You’ve been served retargeting ads before, some more effectively than others. Some sites (not naming names, Amazon) love to retarget you with ads for items you’ve already bought. These ads are useless when the item they’re showing is one you (hopefully) won’t need to repurchase soon, like a toaster or a pair of headphones.

But sometimes, you see that cute top you were waffling over, or those pants you love now come in another color…and they’re on sale. 

This is the kind of retargeting you want your company to do: the kind that reaches high-potential buyers with info that will convince them to convert. Campaigns that can do this are a great option for online retailers, especially small and mid-sized outfits. They have a fantastic ROI and can help you increase sales among newcomers as well as returning customers.  

Okay, but what if you’ve never done retargeting marketing before? It may seem like a big world to jump into, especially given the looming changes to third-party cookies. But you don’t need to feel overwhelmed. Here’s how to sell your boss (or your boss’s boss) on green-lighting a campaign — and how to launch and administer it so their investment proves itself worthwhile. 

Chapters:

1. What is retargeting in marketing?
2. Three benefits of retargeting marketing
3. Elements of a good retargeting ad campaign
4. How to get started with retargeting marketing
5. Win at retargeting marketing with contextualization

What is retargeting in marketing?

Retargeting marketing campaigns exist to reach out to prospects who have already shown interest in your company or products in the hopes of convincing them to buy. The clue’s in the name.

As a marketer, you probably know the rule of seven. This guideline tells us that most customers need to encounter a brand at least seven times before making a purchase. It’s a concept that was born pre-internet but has been reaffirmed multiple times in the digital age.

Retargeting helps your brand reach that magic number by tracking your online visitors across the web to serve them branded ads. You can use retargeting for display ads on any website or to reach your prospects on social media. 

And now that the modern e-commerce funnel has changed (read: collapsed) and purchases can happen anywhere at any time, retargeting marketing increases your chances of driving purchases even further.

Preferably, these ads call back to a shopper’s interactions with your brand and products. Even if your target doesn’t click an ad, seeing it will increase their familiarity with your brand while keeping their shopping (sorry, browsing) experience top-of-mind.

The idea is to build enough trust and remind your would-be buyers about your products enough times to finally earn that sale. 

Three benefits of retargeting marketing

Anyone can launch and benefit from a retargeting marketing campaign. However, the upsides are especially big for small and mid-sized retailers. National and multinational brands have more to spend on marketing and, therefore, have a much easier time staying top-of-mind with audiences.

Retargeting marketing allows your small brand to do more with less and reach niche audiences much more easily.

1. Generate (targeted) awareness for less

Because people typically need familiarity with a brand before they choose to buy, merchants have to do a lot of work upfront to woo potential customers. Large brands can plaster the web (and the physical world) with ads and other buzzy marketing campaigns. Smaller brands simply don’t have that luxury.

Retargeting allows you to build awareness on a budget by focusing on a narrower (and high-potential) audience. When you spend money to retarget people who have heard of your brand and products at least once, you’re speaking to an audience that’s already somewhat engaged.

You’re not spending money on thousands of views that won’t result in any interest, you’re being smart with your ad spend to find those who already are. 

2. Easily promote new items or collections

A successful product launch requires significant investment in marketing. As with your awareness campaigns, using retargeting allows you to make a smaller investment without losing your chance to make a splash. 

Done well, retargeting allows you to segment your audience by behavior and/or interest. You can use your existing retargeting lists to pinpoint would-be buyers who are most likely to care about a new product.

For instance, shoppers who have previously looked at women’s activewear might want to know about those new yoga pants in stock. Those who have been browsing your phone cases might be a good target for ads sharing your stylish new power banks.

3. Increase customer lifetime value (CLV)

You don’t have to limit your retargeting efforts to prospective customers — why not reach out to those who have already bought from you to see if you can entice them to return? You can share a new product as mentioned above or maybe to let them know your company’s having a sale. If you sell items that need to be replenished regularly, maybe showing a new series of ads every other month will remind them and bring them back to your store.

Retargeting gives you a way to do personalized marketing on a small scale and effectively reach audiences who are likely to make a purchase. 

Elements of a good retargeting ad campaign

A retargeting marketing campaign isn’t guaranteed to work just because you’re reaching out to customers who have recently expressed interest in your brand. Your ads still need to speak to your audience’s needs and desires and reach them in the right place and at the right time.

Keep your campaigns effective by following these criteria.

Highly specific ads

Retargeting campaigns aren’t just about reminding people your brand exists. It’s about reminding people why they were interested in your brand to begin with. That’s why these ads typically feature products rather than generic brand imagery or content.

The more your ad speaks to a target’s reason for visiting your site in the first place, the better chance it has of achieving its desired goal — to bring them back so they’ll complete the purchase. Display the exact item(s) your target viewed, products within the same category or that share a use case, or items you know are popular among the demographic your target is part of. 

Specific ads give viewers a concrete reason to check out your site again, and when they come to your store with that reason in mind, they’re more likely to make a purchase.  

Coordinated landing pages

This is a must-have for any ad campaign, and it’s no different in the world of retargeting marketing. Your ads are specific, so your landing pages must be, too. 

