediate savings on future purchases

• For those on the fence because they never bought from your brand before, a discount can be the incentive they need to make their first purchase

Best practices:

• Make it exclusive. Your discount should feel special. If products on your website are always on sale, this type of offer could lose its appeal

• Set a time limit. Create a sense of urgency and encourage quick action by making the discount available for a limited time

2. Personalized consultations

Personalization is a lead magnet necessity. Personalized consultations are a golden opportunity to connect with your audience on a deeper level. They allow you to demonstrate your expertise, understand your customers’ unique needs, and provide tailored advice that can make a real difference in their decision-making process.

Why they work:

• Engaging directly with customers establishes brand trust, an essential ingredient for any successful relationship. 

• By tailoring advice to each individual’s situation, you show a level of care and attention that generic information just can’t match

• A consultation is an active, engaging process. It invites potential customers to interact with your brand, creating a memorable experience

Best practices:

• Streamline scheduling: Use an easy-to-navigate booking system to minimize friction in setting up consultations. The simpler it is to book, the more likely people are to go for it 

• Prepare and personalize: Before each consultation, gather information about the customer’s needs to offer the most relevant and helpful advice

• Follow-up: After the consultation, send a personalized email summarizing the advice you gave and suggesting next steps. A follow-up keeps the conversation going and nudges consumers towards a purchase based on the problems you identified

3. Early or exclusive access

There’s plenty of ways to give your potential customers the VIP treatment — chief among them, access to early sales and product drops. This strategy plays on the human desire to be part of an elite group and enjoy privileges that aren’t available to the general public. 

Why they work:

• Knowing they have access to something others don’t elevates the customer’s perception of the value you’re offering 

• The wait for early or exclusive access to products or sales can create buzz and excitement around your brand 

• Customers who receive special treatment are more likely to feel a stronger connection to your brand, helping you build that oh-so-coveted brand loyalty

Best practices:

• Clearly define the offer: Make sure your audience understands what they’re getting access to and why it’s valuable. Whether it’s a pre-sale, a limited edition product, or early access to content, the offer should be compelling 

• Deliver on your promise: Don’t falter. The early or exclusive access experience should be smooth and rewarding. Any hiccups can damage trust and diminish the perceived value of your offer

4. Free shipping

The people have spoken — they want free shipping. So much so that 62% of consumers won’t buy from a retailer if they don’t provide that option. Offering potential buyers the chance to unlock free shipping removes one of the biggest hurdles to completing an online purchase (added costs) and appeals to virtually every shopper’s desire to get more value out of their purchase.

Why they work:

• High shipping costs are the top reason for abandoning shopping carts. Eliminating this barrier can significantly increase your conversion rates

• Shoppers perceive free shipping as an added value to their purchase, making the deal seem much sweeter (there’s that honey again) 

• Often, free shipping is tied to a minimum purchase amount, which can encourage customers to add more items to their cart to qualify and increase average order value

Best practices:

• Set clear thresholds: If your free shipping offer requires a minimum purchase, make sure this threshold is clearly communicated and easily achievable

• Promote widely: Highlight your free shipping offer on your homepage, product pages, and during the checkout process. Also, mention it in your marketing emails and social media channels

• Test and analyze: Experiment with different thresholds for free shipping to find the sweet spot that increases average order value without hurting your margins

5. Free samples

Who doesn’t love free stuff? Offering free samples as your lead magnet is a tried-and-true method to introduce potential customers to your products with no strings attached. This approach not only allows customers to test and fall in love with your products but also demonstrates your confidence in the quality of what you’re selling.

With a product sampling marketing campaign you can even ask consumers to provide user-generated content (reviews, images, or videos) in exchange for the samples. Using UGC to populate your social media feeds and product pages is the best way to generate consumer trust in your brand and lift conversions, so there’s a lot to gain here besides contact information. 

Why they work:

• Free samples allow customers to try before they buy, reducing the perceived risk associated with buying new products

• By getting your products into the hands of potential customers, you’re increasing brand awareness and the likelihood of future purchases

• Offering something for free can create a positive association with your brand, fostering goodwill and a sense of reciprocity

Best practices:

• Easy redemption: The process to claim a free sample should be straightforward and require minimal effort from the customer

• Collect feedback: Use the opportunity to gather feedback on the sampled products and get your hands on valuable insights for product development and marketing strategies. 

• Follow-up: After sending out the samples, follow-up with an email offering a discount on the full-sized product to encourage a purchase

6. Contests and giveaways

The anticipation of possibly winning something cool is thrilling. That excitement is precisely what makes contests and giveaways such effective lead magnets. They speak to people’s natural love for competition and the allure of getting something for free. 

And you win too. By offering a prize that your target audience finds irresistible, you can significantly increase engagement, grow your email list, and boost social media followers, all while creating a fun experience for your audience.

Why they work:

• The interactive nature of contests and giveaways encourages active participation from your audience

• Participants often share contests with friends and family, which helps increase your brand’s visibility and reach 

• You can make following you on social media a mandatory requirement to enter the contest, so you can grow your presence on these channels while generating leads

Best practices:

• Leverage user-generated content: Encourage participants to share their own content related to the contest (e.g., photos using your product) to increase engagement and generate content for your brand

• Reach out to every participant: After the contest, send a thank you email to all participants and offer them a consolation prize, such as a discount code, to encourage them to make a purchase

7. Interactive quizzes

Quizzes are the best of both worlds. These lead magnets combine entertainment with personalization, offering instant gratification in the form of results that feel tailor-made. They keep potential customers engaged in a unique way and provide valuable insights into their preferences and behaviors. What’s not to love?

Why they work:

• Quizzes keep users clicking, engaged, and interested from start to finish, significantly increasing the time spent interacting with your brand

• With personalized results, quizzes make every participant feel seen and understood, enhancing their connection to your brand (and likelihood they’ll buy something based on the outcome of the quiz) 

• Quizzes are an effective tool for collecting zero-party data on your audience’s preferences and needs, which can inform future marketing strategies. With the collapse of third-party cookies upon us, this is a welcomed benefit.

Best practices:

• Shareable results: Make the results easily shareable on social media to increase the participant’s engagement and extend the quiz’s reach

• Follow-up with personalized recommendations: Use the data collected from the quiz to follow up with personalized product recommendations or content, turning engagement into conversion

• Optimize for all devices: Your quiz should be mobile-friendly to get users to engage with it on their smartphones (where they spend a lot of time. Seriously)

8. Exclusive members club

We already talked about the allure of exclusivity, but you know what’s better than early access to a product? Being part of an exclusive members club that continuously offers perks, special deals, and insider information. 

This type of lead magnet elevates the concept of exclusivity to a whole new level, as it creates a sense of belonging to a special community. It’s not just a one-time offer — it’s ongoing value.

Why they work:

• Humans are complex creatures, but when it comes to belonging, they’re actually quite simple. People love feeling like they’re part of an exclusive group, and members-only clubs deliver on that innate desire for community and recognition

• Contrary to a one-off download or discount, a members club offers continuous reasons for shoppers to engage with your brand

• Members are more likely to become repeat, loyal customers, thanks to the ongoing perks and the emotional investment in the brand

Best practices:

• Update, update, update. Regularly add new perks to keep the membership exciting and valuable. Stagnation is the enemy of engagement (Confucius didn’t say it, but he might as well have) 

• Exclusive, but inclusive: While the club should feel exclusive, make joining achievable for your target audience – it’s a lead magnet, after all

• Communicate regularly: Use email newsletters or a dedicated members area on your website to keep people informed about new perks and offers

9. Virtual events

Virtual events have surged in popularity, offering a unique way to connect with audiences from the comfort of their own homes. They entertain and inform, drawing in people with the promise of unique insights, valuable knowledge, and interactive experiences that they can’t get anywhere else.

Why they work:

• Virtual events allow for real-time interaction between the guests, moderators, and viewers, making the latter feel more connected to your brand

• They can attract a broad audience by offering valuable insights, entertainment, or access to experts, depending on the event’s focus

Best practices:

• Promote early and often: Use all your channels — email, social media, your website — to build anticipation and encourage sign-ups well in advance of the event 

• Offer exclusive content: Make sure the event provides unique value that can’t be found elsewhere, such as live Q&A sessions, behind-the-scenes tours, or first looks at new products 

• Make it accessible: Ensure the platform you choose is user-friendly and accessible to people with varying levels of tech-savviness

• Interact post-event: After the event, send out an email to attendees with key takeaways, additional resources, and a CTA, such as a special offer or invitation to sign up for your newsletter

• Record and repurpose: Not everyone who’s interested will be able to attend live. Plus, you’ve put a lot of effort into producing the event, so you should milk every drop of content out of it. Offer a recording to those who registered but couldn’t attend, and consider using parts of the event in future marketing materials

10. Free trials 

Subscription businesses might find it harder to send out samples of their products. Free trials solve this issue, as they allow potential customers to test your service in all its glory. Just like with samples, free trials are effective because they remove the risk from the customer’s decision-making process. People get to see firsthand if your service fits their needs and lifestyle before committing financially.

Why they work:

• Customers can try out your service without any financial commitment, making them more likely to give it a go

• Unlike a demo or a sneak peek, a free trial gives customers access to the entire service, allowing them to experience its full benefits

• By offering a free trial, you’re expressing confidence in the value of your service, which in turn builds trust with potential subscribers

Best practices:

• Clear communication: Make the terms of the free trial clear, including its duration and what happens when the trial ends. Transparency is key to trust

• Engage during the trial: Use the trial period to engage with users, offering tips on getting the most out of the service and highlighting features they might not discover on their own

• Seamless transition to paid: Make it easy for trial users to become paying subscribers, with a simple upgrade process and a compelling reason to continue beyond the trial

Optimize your e-commerce website for better lead magnet results

Your lead magnets are the hook that draws people in, but your website is where the magic really happens. It’s one of the places where initial interest turns into lasting relationships and, ultimately, sales. 

By focusing on both attracting customers with compelling lead magnets and providing an optimized online shopping experience, you lay the groundwork for e-commerce success. 