Ads that tout the product someone was looking at but then bounce them to your homepage will leave a bad taste in your audience’s mouth by wasting their time. They know what they are after — so take them straight to it, explain the benefits, and make the purchase easy to complete! 

Adequate longevity

Retargeting campaigns aren’t one-and-done. You’re looking to slowly build up familiarity with and trust in your brand. That means you should expect and want your audience members to view your retargeting ads more than once. You’ve caught them during a decision period, and you want to keep reaching them as they weigh your brand and product against other options.

The length of the decision period varies from product to product — someone who’s looking for a new TV is likely to spend more time browsing reviews than someone who just wants a fun new accessory for their summertime socializing. 

One thing to keep in mind is how often during the decision period a person sees your ads. Especially if they’re likely to spend a lot of time considering different options, constantly bombarding them with ads is more likely to annoy them than to win them over.

Most brands set frequency caps on retargeting ads for this exact reason, so no one feels like you’re following them around incessantly. 

Smart targeting

Retargeting ads are meant to go after potential buyers, but not everyone who visits your site is one of those. Don’t let these campaigns exceed their usefulness by casting too wide a net. 

For example, targeting everyone who hits your homepage will mean a lot of money spent on people who looked around and decided your brand didn’t match their needs. The same goes for targeting someone who spent ten seconds on a product page before bouncing. 

Make sure your retargeting marketing is aimed at individuals who have engaged with your brand. What that means may vary based on your industry and typical customer behaviors, but typically, it involves interacting with a product page by looking at product details or reading reviews, visiting multiple pages on your site, or signing up for an account. 

How to get started with retargeting marketing

Sold yet? If not, we’ll wait while you refresh yourself on the small percentage of buyers who actually make a purchase on any given visit to your e-commerce store. If yes, we hope you’re ready to get started — because jumping in doesn’t have to be a big deal. 

Don’t be afraid to start small with retargeting. Your initial campaigns can help you gather data and prove the effectiveness of the method. Here’s how to launch your very first one. 

Add a retargeting pixel to your website (and start gathering customer data)

The very first step in launching a retargeting campaign is finding ways to identify your audience so you can find them elsewhere online. You’ll want to add the Google Remarketing Tag and Facebook’s Conversions API to your site. 

Note that Google’s retargeting tag may not be helpful for long. In response to customer demands for more privacy (and governmental pushes for the same), third-party cookies like the tracking pixel are being phased out. Google is already blocking them for a small percentage of browser users and testing new advertising tools and techniques on that population. The company is still refining its new ad offerings, but it seems traditional cookie-based retargeting won’t have an analog in this new system. 

Therefore, you need to get something a bit more stable than a browser cookie. Facebook’s Conversions API is one example of a tool that will outlast this change — other sites may or may not release their own. You can take matters into your own hands by convincing visitors to sign up for your email list or share their phone number for text message marketing purposes.

Once third-party cookies are gone for good, customers’ contact information will be the best, if not the only, way to retarget them.

Link your pixel (and upload customer data) to retargeting ad providers

You can retarget ads through multiple platforms: Google Display Network, the Google SERP, and social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. (Note that the latter two also have their own retargeting pixels for you to install if you choose to use these platforms.)

The setup for each site is a little different, so we’ll let them explain best practices to you. 

For now, you may simply need to follow the steps on each site to set up your third-party cookies. However, if the option is available, we recommend you get used to uploading your email lists. You’ll have to start doing it someday, so why not build the foundations for your next-gen retargeting efforts now? 

As a plus, you can start learning how to best segment these audiences when cookies aren’t doing all the work for you.

Segment your audience by behavior and preferences

Personalized ads tend to work better, and the best way to personalize retargeting ads is by looking at what your customers do on your site. Of course, this type of retargeting marketing may become more time-intensive once third-party cookies are fully out of the picture. Still, let’s talk a little bit about what this kind of retargeting can do.

Even if your store has a very narrow niche, your shoppers likely came to the site looking for a specific item or type of product. The more you know about what they were after, the better; you can reach them with retargeting ads that promote the product or product category they were browsing. Ads that understand your audience’s needs will, of course, do a better job of bringing them back to your site.  

However, this type of retargeting requires the ability to track each user closely and then transmit their browsing data to an ad server, which will become much harder when third-party cookies are no longer allowed. It may be easier to build retargeting ad campaigns around your most popular products — the ones that your visitors are more likely to have looked at or at least know about.

You can then break out these ads by demographic, so you have a campaign aimed at millennial women, one for Gen Z women, one for millennial men, and so on.

Finally, sometimes audience behavior isn’t just about what they view on your site, it’s about how far they get in the customer journey. A person who browses your site for ten minutes has a different relationship to your brand than one who makes an account, and that person needs a different approach than one who put some items in their cart but then decided not to buy. 