So, don’t let the momentum stop with the honey. Continue your journey to e-commerce excellence by ensuring your website is as optimized and as effective as your lead magnets. 

Okay, okay, maybe we’re being a bit hyperbolic. Nothing’s as bad as trying to find a half-decent potato while your least favorite Christmas song blares over the store sound system. However, we do know customers love the convenience offered by online shopping. Nearly 70% of consumers factor site speed into their willingness to purchase from an online retailer. And a majority of online shoppers expect a page load time of 3 seconds or less.

If you haven’t given your website a performance checkup lately, it’s well past time. Here’s how to evaluate your current performance, plus some steps anyone can take to optimize an e-commerce site for a speedy shopping experience. 

Chapters:

1. Why website performance matters
2. The 7 main website performance metrics
3. How to measure your website performance
4. How to improve your e-commerce website performance
5. Website performance is all about the need for speed

Why website performance matters

Does it really matter if you don’t hit that 3-second load mark? Yes, it does. Failing to prioritize website loading speed decreases the quality of your user experience, and that’s bad in multiple ways.

First and most obvious, higher load times mean an increased bounce rate. Even users who stick around through the first few slow page loads may give up on your site before making a purchase.

Lower initial conversion rates are likely to be matched by lower loyalty overall. Customers who remember their suboptimal shopping experience are less likely to return for another try — and they won’t want to follow links that direct them to your site. 

Bad website performance also affects your Google SERP rankings. Because the search engine’s algorithm prioritizes user experience, pages with a slow loading speed are pushed down in the search results. Smaller outlets competing for attention might lose out to their faster competitors. 

The 7 main website performance metrics

Page load time isn’t a standalone website performance metric. It’s an overarching assessment that rolls together multiple metrics. Four of these metrics are Google’s Core Web Vitals:

• Largest Contentful Paint measures the loading speed of the largest page element users can see “above the fold” — that is, without scrolling down
• Interaction to Next Paint measures a page’s responsiveness to interactions, such as clicking an “add to cart” button or typing information into a form
• First Input Delay measures the time gap between when a user interacts with your website (say, clicking that “add to cart” button) and when their browser starts to process that request
• Cumulative Layout Shift measures how often page content moves while a page is loading

Google considers these aspects most important because they have the biggest effect on user experience. However, there’s four other metrics that also capture important parts of the user experience: 

• Time to First Byte measures the speed at which your DNS provider starts delivering your website content after receiving the request
• Total Blocking Time measures how long it takes for a web page to load enough that a user can interact with it (as browsers that are in the middle of loading pages cannot process interactions)
• First Contentful Paint measures how long it takes for the first of your website content to render

If you want to dive deep into any of these metrics, Google’s web.dev site explains more about why each one matters and how to measure them. Or, you can just keep reading as we discuss measuring your site’s performance. 

How to measure your website performance

Measuring your site’s performance is easy with Google’s free PageSpeed Insights. This tool assesses your site on the metrics listed above and ranks it as good, needs improvement, or poor. You’ll also get notes on your site’s performance, accessibility, use of best practices, and SEO. 

There’s an option to view how your site performs on mobile vs. desktop devices and tips to help you optimize your site. You get a lot of help for the low price of living in Google’s web ecosystem, and let’s face it — that’s already happening. 

When you’re looking at your report, you may notice Total Blocking Time is excluded from the “Core Web Vitals Assessment” box. Scroll down to the Performance box, then look at the Metrics table to see your results.

PageSpeed Insights makes it easy to understand why your site earned the rankings it did with color-coded graphics and personalized tips. Go ahead and run a test now — all it takes is a few seconds — so you can get a baseline of your site’s performance and see where you have room for improvement. 

How to improve your e-commerce website performance

If you’re still here, we’ll assume your Core Web Vitals Assessment showed you have some work to do. There’s no shame in that. Even Google’s web.dev site doesn’t pass the assessment! Here’s our best tips to help you improve the performance of your e-commerce website and the tools you need to make it happen. 

1. Cut down on HTTP requests

HTTP requests exist at the core of loading web pages. You don’t need to know the technical specifics here — only that a browser must make these requests to load CSS files, scripts, images, and other content on your page. Each request requires the browser to send a message to your web host, which then has to respond with the appropriate content.

The more HTTP requests you have, the longer it will take to complete them all. Imagine if you went to a restaurant and first asked for water and then, when your waiter returned, ordered a soda. When they brought the soda, you asked for an appetizer. And finally, after the appetizer arrived, you had decided on your entrees. It would take a long time for you to get and finish your meal, no matter how fast your server worked.

Give your (web) server a break by cutting out unnecessary HTTP requests. If you don’t need a script or CSS file, don’t reference it in your page’s header. You can also try to cut down on multimedia content to increase your page load speed. 

2. Use HTTP/2

Not all HTTP requests are made equal. HTTP/2, a standard that debuted in 2015, comes with capabilities that help your web pages load faster. For one, it allows developers to prioritize which elements load first, so you can tell browsers to request light resources before larger scripts. It can also serve multiple resources at once. To return to our restaurant metaphor, HTTP/2 allows you to give your whole order at once so the waiter can get your food to you more quickly.

KeyCDN has a free HTTP/2 test to determine whether your site supports the HTTP/2 protocol. Or, if you want a closer look, open your browser’s developer tools, navigate to the network tab, and look for the “Protocol” column. (You may have to right-click the list of columns and add Protocol.) 

HTTP/2 support is determined by your web host, so they’re the resource to turn to if you need to enable the protocol. The process is different for each provider. 

3. Eliminate unnecessary redirects

Many companies employ redirects to bypass link rot during website overhauls. However, each time you redirect a user to a new page, you’re forcing them to sit through another page load. Especially redirects that lead to another redirect — no thanks! By the time the user reaches the actual URL, they’ll already be ready to close out of your page.

Redirects have a habit of piling up over time. That means you need to audit them periodically; it’s especially important to do so after any redesign or re-architecting of your website.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider can help you check your entire site for redirects and even detect redirect chains and loops for you. You could also use the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar to check page-by-page, but we wouldn’t recommend this. Unless you have an obligation you really want to get out of.

4. Limit external scripts

Most developers use third-party scripts to add functionality they don’t have the resources to code in-house. Incorporating external scripts is always risky in terms of page speed, though. You don’t have control over the code, so you can’t do anything if the script is slow to load.

Slow-loading scripts make pages take longer to load and can cause problems like content jumping (measured by the Cumulative Layout Shift metric). 

Check each page to make sure no unnecessary scripts are loading. For instance, you may have a reviews feature enabled on your site as a whole, but you don’t need that script included on pages made for browsing. You may also ask yourself whether you really need that modal to collect customers’ emails or if it’s turning off more buyers than it’s bringing in.

More bells and whistles aren’t always better. A simple website with a good user experience can muscle out an overdesigned store.

5. Enable lazy (asynchronous) loading

When a browser renders a website, its default is to process each request in order, only moving on to the next command after finishing its current task. Large scripts slow up the entire process, as a browser must load the entire file before it can move on to rendering the rest of the content.

Avoid this delay by directing the browser to load your scripts asynchronously — that is, while continuing to render the webpage. Simply add the async attribute to your script tags (your code will look something like this: <script src=”my_script.js” async></script>).

Some experts recommend adding your <script> tags near the bottom of your body content as older browsers may not be able to read the async attribute, but there’s no need to do this. You’d be hard-pressed to find a browser in the wild that couldn’t handle the async tag. 

6. Use mobile-first designs

Website performance optimization needs to include mobile-first thinking. Smartphones are now the source of nearly four in five e-commerce website visits and two in three e-commerce purchases. Unfortunately, the mobile web is still a drag. Most sites have much longer load times on mobile devices. With over 50% of mobile visitors ready to jump ship if a site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, e-commerce retailers are likely losing out on a lot of business. 

Almost every website published these days is responsive, but designers who code for desktop and then later optimize for mobile may be going in the wrong order. Using mobile phone emulators to design for small screens puts the needs of this growing audience front and center. 

Plus, it’s easy — Google Chrome’s Dev Tools allow you to enter “device mode” to view what your site will look like on smaller screens. 

Designing for mobile phones also requires you to make the most of limited screen real estate, which may mean you opt for fewer decorative elements that can slow down a page. You’ll also want to simplify navigation and interactions rather than going for flashy or unique experiences that require external scripts and plugins. 

If you’re working with an existing site, you probably can’t implement this practice right now. Just keep it in mind for your next redesign. 

7. Compress text-based files with gzip

HTML and CSS files may not seem too onerous to load, but when you’re counting in milliseconds, every byte matters. Compression reduces the size of text-based files so they can make the trip from your server to a customer’s browser more quickly. Gzip is the most common compression framework, but Brotli and Deflate also work well to speed up your website. 

This is another feature that’s set up on the hosting side. Most hosts enable it by default, but it’s good to check yours using a free HTTP Compression test. If you find out your content isn’t compressed, it’s time to reach out to your hosting provider. 

8. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files

Compression frameworks like Gzip aren’t the only byte-savers. You can also minify your text files by removing anything that’s not a key part of the code — things like comments, formatting, or lengthy variable names. Many of these elements are helpful for human developers, but web browsers don’t need them to display your web page directly. 

There’s no need to go through and delete comments and extra spaces and tabs by yourself. Minifier.org offers a free tool that can handle CSS and JavaScript. Google’s web.dev recommends this free HTML minifier. 

If you’re looking for tools that can mass-minify, Google’s PageSpeed Module works with Apache or Nginx web servers and automatically minifies your files. However, installing tools like it or CSSNano may require you to call IT.

9. Optimize images and videos

Multimedia files often decrease website performance simply because they’re so large. E-commerce merchants, who rely heavily on images and videos, must be diligent about optimizing these files to reduce the burden on visitors’ internet connections. 

The easy part of optimizing images is resizing them. No file should exceed 20 megabytes (MB) — but really, only your hero images should be that big. Shopify recommends merchants keep images around 500 kilobytes (KB) if possible, though they allow that some sites need files up to 2 MB in size. You’ll likely have to compress your images to meet these goals. Thankfully, there’s plenty of free image compression tools out there you can use.

Once you’ve cut file sizes down, make sure you’re using responsive design principles to keep things speedy for users loading your site from smaller devices. MDN Web Docs, run by Mozilla, has a nice responsive images tutorial you can follow if you’re new to the subject. 

10. Take advantage of browser caching

Web browsers can store files locally on users’ machines, which speeds up loading times for repeat visitors. Instead of contacting your server for every file, browsers can pull cached assets from the machine’s local memory.

Caching is an excellent solution for most e-commerce merchants, as your assets remain fairly static. If you do a major site overhaul or replace product pictures, you’ll want to make sure browsers have instructions to re-download the new content and replace cached assets. However, this is a rare enough occurrence for most online retailers that setting up caching is the way to go.

Your web host is, once again, the party in charge of your caching settings. You’ll want to find its documentation and follow the instructions to enable local caches and set expiry dates (which instruct browsers how often they should refresh cached assets from your site). 

11. Use a content delivery network (CDN)

Browser caches only help audiences who have come to your website before. Content delivery networks, or CDNs, stash assets as close as possible to each visitor to cut down on load times. 

CDNs don’t rely on local machines to store assets. They simply distribute your assets to a network of servers in various locations. That means instead of having one server in Virginia that answers all requests, you may have a server in Virginia, one in California, one in Illinois, and so on. Companies that serve international audiences can work with international CDNs, so they have servers in multiple countries, regions, and continents. 

Whenever a browser sends a request to load your website, that request routes to the server that’s geographically closer to the user. It may not sound like a huge time-saver, but since page load speeds are measured on a very small scale, CDNs make a noticeable difference. 

12. Regularly audit your plugins

Plugins, add-ons, and extensions are a huge time-saver for most web developers. But, like external scripts, bloated plugins can drag your page speed down. Improve your website performance by revisiting your plugin library to see whether there are any hangers-on that you no longer use. 

Sometimes, you need all your plugins, but your pages are still loading way too slowly. In that case, it’s time to figure out the culprit. Copy your site into a staging environment, disable all your plugins, and test your site load speed. Then, enable plugins one at a time to determine whether a single plugin is tanking your performance metrics. (Make sure you enable, test, and then disable each plugin so you’re not accidentally measuring cumulative effects.)

Thankfully, with so many plugins out there, you’ll likely be able to find a replacement for any sluggish tools. 

One other option is to look for plugins that have been optimized for speed. For instance, our Ratings & Reviews display technology was designed to keep your website running quickly, and our developers shared the steps they took to fulfill that promise. Find tools built in this vein — ones that use best practices like minifying and reducing script files, caching, and lazy loading — to make your audits a breeze. 

13. Remove unnecessary pop-ups

Yes, we’ll say it. Pop-ups are super unpopular. They lead to a bad experience, especially on mobile devices. Even if you think your pop-ups are tastefully done and helpful, internet users are faced with a barrage of modals, overlays, and chat widgets all day long. Everyone has pop-up fatigue, and if you contribute, you’re eroding your consumers’ trust. 

Most pop-ups call outside scripts and reference assets like images and fonts, all of which a browser has to load. Modals that appear conditionally have to gather audience data before triggering, which also takes time. And if your Total Blocking Time is high, users may not be able to close out of these elements as the rest of your site renders. This delay would influence users’ perception of your site speed even if there was no actual slowdown. 

The slowdown is real, though, as is the nearly universal dislike for these tools. Removing them from your site is a win-win. 

14. Choose the fastest services

When a customer clicks a link or types in a URL, they’re telling their browser to query a DNS service to take them to their target site. That DNS service routes the browser to your site’s IP address. Then, their browser starts reading your HTML files and requesting assets from your server or CDN so it can render the website you’ve designed. 

That’s a lot of services coming together to make your site appear. If any one of them is slow, your page speed will be negatively affected. That’s why the cheapest option isn’t necessarily the best option for your technical infrastructure. 

For instance, many base website hosting plans are shared. This means other websites use the same server you do, so a spike of traffic from one of them might slow down your load times. VPS hosting (for growing sites) or dedicated website servers (for those who can afford them) will return better results.

You also want to make sure your domain registrar, which handles DNS hosting, is a high performer. DNSPerf keeps an ongoing log of DNS performance so you can see for yourself how various providers stack up.

Of course, speed doesn’t only matter at the top levels. We talked about finding lightweight and streamlined plugins. You’ll also want to think about services like your security software and other backend tools. Though customers don’t interact with them directly, they can still impact your e-commerce website’s performance. 

15. Monitor website operations

Checking your website performance every once in a while to see if there’s big problems is a smart idea. Constantly monitoring your site so you’re aware the second a problem pops up is even smarter. 

You can invest in tools that collect data on your users’ experience to show how your site performs in the real world. Since many shoppers will be visiting you from setups unlike your own, real user monitoring provides a fresh perspective. 

Other tools pretend to be human visitors, using a series of scripts to navigate your website and test its performance. Synthetic monitoring setups like these are more useful for teams looking to gather data from controlled tests. If you’re in the midst of optimizing your site, synthetic monitoring will help you spot changes that actually make a difference. These systems can also run scheduled tests with the goal of catching major problems before your customers run into them. 

There’s plenty of tools that perform both of these jobs (and more):

• Site24x7 performs synthetic and real user monitoring for you
• LogRocket monitors users and identifies errors and site interactions users typically struggle with
• New Relic is an end-to-end synthetic monitoring system that integrates with just about every infrastructure there is 

Whichever tool you use, make sure you configure the alerts to tell you when something goes wrong. The quicker you can fix the problem, the fewer customers you’ll disappoint. 

Website performance is all about the need for speed

As internet and mobile connections become faster and even more ubiquitous, consumer standards will continue to rise. Providing a fast, convenient experience is a baseline expectation. Companies who can figure out how to excel on mobile and get those loading speeds down to a second or less will have a chance to capture more market share.

The customer experience you provide is directly connected to your conversion and retention rates, and your website’s performance is directly related to that customer experience. Website optimization isn’t a project that can wait for a rainy day. It’s an essential part of bringing customers to your site and making more sales.

Improving your site’s speed isn’t the only way to reach more customers. Check out these ways to increase organic traffic to keep your momentum on the SERP.

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Another shopping trend that really boomed is the uptake in subscription businesses. In 2022, the subscription commerce market is valued at $26.9 billion and is predicted to reach $74.2 billion by 2028, according to global research. So if you hadn’t been considering a subscription business for your brand, it might be time to start.

Chapters:

1. What is subscription commerce?
2. Benefits of subscription commerce
3. Subscription commerce best practices
4. Subscription commerce FAQs
5. Personalize your subscription commerce experience

What is subscription commerce?

Subscription commerce is a business model where your customers pay a set recurring price to receive your products or services on a regular cadence. The three most common types of subscription commerce model:

1. The curation model: This popular model provides subscribers with pre-selected items based on their personal needs and preferences. This option offers an element of surprise with each subscription box and is particularly good for helping your customers discover new products!
2. The replenishment model: Commonly known as the “subscribe and save” model, this type of subscription allows customers to automate the purchase and delivery of everyday consumer products, such as vitamins, cosmetics, or hair products, for a discounted price
3. The access model: With this model, customers pay a regular fee to attain desirable member-only perks, such as select discounts and early access to new products. Subscribers to this model are often attracted to the exclusivity that membership offers

For consumers, subscription commerce offers convenience, high-quality products, reliability, and great value, while brands and retailers benefit from locking in higher recurring revenue — more on that to follow.

Benefits of subscription commerce

Subscription commerce is riding a high right now. When done well, this service provides brands and retailers with some wonderful advantages.

1. Recurring revenue: Subscriptions bring in consistent income that makes it easier to forecast sales and plan for the future — handy in a time when 77% of consumers have changed spending habits. And since you get paid upfront monthly, quarterly, or annually, you’ll be able to map out your fulfilment operations way easier
2. Higher customer lifetime value: One of the best things about subscription services is that retention is built into the business model. By offering personalized discounts and membership perks, you have a better chance of attaining long-term customer loyalty, which increases the lifetime value of your customer base
3. Lower customer acquisition costs: As we just mentioned, a higher CLV from subscription services means lower customer acquisition costs. All you have to do is keep your subscribers happy, and you’ll be able to significantly decrease your customer churn, lower your new customer acquisition costs, and watch your profit margins grow
4. Easier Inventory Management: Unlike the pay-once model, a subscription commerce model removes the uncertainty about how often you’ll need to replenish your stock. This tells you how many customers are going to buy specific products in any given period of time, making it way easier to assess your stock levels properly
5. Enhanced customer service: Shoppers love having control over their purchasing decisions. A subscription service offers this, plus the added benefit of discounted pricing. Toss in some personalization and incredible customer service, and you’ve got a recipe for an awesome subscriber experience.

Subscription commerce best practices

You can have the best products in the world as part of your subscription service but if it doesn’t come with the right criteria to wow your customers, it really won’t matter. To make a positive and lasting impression, you need a customer-first mindset.

1. Choose the right subscription model

An obvious starting point, but don’t trip up at the first hurdle. Depending on what you offer, select the subscription model that fits your e-commerce business best. It’s also worth testing two or more models with a select few of your shoppers so you can get a feel of what works and what doesn’t.

2. Figure out your USP

Any good subscription revolves around a very specific niche. Without a clear unique selling point, your brand won’t be well-positioned to spark curiosity around your subscription or deliver the tailored experiences consumers expect.

Ask yourself what makes your subscription different from your competitors. Next, ask what your customers stand to gain from your subscription instead of taking the more conventional course. Shoppers value specialized products and services. Being selective about what you choose for your subscription service will help you carve out your niche.

3. Make signing up easy

Once a customer decides to subscribe, signing up should be as simple as possible. Consider offering a streamlined registration process that asks for essential information only, like name, email address, and password.

Customers should also be able to sign up on your e-commerce website, app, or even through social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok.

You’ll also want to make sure subscribers can choose the frequency of their subscription deliveries, as well as the ability to pause or skip any they may not want. Studies show that subscribers who can skip an order last 135% longer than those who can’t.

4. Optimize the subscriber journey

When a subscriber visits your website, they should be welcomed with a seamless experience that provides valuable information, effortless navigation, and easy checkout. Focus your efforts on:

• Tailored subscription options. Provide different types of subscriptions for your different audiences so they can choose the service that fits them best. You could even include a quiz to help them uncover which option perfectly meets their needs! 
• Intuitive navigation. Ensure subscribers can find what they’re looking for easily by including distinct menus, logical categories, and a search functionality. Have people in your organization test user journeys, too
• Swift website speed. Maximize your website’s performance by minimizing page load times — nearly 70% of consumers say that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer
• Clear and compelling product information. Include detailed product descriptions and high-quality images. You’ll also want to feature any customer ratings and reviews — 88% of shoppers use them to evaluate products before making a purchase
• Streamlined checkout process. Simplify the checkout process by removing unnecessary steps, offering guest checkout, and providing a clear snapshot of the purchase summary. Include secure payment gateways and flexible payment options as well

5. AI-Driven contextualization

Subscribers are more likely to engage with content when it’s personalized to their specific preferences and needs. Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms help you deliver contextualized shopping experiences by leveraging customer data like browsing and purchase history to provide tailored product recommendations.

In turn, subscribers feel more valued and better connected with your brand.

6. Valuable incentives

Consumers love deals, discounts, or any other offer that saves them money. Who doesn’t? By offering this to your subscribers, you’ll strengthen their desire to save on their purchases.

Typically, subscription commerce incentives revolve around a monetary reduction, but don’t feel like you have to limit yourself to just that! Providing free products (or samples) or access to exclusive services or events are other great ways to increase subscriber loyalty.

7. Social proof

Social proof like customer reviews and other forms of user-generated content, can significantly impact purchasing decisions. To help build trust with your customers, encourage subscribers to leave reviews and share their positive experiences so you can highlight on your website, social channels and everywhere your shoppers are.

Influencers are another effective way to build loyalty with your subscribers — 71% of consumers are likely to buy products from an influencer they trust. Just make sure to find the right ones that fit your subscription niche.

8. Effective communication

Customer communication is a key element of a fantastic subscription commerce experience. Start by establishing a cohesive communication plan that helps you keep subscribers informed and excited about new products, special offers, and other related news. Just don’t overdo it!

Then make sure to correspond regularly and segment your subscriber audiences so you can tailor your messages according to specific preferences and interests.

9. Exceptional customer support

Subscription commerce goes far beyond selling products or services. It requires excellent customer service that addresses issues quickly and efficiently. 

91% of shoppers say they won’t willingly do business again with a company that left them unhappy. Avoid dissatisfied subscribers by prioritizing your customer support with these tactics:

• Offer multiple channels such as live chat, email, or phone to ensure customers can reach out through their preferred method
• Utilize chatbots for support during off-business hours or for commonly asked questions and pain points
• Include self-service resources such as a thorough FAQ section that encourages customers to find answers on their own
• Make every effort to reply quickly to customer queries by addressing their questions or concerns promptly
• Respond to negative reviews and turn negative experiences into a positive that creates advocates for life

10. Retain subscribers through customer feedback

Listening to customer feedback is key to enhancing the subscription commerce experience and ensuring customer retention. Analyzing data, reviewing ratings and reviews, and sending out regular customer satisfaction surveys to subscribers are all useful ways to understand their needs and expectations better.

Another way to retain customers is to ensure you’re surprising and delighting them with every package you send. Don’t let your subscriptions go stale. Continue to find new ways to impress people, like providing new brands and products you know they’ll love. 

Subscription commerce FAQs

Thinking of starting a subscription business for your products? Ask yourself these questions to determine if the subscription commerce model is a good fit for your brand. 

Personalize your subscription commerce experience

The subscription commerce opportunity is ripe for brands and retailers to truly understand shopping habits, adapt to consumers’ new ways of buying, and instill trust to create long-lasting relationships. Not to mention, the recurring revenue stream it will provide.

As shopping behaviors continue to change, you might have to alter how you get your products in shoppers’ hands, and a subscription commerce offers a great way to do that. If you aren’t already thinking about starting a subscription service for your brand, you certainly should be.

But the difference between an okay service and one that delivers a wow factor is personalization. You need to know your audience better than you know yourself. Bazaarvoice AI tools can help you deliver personalized experiences that drive repeat business and higher customer satisfaction. Get in touch below to learn more.

Chances are you’ve most likely been to a Home Depot or ordered from them online. Need a new drill? Repainting your living room? Updating your lighting? Bored on a Sunday? It’s off to Home Depot. 

The home improvement retailer has 2,200 stores in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and offers more than one million products for its shoppers. They serve DIY customers, professional contractors, and installation businesses across North America. 

For brands that sell their products on HomeDepot.ca, figuring out how to maximize channel sales is critical for business. Brands can of course come to HomeDepot.ca with their own user-generated content (UGC) — like reviews, Q&As, and social posts — but the retail chain partners with Bazaarvoice specifically to provide robust UGC collection tools for brands. 

A UGC strategy done right increases the discoverability of products, boosts sales, and creates a valuable dialogue with customers and new shoppers. It also informs SEO benefits, provides insights for product innovation, reduces return rates, and ensures shoppers have a positive experience with your brand. The impact of reviews by numbers:

Customers who interact with UGC are 2x more likely to convert, according to Bazaarvoice research. Reviews help customers validate their purchasing decisions and feel more confident about the products they buy. 

Home Depot Canada has launched several Bazaarvoice solutions and features that improve the customer experience and help suppliers optimize UGC. One of its most successful solutions is its sampling program, the Home Depot Seeds Program. 

What is the Home Depot Seeds Program?

The Home Depot Seeds Program is a product sampling program that puts a brand’s high-priority products in the hands of Home Depot Canada’s most loyal shoppers, in exchange for honest reviews on HomeDepot.ca.

Bazaarvoice and Home Depot partnered to help brands select which key items to sample, identify Home Depot Canada audiences within the sampling community, and guide brands through fulfillment. 

How to leverage the Home Depot Seeds Program

Home Depot encourages its brands to enlist the Seeds Program for seasonal, exclusive, and new products. Or even any products that just need a fresh crop of reviews:

• New products: Brands can collect authentic UGC for products ahead of a new launch. Insights found within reviews ensure your products launch with a bang, and will help future shoppers feel confident about purchasing your new products
• Seasonal items: Optimize seasonal item product pages with UGC to boost discoverability and increase conversions during their limited time
• Home Depot exclusives: If your brand sells products exclusively through Home Depot, then HomeDepot.ca is the only place where shoppers can see that valuable UGC
• Products with outdated reviews: Search engines like Google favor pages with fresh content, so a a continuous flow of review content means more traffic to your product pages, which means more sales

Getting started with Bazaarvoice + Home Depot

The Home Depot Seeds Program has already helped some brands on HomeDepot.ca more than double their conversion rates. In addition, the program has been so successful that Home Depot vendors in the United States are now interested in using it to collect reviews for their Canadian exclusive items and product launches. 

Learn more about the Bazaarvoice + Home Depot partnership and more ways you can utilize strategies to increase channel sales over on our partnership page. Or get in touch directly below to get started.

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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This inspires them to shop. A whopping 97% of shoppers have purchased something from social media — and 69% have been inspired by social media to make a purchase via another channel. 

Where a third of shoppers spend $200 or more a month, active social media users spend almost 3x more, or $580 a month. That’s why you need a retail social media strategy — the relationship between social media and shopping is tighter than ever. 

Consumers want to discover new things and purchase them on the spot — 54% of shoppers say they’re willing to buy products on social media if they can get product info directly there. When we asked shoppers where they shop, we discovered:

Social commerce, which is the buying and selling of products on social media — and everywhere social reaches — through shoppable content, is here to stay, and more and more shoppers are jumping into it. With all that in mind, creating a retail social media strategy for your brand is a necessary move. 

Retailers who fully embrace social commerce can increase engagement, conversion, and revenue.

Your retail social media strategy 5-step guide

We have tips for defining your goals, implementing best practices on social platforms, building relationships on social media, driving sales, and using metrics to assess ROI. This five-step guide will help you launch your retail social media strategy. 

Step 1: Define your goals

Before you can hit the ground running, it’s crucial to define your retail social media strategy’s goals. Goals guide your brand’s focus on desirable outcomes and set a foundation for your marketing strategy — which you’ll continue to adjust and build upon as you discover what works and what doesn’t. 

Communicating your product’s benefits and connecting with your target audience can help you generate sales, grow your customer base, and increase brand loyalty. All of these are strong marketing objectives. Therefore, selecting the objective that coincides with your brand’s mission is the best place to start.  

Defining clear, realistic, and quantifiable goals will give direction to your retail social media marketing efforts. 

Build brand loyalty 

Transform your brand enthusiasts into your greatest advocates by building stronger relationships with your shoppers. That means answering their questions, breaking down buyer barriers, and sharing insights with shoppers. When your advocates feel heard and valued, your brand wins. 

Generate sales

Boost conversion rates by optimizing user-generated content (UGC) on social media channels, focusing on shopper experience to pique interest, and syndicating reviews across a vast network of retailers to increase buyer confidence. 

Stand out on social 

Get noticed by selecting the social media platforms that match your brand, collect feedback about your content and products, use your customers’ voices to connect with a broader audience, and be authentically true to your identity. 

Drive traffic and generate leads

Featuring UGC resonates with shoppers, since the content shows everyday people using your product. Consumers equate this to a recommendation from a friend or family member. When you display UGC on social media, it’ll help you drive traffic and generate leads, which ultimately helps boost sales.   

Step 2: Understand retail social media best practices

While most consumers prefer to engage with brands by following them on social media, others prefer interacting with influencer content and taking their recommendations. Consumers also appreciate being able to easily access brand or product information directly from social media, according to Bazaarvoice data. 

Above all, consumers seek out high-quality visual UGC on social media. Using a blend of robust visuals, videos, influencer content, and shopper reviews can increase buyer confidence while helping you achieve your strategic goals. 

Although quality content is a must on all social platforms, it’s crucial to have a solid grasp of each platform’s best practices. Here’s some platform-specific guidelines to get you started. 

a) Instagram

From trend discovery to product research, brand-created content on Instagram is a major player in a shopper’s buying journey. In fact, 83% of users say Instagram helps them discover new products, and 81% use it to research products and services. 

To capitalize on user activity, you must first complete the Instagram Shopping approval process to begin tagging products to make posts shoppable and drive sales. 

Consumers find your brand through discoveries

Instagram’s Explore Tab bridges the gap between aimless browsing and active shopping. With this feature, brands can enhance shopping experiences by immersing in your products and creating an in-store shopping feel. 

Brands like Iconic London have integrated a gallery of inspiring social content to create feed-like experiences on their home pages and product pages, which further reinforces its position and increases engagement. 

Not only that but the brand has seen an 11% lift in average order value for those who engaged with these galleries versus those who didn’t.

Shoppers can have a personalized shopping experience

Instagram’s algorithm gathers visually similar items, allowing users to scroll through content based on their interests and what they want to see. This helps users continually discover new products.

When you use Instagram, you can give your customers a personalized shopping experience. Lifestyle retailer Oliver Bonas, for example, uses Bazaarvoice Like2Buy to turn their Instagram visuals into shoppable posts to improve customer experience. They make their Instagram photos and videos shoppable and improve their shopper experience.

The tool has helped the brand drive more engagement and increase conversions by 188%. They can also collect new UGC assets to feature on Instagram later on. 

Instagram shopping is seamless 

Instagram’s checkout feature allows users to purchase products without leaving the app. Shoppers just have to enter their information, and it’s saved for future transactions — streamlining the shopping process. 

Although content will help users discover products, the checkout experience needs to be as easy as possible to ensure they complete their purchase and keep coming back. You should test your checkout process regularly to make sure it’s as seamless as possible and identify and fix any obstacles. 

You can use Instagram’s insights to track the success of your content on the platform, so you’ll know how well your retail social media strategy is working. 

b) Facebook

Facebook posts can help you make a splash, connect with consumers, and achieve your desired ROI. 

Simple, high-quality creative posts resonate most

High-quality, creative posts inspire Facebook users to interact with your brand. Each post should include images, videos, or GIFs that accurately echo your brand’s message. It’s also a great place to feature visual UGC. 

Posts inspire action 

Capture your Facebook followers’ attention via different types of actionable content. From sharing articles and blogs from your website to posting links to asking the audience to leave a review, there are various ways to inspire engagement. 

Understanding your audience builds a connection 

Connecting with your audience is about understanding how they tick and what inspires them. The better you understand your audience’s needs, the easier it will be to develop posts that connect with them. Facebook’s Page Insights can help you gather information about audience demographics and past posts they interacted with.

c) TikTok

TikTok content should be short (just about 15 seconds), visually compelling, and authentic. Here’s how it can be an influential part of your retail social media strategy. 

Trends are the heartbeat of the app

TikTok content follows trends, which are the ongoing conversations users have on the platform. You should jump on these trends. Complete the latest TikTok challenge or give your take on a popular trend — this will make you seem relatable and cool. It also helps you build momentum on the platform.  

Authenticity is the only way to be

TikTok is where people go to have fun and be themselves. Brands contributing to the platform should strive to be a part of the community and its light-hearted spirit, instead of pushing sales or other hidden initiatives. Being authentic is everything. 

TikTok Analytics enables you to track key metrics, like views, likes, comments, shares, and engagement rates. 

d) Pinterest

Pinterest is an amazing and underrated platform for retailers. It’s highly visual and made for discovering and saving (or pinning) your favorite things. 

The highest-performing pins are the ones that tell a story, are visually captivating, and entice the audience to want to learn more. Pins that will compel your audience to engage with your brand: 

• Standard pins. Vertical, high-resolution images are eye-catching. Putting your brand’s products front and center helps you showcase them. Utilizing specific titles and descriptions boosts pin discovery

• Video pins. Videos with an immediate visual hook will capture your target audience. This is important because some pinners browse the platform on mute. Also, video pins must have a strong cover image that conveys exactly what the video is about before the user scrolls past 

• Story pins. Like a video pin, a compelling cover image tells users what the story is about before clicking on it. Use multiple pages to tell your story and let your personality shine through with images, videos, colors, and fonts that suit your brand 

Like other social media platforms, Pinterest offers analytics that allow you to track pins, views, and more, so you can keep tabs on the effectiveness of your retail social media strategy. 

Step 3: Build relationships with customers and community connections

Consumers love following their favorite brands on social media to learn about new products, keep up with sales and promotions, and like and share their content. 70% of consumers discover products on social media — and, they’re more likely to buy from brands they follow on the platforms. 

Taking steps to build community connections and direct relationships with your customers will drive engagement and sales. Here’s how: 

Respond to comments and questions 

Shoppers want access to detailed, quality information about products while they’re shopping. They also want to feel like their needs are being met. So, when they comment on your post, send a question via a DM, or leave a review, respond to it. Consumers actually expect it. 

MeUndies has found value in Bazaarvoice Questions and Answers. When it answers customer questions, shoppers learn more about products and feel confident purchasing. This has increased conversions for the brand and reduced the number of customer service messages employees have to respond to. 

Provide top-notch customer service 

Most consumers say a brand’s customer service factors into their choice of whether to become a customer, according to a Microsoft report. Additionally, 58% say they’d end a relationship with a brand after poor customer service. Make shopping experiences seamless, respond to customer questions and feedback, and resolve problems immediately, and you’ll have a loyal customer for life. 

Bazaarvoice recently announced a partnership with customer service platform Zendesk to help brands build efficient, effective UGC programs that deliver quality customer experiences and improve customer service across a shopper’s journey.

Host contests and giveaways

Who wouldn’t want to show their love for their favorite brands and win a prize in the process? Social media contests and giveaways do just that. They also help brands engage followers, collect UGC, and increase sales. Instagram accounts that host contests grow 70% faster than those that don’t. 

Successful social media contests use brand-, product-, or campaign-specific hashtags. Samsonite ran a travel-gear giveaway using the hashtag #takewhatsyours to gather UGC and influencer content.

The campaign generated over 27,000 posts, which it uses on product pages, social media, and in its marketing to connect with customers.

Use social listening 

Through social listening, you can monitor topics, keywords, and hashtags related to mentions of your brand or products. You can also keep tabs on your competitors and what’s happening in your industry overall. Knowing what’s happening lets you capitalize on trends, resolve problems, and provide the content that you know audiences want to see. 

Create communities 

Focusing on your audience and building relationships with a brand community of supporters is always a great way to understand what your customers need and want — and respond accordingly. 

The rise of community commerce lets you leverage social creators to post real-life, authentic content that informs, entertains, and inspires. Just make sure it’s shoppable so people can easily buy what they see! 

Step 4: Drive sales with social media

With billions of social media users all over the world, social platforms are the place to connect with consumers and inspire them to buy your products. Social media is where people go to find out about the latest things. 

When you feature UGC on your social platforms, it helps build an authentic connection. Brands can see double the engagement when UGC is incorporated into retail social media strategies. There’s a number of ways to drive sales with social media.

Use social media to promote products 

Social platforms are a great place to showcase new products and post refreshers about your tried-and-true items. Another way to promote products on social media is with the help of influencers. 

Everyday social media users, like your real customers, are the influencers that resonate the most with shoppers. These influencers are considered authentic, and our research shows that 82% of consumers are purchasing more or the same number of products from everyday social media user recommendations this year. 

Run social media ads with UGC 

Consumers trust the advice of their peers over highly produced ads with professional photography and taglines that sound too sales-like. Running social media ads that feature UGC gives your paid ad campaigns an extra boost by driving higher conversions. 

For instance, bedding e-commerce brand Parachute increased its click-through rate by 35% and lowered its cost-per-click rate by 60% with UGC advertising. 

Use social media to drive traffic to your website 

Social media is the preferred spot for product inspiration and discovery. Tag your posts and make social content shoppable to drive traffic to your website and help shoppers complete their purchases. 

Use UGC collected from social media on your e-commerce website, on product pages, home pages, and anywhere else. Bazaarvoice Galleries can help by feeding social content to all of these places. Brands see 140% higher conversion rates when users interact with Galleries content on product pages. 

Step 5: Measure ROI to determine your retail social media strategy’s success 

Now that you know what it takes to create a solid retail social media strategy, how do you know it’s working and meeting your goals? The only way you can know is to measure your ROI.

This involves tracking metrics such as engagement, traffic, conversions, and revenue generation. Your goals and objectives will determine the type of social media metrics you track. 

Individual social media platforms offer their own analytics tools. Take, for example, if you want to build awareness on Instagram, you may want to closely examine Instagram Reels and Story views or engagement rates.

If you advertise on Facebook, you may want to measure the cost-per-click rate. But manually tracking and gathering metrics from each platform can be time-consuming and make your head spin if you’re unsure how to find meaningful data. Bazaarvoice offers several tools to help. 

The Social Commerce Platform provides brands with social analysis, UGC performance tracking, and competitor insights all on a single dashboard.

Let’s say you’re on TikTok and want to measure performance. You can do so from one singular dashboard. It can tell you what content to post, what’s engaging your audience, and what strategy works. 

Using tools like Premium Network Insights take the guesswork out of ROI assessments of your brand strategy. Our Social Analytics tool helps brands understand what their shoppers find most engaging, such as certain types of images or content. This can help inspire future marketing campaigns. 

Having a repertoire of analytics tools makes it much easier to pinpoint a successful retail social media strategy for your brand.

Retail social media strategy key takeaways 

Social media is the preferred source for product information and inspiration. Consumers follow their favorite brands on social platforms and expect to see compelling, authentic content that they can engage with. That’s why you need a robust retail social media strategy. 

Your retail social media strategy should focus on: 

• Defining your retail social media goals
• Deciding which types of content work best on different platforms (the answer is mostly always UGC!)
• Building authentic relationships with consumers 
• Driving sales with social content 
• Measuring your ROI to know what’s working and what needs work

This five-step guide can you get started. Learn more about how we can help you with social commerce here.

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The retailer’s guide to social commerce

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Chapters:

1. Types of user-generated content
2. Best examples of user-generated content
3. Turn customers into brand ambassadors with user-generated content

A brand is essentially faceless. It shows no emotions, has no lived experiences, and lacks facial expressions. Every element that makes humans connect isn’t there — and if there’s no connection, there’s no trust. So it’s not surprising that 88% of shoppers trust recommendations from people they know more than any brand-owned channel.

But brands can’t just go out and tap every member of their potential customers’ network to get the word-of-mouth wheels spinning. What they can do is lean into user-generated content (UGC) to infuse their marketing with the kind of authenticity and trust that word-of-mouth inspires.

UGC refers to content — photos, video, text, etc. — that’s created and published by unpaid contributors. And it’s a big win for brands. When consumers post about a brand on social media, they influence their followers’ buying decisions. According to our Shopper Experience Index, 69% of shoppers have been inspired by social media to make a purchase.

Types of user-generated content

There’s multiple different examples of user-generated content, as you’re about to see, coming in different styles, types, and formats. The most common types of UGC are:

• Product ratings and reviews
• Images
• Social media content
• Customer testimonials
• Blog posts
• Live streams

Best user-generated content examples

Let’s take a look at our favorite user-generated content examples and explore why UGC marketing is so effective in each scenario, and which approach is best for your brand.

1. IconicLondon: Make UGC shoppable

Makeup brand Iconic London has relied on UGC to build consumer trust since it first arrived on the scene. The brand’s website and Instagram account are populated with visual content from real users who love Iconic London’s products.

“As a niche brand, we exist because when people experience our formulas, they love them and want to talk about them,” explains Eleanor Assa, CMO at Iconic London.

The brand doesn’t just sit on the wealth of UGC their customers provide. Iconic London knows that their audience enjoys shopping in a social environment, so they upped the ante with social commerce tools: Bazaarvoice’s Galleries and Like2Buy. Shoppers can see Iconic London’s products in action via UGC and buy those that snag their attention without experiencing friction in their journey.

Iconic London’s bet on UGC is paying off. Within 12 months of implementing social tools across their website and Instagram, they saw a 126% lift in conversion rate, and an 11% lift in average order value.

Why it works    

This kind of imagery enables shoppers to more easily picture how the products look and perform because they can see real people — not just models — wearing and enjoying Iconic London’s makeup.

Instead of just inspiring potential customers, Iconic London goes the extra mile and empowers them to take action. With social commerce tools such as Like2Buy, shoppers can purchase directly from the makeup looks they want to recreate in just a few clicks.

2. Doritos: Provide content creation tools

To keep users engaged with its brand, Doritos launched Doritos Legion of Creators, a site where users can create branded images and videos that Doritos shares on its social media accounts.

Fans have created everything from snack-centric weather forecasts to pictures of themselves lounging in piles of nacho chips. Doritos keeps users engaged on the site with public challenges, such as its “oddly satisfying challenge,” which invites creators to make “hypnotizing” videos for a chance to be featured in its Instagram Stories.

And the fan-made content, such as above, receives thousands of likes and comments.

Why it works

The content from this campaign is outrageous and funny, so it’s no surprise that it drives a lot of engagement.

But Doritos isn’t just sharing photos of people enjoying its product with its Legions of the Bold campaign. It’s actually driving users to its website and providing them with tools to create one-of-a-kind content. And giving fans the opportunity to create their own works of art makes consumers feel connected to the brand.

In other words, it’s nacho average UGC campaign. (Sorry!)

3. GoPro: Generate a steady source of UGC

GoPro has long been synonymous with adventure and sky-high doses of adrenaline. The brand’s social media content is almost entirely made up of visuals captured by real users that represent GoPro’s essence down to a T. So much UGC is produced that you might wonder how the brand is able to get their hands on all of it. 

How did GoPro crack the UGC code? They generated a steady source of it with GoPro Awards — challenges that incentivize users to get their GoPros out, snap some cools visuals, and be rewarded in return.

The trick here is to keep things fresh. Some challenges are as easy as becoming picture of the day, while others encourage users to capture their best moments in the snow or showcase how they’re changing the world for the better. 

GoPro’s crown jewel is their Million Dollar Challenge. Since 2018, the company has encouraged customers to purchase the newest GoPro model (hello, revenue!) and use it to capture “life’s epic moments.” The latest edition awarded 55 creators a share of the $1 million — that’s $18,181.81 for the lucky winners and a thousands of examples of UGC for GoPro to spread across social media.

Why it works

Getting customers to actually produce UGC is one of the biggest barriers for brands who want to implement this strategy. GoPro found a perfect way around it with their daily and seasonal Awards, incentivizing users to get their cameras out for the chance to be seen by millions of people (20+ million on Instagram alone) and even get money rewards in return.

4. Parachute: Think outside social media

Direct to consumer bedding and bath brand Parachute encourages their audience to use the hashtag #MyParachuteHome in content featuring the company’s products. Parachute then repurposes customers’ photos in promotional content, not just social media posts.

For example, the brand uses UGC in retargeting ads, illustrating how real consumers use Parachute products. These ads, such as the right-hand one below, generated a 35% higher click-through rate and a 60% lower cost-per-click than ads that don’t feature UGC like the left-hand one below.

But Parachute doesn’t limit itself to implementing UGC in digital campaigns. The company also features UGC content on an insert card, enclosed in order boxes, that showcases how other buyers have made Parachute products a part of their home — and no doubt inspires consumers to snap some pics of their own and make another purchase.

Why it works

Many brands overlook opportunities to use UGC outside of organic social posts. Parachute, however, shows the value in repurposing this content and featuring it in ads, inserts, email campaigns, and more. This strategy is in line with current shopping habits, as 40% of shoppers say UGC makes them more likely to buy a product from an ad. 

5. LEGO: Turn users into product development mavens

What if we told you that UGC is not only a powerful vehicle to build consumer trust but also a potential goldmine for product development? That’s what LEGO, an iconic childhood (and adulthood, to be honest!) staple, has figured out.

The brand has a solid brand community in LEGO Ideas, where customers can participate in activities and challenges ranging from “celebrate Japanese culture” to “100 years of fairy tales” (using legos, of course).

But LEGO’s most impressive launch yet is Product Ideas. The campaign empowers users to design a completely new LEGO set with their existing pieces for the chance of seeing it become an actual, official product.

It’s an opportunity for many to turn childhood dreams into a reality, work with LEGO designers, and share their creative verve with fellow LEGO enthusiasts on social media.

Why it works

LEGO is offering the ultimate reward to contestants who are fans of the brand. There’s an extraordinary incentive for people to share their creations and generate a ton of buzz around them that leads to invaluable UGC for the brand. And LEGO also gets new product ideas, voted for by users that want to buy them, out of the deal. It’s a win-win-win situation.

6. Glossier: Foster a community that wants to share

Here we have a great example of how user-generated content makes your brand authentic and relatable. Beauty brand Glossier drives engagement with its social content by encouraging customers to get vulnerable and share their selfies. It does this by posting customer stories that are often heartwarming, as well as numerous photos of people using Glossier products. 

The beauty brand relies more on customer-submitted imagery than it does on models and product shots. Users eagerly take to social media to post photos of themselves using and wearing Glossier products.

For example, when the brand launched its Mega Greens Galaxy Mask, thousands of users shared selfies of themselves in the mask with the hashtag #maskforce, which Glossier reposted on its own social accounts like above.

Why it works

Getting recognition is one of the key reasons we post on social media, so UGC gives followers the chance to step into the spotlight. And Glossier does this with compassion and flair.

The #maskforce selfies are unique, feminine, often humorous, and 100% real, making them right on-brand for Glossier. The company aims to make, “every single woman an influencer,” according to founder Emily Weiss. And Glossier’s example of sharing user-generated content does exactly that, giving every user a chance to be the face of the brand.

7. LeCol: Combine authentic visual content with reviews

The concept of user-generated content is closely associated with visuals. And visuals are important when the goal is to showcase products being used by real people. But there’s another dimension to UGC that matters just as much for brands that want to inspire that sweet, profitable trust: ratings and reviews. 

What happens when brands combine visual and written UGC? They get themselves a winning combo. Case in point: Le Col, a high-end sporting gear brand whose number one challenge is convincing first-time customers that the premium prices are worth it. To drive this point home, Le Col integrated product galleries with customer reviews.

According to Andrew Longley, Head of Digital at Le Col, “customers who engage with our gallery are five times more likely to convert.” Le Col’s average order value for products with reviews increased by 13%.

Why it works

LeCol recognizes the importance of every type of UGC. By combining the power of visuals, where their products are the star, and written reviews, with detailed accounts of first-hand experiences, they double their chances of gaining first-time buyers’ trust.

8. La Croix: Curate a branded look

The social media accounts of sparkling water La Croix are filled with user-generated content. From fan art to photos of young adults — its target demographic — posing with their favorite flavors, La Croix populates its feeds with content created by people who clearly love its product.

And although the content comes from a variety of creators, La Croix manages to maintain a consistently branded look. Scroll through its Instagram page and you’ll see bright colors, sunny landscapes, and smiling faces again and again.

La Croix accomplishes this in part by hosting giveaways of branded merchandise, such as the shirt featured above, and by providing interactive displays that its fans want to engage with.

Why it works

Consistent branding is important, even where UGC is concerned. Imagine your best friend of 20 years shows up at your door and suddenly switches their demeanor, style, and even their accent. It’d be jarring, and the same goes for branding. 

By maintaining consistency, La Croix ensures that its personality and voice remain recognizable and trustworthy to the audience. The brand integrates UGC in a way that complements the existing narrative, ensuring that the core message and essence remain unaltered and authentic.

9. Aerie: Be inclusive

This lingerie and swim brand invites customers of all ages and sizes to wear its designs. Back in 2014, Aerie even famously pledged to stop retouching photos and encouraged its audience to do the same.

To promote this message, generate UGC, and bolster its social responsibility efforts, the brand partnered with the National Eating Disorders Association for several years in a row. Aerie donated $1 to the NEDA for every unedited swimsuit photo an Instagram user posted with the hashtag #AerieReal.

Why it works

This inclusive campaign allows consumers to see real, unedited images of people wearing the products. It encourages body positivity among participants and has a charitable angle that modern consumers expect of brands. Consumers are more likely to share UGC when they feel accepted and celebrated by an inclusive brand, like Aerie, so the campaign fosters a positive loop of engagement.

10. Sephora: Create a unique space for users to share their experiences

A powerhouse in the beauty industry, Sephora has embraced UGC by establishing their Beauty Insider Community, a digital platform where makeup enthusiasts, skincare lovers, and beauty aficionados come together to discuss, review, and showcase their favorite products. 

Instead of relying solely on influencer posts or ads, Sephora has given voice to its community members, allowing them to upload pictures, share experiences, and engage in discussions. The platform not only showcases how products look on a diverse range of skin tones and types but also offers tutorials, Q&A sessions, and personal stories, providing potential buyers with genuine feedback and inspiration. 

Why it works 

Beauty is deeply personal. So what better way to showcase products than through the diverse experiences and looks of real users? The Beauty Insider Community offers a sense of authenticity and inclusivity that standard ads often miss. 

It’s about connection, community, and shared passion. With this dedicated space, Sephora empowers its customers to share their UGC and also inspire and be inspired, turning each interaction into potential sales for the brand. 

Turn customers into brand ambassadors with user-generated content

These examples of user-generated content illustrate how you can empower customers to do word-of-mouth marketing on your brand’s behalf. But in order to take advantage of UGC marketing, brands must provide consumers with opportunities to share their creations.

Invite customers to post content with a specific hashtag, share user photos on social accounts, or add an on-site shoppable gallery. Brands can also create opportunities for fans to interact with branded merchandise, or direct users on site to make original content.

By making user-generated content an integral part of your marketing efforts, you’re giving potential buyers an authentic look at what your customers think of you rather than simply providing them with your brand’s perspective.

Watch our on-demand masterclass below as we talk through more user-generated content examples and how to use them to build your own UGC strategy.

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Masterclass: How to build a best-in-class user-generated content strategy

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One nice side effect to this, though — aside from the constant influx of quality memes — is the sustained rise of social commerce. You saw your friend wearing that dress in Italy and now you want to wear that same dress so you can pretend you’re in Italy instead of just at brunch. 

Given that social commerce sales in the U.S. alone are expected to reach $145 billion by 2028, it’s time to start your social commerce strategy or risk being left behind in the middle ages of brand strategy.

Using the latest research and our unique insights, we’ve put together everything you need to know about the state of social commerce today.

Chapters:

1. What is social commerce
2. Why social commerce works
3. How to leverage social commerce
4. Social commerce brand examples
5. Getting started with social commerce

A lot of things in life get planned around shopping: weekends, vacations, back-to-school prep, and holidays, to name a few. We wander around shopping districts, malls, and neighborhood markets to window shop and find our next favorite thing. 

While shopping can be a chore, it can also be an adventure — one that has a strong social component. We ask salespeople and our shopping companions for their opinions on a daring pair of sunglasses, the right shade of paint for the living room, or a gift for someone who’s difficult to shop for. Those aren’t the only places we discover products anymore, however. 

70% of shoppers discover products on Facebook and Instagram

According to our research

“Pandemic-inspired shopping behaviors are sticking around”, according to our Shopper Experience Index. In response, brands continue to turn to social commerce to bring the fun of shopping onto digital platforms. Scrolling is the new window shopping, and it gives brands a new place to experiment to surprise and delight their customers. 

For the right strategy, you need to tap into the best available data. Bazaarvoice is fortunate to have a mix of behavioral data, research, and consumer insights sourced from the more than 7.5 million-strong community of shoppers on the Influenster App. What do they have to say about the state of things? 

Of those surveyed most recently, “50% agree or strongly agree that social media plays an active role in influencing the products that they choose to buy (only 24% disagree!)”, and “one in two shoppers have bought via social media in the past year”.

As social commerce increases, brands are experimenting with new ways to present content across social and expanding to new channels. Certain categories of shopping continue to shift from in-store to online.

But before we delve any deeper, what actually is social commerce? 

What is social commerce?

Social commerce is the buying and selling of products and services through shoppable content on social media and everywhere social media reaches.

With social commerce, users can shop directly through images and videos that showcase products without ever leaving the source. Let’s say you’re scrolling through Instagram, and you see an ad in which a model or influencer is wearing a new dress and accessories. You can tap on any of the displayed items for sale and be sent directly to the checkout page without ever leaving the app. The experience looks like this:

But social commerce doesn’t just influencers shoppers in-app. Or even on social media at all. Social commerce now influencers shoppers everywhere it’s displayed, at any touchpoint on the buying journey — on product pages, in emails, and even in-store.

The goal of social commerce is for brands to reach new audiences and let them make purchases with minimal friction. This, in turn, increases add-to-cart rate, sales, and engagement on social platforms and wherever social content lives.

Eight out of 10 respondents to our Shopper Experience Index have increased their time on social over the last year — and that has affected their shopping habits. “Three in four say their shopping behavior has been very influenced by social media”. 

Discovery is still the main drive: “65% use it for inspiration, 61% shop when they stumble across something mid-feed, and 60% shop directly from recommendations or links from influencers”. 

Why social commerce works 

Two words: social proof. Social proof is the concept of using the decisions our peers have already made to make our own decisions. 

For example, if you’re walking downtown in a city and see a busy restaurant, you’re likely to believe they serve great food. It wouldn’t be full otherwise, right? Or maybe you’re mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, and you see someone wearing a nice shirt. They look great. You decide you want to look great in this shirt, too. You buy it.

And there’s the primary benefit of social commerce: it exposes brands to new customers and customers to new brands in a casual, engaging setting (that digital window shopping). Shoppers can explore products without even intending to shop in the first place.

Social commerce reaches consumers on the platforms they already use instead of waiting for consumers to seek them out, enhancing the customer experience. It’s particularly effective on Instagram because, “you don’t begin your journey with a search, you begin with a scroll,” says Curalate co-founder Apu Gupta.

This is the kind of online shopping experience consumers crave — one out of two shoppers are buying on social networks regularly, and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Statista estimates that 2023 sales via social media platforms globally will add up to nearly $1.3 billion. 

Extending the reach of social commerce

While social commerce starts on social media platforms, it doesn’t have to end there. Brands can take the concept a step further by syndicating shoppable social media posts to other channels, including product pages, blogs, and email newsletters. This offers more opportunities for customers to discover the engaging content that’s shared and created within brands’ social communities. Bringing social content to e-commerce has resulted in:

The key is making everything as frictionless as possible. 54% of shoppers say they’d be more likely to buy a product on social media if they could click the post and get product info directly there. 

Bazaarvoice’s social commerce tools are what make it possible for brands to distribute their shoppable social content on other sales channels, lowering friction across the brand experience. These tools can convert any image or video into one or multiple product pages. 

With this function, shoppers can hover over any of the products featured in a social post to learn more about them and click through to purchase. Brands can then use this media to post on various different channels.

Case study: River Island

International apparel brand River Island used the Bazaarvoice Galleries tool to share user-generated content (UGC) from social channels on its website, resulting in a 184% conversion lift and a 45% average order value increase. 

River Island was able to accumulate a ton of quality UGC by encouraging its customers to post their purchases using branded hashtags and tagging River Island on social media. Then, it turned that UGC into shoppable images to display on its website, including its homepage, product pages, and a full-page gallery.

River Island then took its social commerce campaign a step further, integrating a wish list feature that enabled shoppers to save items without interrupting their browsing.

How to leverage social commerce

Boost your own brand’s social commerce strategy with these tactics to simultaneously attract customers and drive social conversions.

Make social shoppable

The first step in social commerce is to convert social content that features your brand’s products into shoppable images and videos. The top social commerce platforms are Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and TikTok. The newest platform in the space, TikTok, “will gain 9.6 million social buyers in 2023, more than the net increase of Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest combined”, per eMarketer’s recent report. 

Here’s a quick overview of how social shopping works on each platform. 

• Facebook: Facebook Shops uses the same process as Instagram to set up an online storefront — by uploading products individually or importing an entire catalog of multiple items. Facebook Shops encourages shoppers to interact with sellers if they have questions using Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram Direct. This makes it even more like an in-person shopping experience
• Instagram: Instagram Shopping allows brands to upload their product catalogs to link with Instagram photos and videos featuring catalog items. They can then be grouped in collections using the Instagram Commerce Manager. Followers can tap on images to purchase within the app. (The Instagram Shop tab was removed as of February 2023) 
• TikTok: TikTok Shop launched in the fall of 2022 and allows merchants and creators to showcase and sell their products to the community within the app via live shopping, shoppable videos, or a product showcase 
• Pinterest: Similar to Instagram, Pinterest Shopping allows brands to upload their product catalogs and then converts each item into shoppable Pins. Brands on Pinterest can also enable a Shop tab on their profile, consolidating all of their shoppable images and video Pins 

According to Pinterest, shoppers are willing to spend “80% more per month” on their platform compared to other social commerce platforms.

And while these four might be the top platforms shoppers turn to, they aren’t the only ones! Snapchat and YouTube both have their own place in the realm of social shopping.

Snapchat partnered with IPG MAGNA to conduct their own research on The Future of Social Commerce, surveying around 8,000 consumers across four different markets (the UK, Germany, the US, and Saudi Arabia). Their findings bolster other social commerce research – social media is key for product discovery, shoppers turn to their networks to aid in discovery, and social makes shopping easier and more convenient. 

What Snapchat adds to the discussion is the potential around augmented reality (AR) in shopping. According to their research, “2 out of 3 consumers said they would be even less likely to shop in-store if they got to virtually experience the product before purchasing it.” Regular Snapchatters were especially enthusiastic about this option. 

• Snapchat: This year Snapchat launched AR Enterprise Services (ARES) to help brands take advantage of AR and AI shopping options. This is in addition to their Shopping Suite, which allows consumers to virtually try-on products in real time and offers tools like a Fit Finder 
• YouTube: YouTube refocused its efforts on creators this year, discontinuing its beta program for creators to earn money by tagging products from third-party brands in videos with shoppable links, instead rolling out its affiliate program to all creators 

The focus on creator-curated products is significant, since eMarketer’s Insider Intelligence reported that, “a quarter of US consumers start their search on YouTube when shopping online, more than on Instagram or TikTok, per Jungle Scout.” 

Engage with shoppers

The point of social commerce is to facilitate a shopping experience in a space where people are already connecting and interacting. It’s not enough just to upload your product catalog and post shoppable content. You should work to enhance the digital shopping experience by engaging your current and potential audience in fun, dynamic ways. 

Social media users love new app features and the brands that know how to use them in interesting ways. Brands can easily engage with fans by playing with Instagram Polls, Reels, Stories, and Questions in their content strategy to captivate and entice followers. These are fun ways to get followers to interact with content while simultaneously getting feedback about products. Livestream shopping is another exciting new addition to social commerce platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and TikTok.

With Bazaarvoice’s Like2Buy feature, brands can contact shoppers who clicked the “link in bio” button but didn’t convert. This way, you can engage them after they’ve browsed your Instagram Shop with a thoughtful retargeting strategy. With this tool, brands can go a step further and create a lookalike audience based on their most engaged followers. That’s a surefire way to grow your customer base!

Focus on social content, not just platforms

Social commerce isn’t just limited to social media, contrary to its most common definition. Sales from social media only account for 4.4% of all e-commerce sales in the U.S., but its influence reaches beyond the confines of our feeds.

Brands can and should use the content created within their social media networks on their other sales channels, like e-commerce websites, emails, blog posts, and third-party retail sites. Tools like Bazaarvoice Galleries feed social content in beautiful displays on home pages, product pages, dedicated gallery pages, or anywhere else on a brand’s website.

By bringing photos and videos from social to website visitors and email subscribers, brands can share the social commerce experience with a wider audience and reduce friction across the brand experience. As a bonus, this repurposed content lets your team work smarter — saving the time and resources required to create fresh content for multiple channels. 

Let users create your content

What’s the secret to social commerce success? User-generated content, or UGC. Leverage UGC to attract shoppers with realistic, inspiring representations of your brand and products. While social commerce doesn’t always have to include UGC, it’s a powerful approach.

UGC is what makes social commerce more social, interactive, and authentic than traditional advertising. It also lends the authority of social proof: your real-life customers become the face of the brand and provide free marketing material out of genuine enthusiasm for your products. 

UGC creates organic engagement when the user tags a brand, uses a branded hashtag, posts comments, engages with a poll, etc. Then the brand can reciprocate with a repost, which it can use to sell products and syndicate on its website.

You don’t have to wait around for customers to post glowing content about your brand on Instagram either — you can proactively work with social media influencers. According to our recent Influenster survey, 60% of respondents said they shop from influencer recommendations. How often? 

• 69% sometimes 
• 18% all the time
• Only 13% rarely 

And if you’re wondering what kind of influencers those surveyed say they shop from, the breakdown is pretty fascinating: 

• 35% from people they consider “subject-matter experts”
• 25% from family and friends’ recommendations 
• 23% from social media stars
• 13% from none of them
• And only 5% from celebrities 

There’s a reason more and more brands are leveraging influencer marketing and even increasing their budgets for it. Influencer Marketing Hub found that 67% of those respondents that budget for influencer marketing intend to increase their influencer marketing budget over 2023 in its benchmark report. 

Tapping into the reach of the right influencer or influencers and their highly engaged communities can bring a good return on investment, especially compared to what it might cost to reach the same audience via traditional advertising on the same platform. 

Pro tip: Calculate the impact UGC can have on your ROI right here.

Which platforms should your brand concentrate on? Based on Influencer Marketing Hub’s 2023 Benchmark Report, TikTok is now the most popular platform for influencer marketing (56%), with Instagram right on its heels (51%) and Facebook (42%) and YouTube (38%) following. 

Find success with sampling

While influencers are more often paid directly now than through product samples, around a third of brands still do the latter. This works in favor of brands since the smaller influencers require less compensation but have higher engagement rates. 

Sampling programs streamlines the process of getting brand products into the hands of eager influencers. They then return the favor by producing valuable content.

Beyond visual media, reviews are another powerful form of UGC to implement in social commerce strategies. The likelihood of a shopper purchasing a product with five reviews increases by 270% than one without any reviews. Post reviews alongside social commerce content to boost your impact even further on your social media, emails, or website or by tagging or linking the corresponding products so followers can purchase instantly.

Boost social commerce marketing with ads

Promoting UGC with some advertising dollars can catapult your social commerce efforts. Paid ads that incorporate UGC get high conversions, and based on Instagram and Facebook’s algorithm, ads with high engagement like UGC get more exposure. Parachute, a bedding e-commerce company, increased its click-through rate by 35% and lowered its cost-per-click rate by 60% with UGC advertising.

Instagram lets you turn any post into an ad and choose your target audience by promoting it. The more advanced Ads Manager enables you to create ads across platforms and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, for mobile or desktop. 

Pinterest has robust advertising capabilities, so you can promote image, product, and video Pins with direct links to checkout pages. TikTok offers a variety of advertising options, starting with the more standard in-feed ads and video shopping ads common on other platforms. TikTok also offers more tailored options, like the Creator Marketplace, which can match brands with the right creator to collaborate with, or the Creative Exchange, which provides end-to-end professional creative support. 

You can handily monitor your return on investment, too, since each ad platform also includes analytics for thorough performance tracking.

Use customer behavior insights

Conducting regular reporting using customer insights gives companies and brands a competitive advantage. Be sure you’re routinely analyzing engagement metrics, feedback, and reviews from shoppers to optimize the social commerce experience you’re providing. 

For those wanting to go even further, Social Analytics allows brands to to understand what their shoppers find most engaging, from visual themes to specific content types.

Discovering what consumers are saying and how they feel about products can inform and improve product descriptions and messaging for social commerce content. Digging into the popularity of products based on views, conversions, and reviews can determine which products to focus on for your social commerce strategy.

From a top-level standpoint, these insights can also help brands tweak the products themselves and develop new ones.

Social commerce brand examples

See it in action: these social commerce brand examples show how to combine UGC with social commerce to make shoppable posts that drive conversions.

MAM

During the pandemic, MAM UK found themselves with the same challenge facing many brands: creating an integrated shopping experience for their customers that brought everything brick-and-mortar online. Then as the pandemic wore on, translating back to a more intertwined dual experience. Today, many customers do their research online before buying offline (ROBO) giving UGC increased power in the shopping experience.  

MAM implemented Bazaarvoice Social Commerce with Galleries and Like2Buy — and that social proof ultimately doubled their traffic and conversion rates. In hard numbers, that turned out to be a 108% increase in conversion rate and a 58% increase in average order value. Using Like2Buy alone drove site visits up by 157% and generated an extra £96k in yearly revenue.

All of this proved the power of UGC in the social shopping experience for these premium baby products. 

Villeroy & Boch

A lot of lifestyle brands share the challenge of wanting to show off how their products will actually look inside of consumer homes and how they will realistically be used. UGC is an impactful, authentic way to do this that audiences connect with more than polished campaigns. 

With an abundance of UGC shared by consumers across social that they were already capturing, Villeroy & Boch moved to integrate it into their online store. Bazaarvoice Galleries allowed them to highlight this content across newsletters and hompages in a way that showcased how consumers were using and styling their ceramic goods. 

This ultimately led to a 275% increase in conversion rate among users who engaged with UGC!

Rael 

Personal-care and beauty brand Rael galvanized its target audience to spread UGC far and wide across social media with sample products from a new skincare line. It sent product samples to Bazaarvoice’s Influenster community to generate reviews and social content to support new product launches. The campaign resulted in 3,000 customer reviews and 9.8 million impressions from thousands of social posts, shares, likes, and comments.

The responses from the sample recipients also gave Rael instrumental insight into its marketing strategy. It identified a product it previously underestimated, which generated lots of positive reviews, and on that basis, it made it a focus of its future marketing.

Rael is now also equipped with a bank of UGC from a sampling campaign to repurpose across its marketing channels.

DSW 

One challenge major shoe retailer DSW faces is showing how its products look in the real world when customers can’t physically try them on — a common problem in e-commerce. The solution is where UGC comes in.

To procure a large volume of quality UGC, DSW launched a hashtag campaign prompting its audience to tag how they wear their DSW fashions with #MyDSW. Showcasing this content on its website and social media resulted in a 2x conversion lift.

Getting started with social commerce

What traditional e-commerce lacks in the shopping experience, social commerce makes up for in spades. Shoppers are the stars of social commerce marketing and inspire other real people to make enthusiastic, confident purchases.

Here’s our best advice for getting started with social commerce:  

• Turn social media channels into virtual storefronts. Upload product catalogs to Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest — and have some fun experimenting with how you present your products on TikTok! 
• Leverage UGC to get the most mileage from social commerce content. Create shoppable media using content from followers and influencers
• Social commerce extends beyond social media. Spread shoppable social content to as many marketing channels as possible, including your website pages and email campaigns
• Listen to how consumers are responding to social commerce. Insights from social interactions and reviews can help you develop strategies and products
• Put the social in social commerce. Use shoppable social media content to engage with followers by reposting their content, encouraging questions and comments, using interactive app features, and retargeting potential customers 
• Don’t forget TikTok. If your brand isn’t already on TikTok, now’s the time! It’s quickly grown to be the most popular channel for influencer marketing and is outpacing its predecessors for social commerce, too

Before all of that though, the first step is finding the right social commerce provider to work with. You don’t have to go it alone. The right provider will save you time, stress, and money. Below are some example questions to help you vet providers:

These are just a select view of the questions we recommend asking but you can find more here. Or if you’ve already started with social commerce and want to streamline your efforts, Bazaarvoice’s social publishing tools make social commerce easy. Brands and retailers can schedule and track content all in one place for efficient, streamlined execution that gives you everything you need to win on social.

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The ultimate guide to increasing social commerce conversion

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