To recap, here’s the ways you can segment your audience (and tailor ads accordingly):

• By product viewed: Serve ads that show the exact product(s) a visitor viewed on your site. This reminds viewers of the item they liked while building brand awareness and trust. 
• By product category: Serve ads that display the same type of products (for example, women’s going-out tops or healthy snacks) a visitor viewed on your site. This keeps your brand top-of-mind for any shopping your audience wishes to do in the same area.
• By audience demographic: Serve ads that speak to the various market segments you serve, whether that’s different generations or just “people who like running” vs. “people who like swimming.” These ads promote the demographic’s most-bought items to invite audiences to get in on a trend with your brand.
• By onsite behavior: Serve ads that target the most engaged customers — those who abandoned their carts (or, if your site has the capability, those who favorited items or added them to a wishlist). Use this campaign to remind shoppers of the items they almost bought and invite them to come back and finish the purchase.

Of course, there’s multiple ways to dice up audiences within each of these options. Choose one to get started with, and try different methods of targeting (or different types of ads) to see what works best. Or save time and work with a contextualization partner who can segment for you based on AI-powered insights.

Convince on-the-fence shoppers with UGC-based ads

Now, it’s time to create the actual ads! You’ve likely seen retargeting ads that follow you around the web with product pictures. They’re noticeable because of the familiarity, but this format doesn’t bring a lot to the table in terms of convincing audiences to give you a second look.

Ads that feature user-generated content (UGC) stand out and have a better chance of connecting with your audience. Imagine if, instead of seeing that set of dinnerware displayed against a white background, you saw an ad that showed the dinnerware in use at a fantastic party. Or, if the ad used reviews to tell you previous buyers thought it was “sturdy enough that you don’t have to worry about putting it in the dishwasher, despite the decorations.” 

These authentic product experiences can only be found in UGC, and they do a lot more to build trust because they show that other people trust you, too. 

Choose or create landing pages for your retargeting campaign

Whether you’re using existing pages as the target of your ads or creating new ones, make sure the content of the page matches what people saw in the ad. If your retargeting campaigns feature one item, you can probably just link audiences to that product page. Just make sure it’s easy for them to buy the item once they get there.

However, if you’re featuring more than one item in your retargeting ads, consider linking to a collection or product category.

The other option is to create a unique landing page with the item(s) you featured and a streamlined checkout — in other words, to save shoppers the hassle of doing the add to cart > visit cart > check out dance. You may see more conversions from this type of page, especially if you target it toward people who spent a long time on an item’s product page or denoted their interest in some other way. 

Either way, think about including UGC on your landing page as well. We’ll assume you already have reviews turned on, but do you share product videos or images, including the one(s) you used in your ad campaign? Showing that media again will make the interaction feel more cohesive and remind users why they clicked on your ad in the first place. 

Set your budget for your retargeting campaigns

You don’t have to spend a lot on retargeting campaigns to be successful. It’s possible to start off with just a few dollars a day when you’re only looking to reach a very small number of people. If you’ve never done retargeting marketing before, we recommend starting small. Retargeting tool AdRoll suggests smaller retailers can launch a campaign with around $50 per day. 

If even that’s a difficult sell to make, it might help to remind stakeholders that your budget will determine the quality of the results and data you gather. You shouldn’t build a campaign off “insights” you gathered from ten or twenty people. Likewise, hitting a larger number of people for a very limited amount of time (say, a week or two) is unlikely to show results because retargeting is about repeated exposure to your brand and products. 

Marketers who face budget constraints may consider limiting ads to one platform — try starting with your best-performing social site if you’re in this situation. You can also set frequency caps to make sure you don’t pop up in any one person’s feed too often. This allows you to keep the scope small without hampering your ability to retarget a good number of visitors. 

Track important retargeting metrics

The most important metrics in a retargeting campaign are your click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and cost per conversion. You may track other data points as well to help you understand how many touches it takes to convince a target to return to your site and how many people come back even if they still aren’t ready to buy. But these are the big three.

• Click-through rate tells you how effective your ads are. You can compare your CTR across platforms to see which method is the best for reaching consumers, and across campaigns to see which ads are enticing the most customers to return to your site
• Conversion rate tells you how many of those clicks result in a sale. This is where you get the ROI from your retargeting marketing efforts, so you want to make sure you have these numbers on hand to prove your experiment is working!
• Cost per conversion helps you understand how efficient your ad campaign is. It helps you understand how retargeting ads perform compared to your other (non-retargeting) campaigns. This is another number that can work as justification to support continued retargeting efforts

Of course, not all retargeting campaigns result in someone clicking the ad and making a purchase — they may return to your site on their own accord after viewing a certain number of ads. While this behavior can’t be directly attributed to your ads (at least right now), keep track of when this happens. 

You may find your ad campaigns correlate with changes like a smaller gap between first visit and eventual purchase, visitors needing fewer site visits before they make a purchase, or other behavioral indicators that your ads are making a difference. 

Win at retargeting marketing with contextualization

The magic of retargeting marketing is that these ads directly respond to consumer actions, making personalization easy. You’re addressing a warm lead instead of trying to nurture a new one. Of course, this means you have to retarget your audience soon after their visit to your site.

Retargeting campaigns can’t be set up as a response to consumer behaviors, they have to be prepped and ready to deploy as soon as an individual shows sufficient interest.

You don’t have time to waste when setting up your retargeting marketing. Even if the first ads aren’t perfect (and when are they ever?), it’s more important to reach people while your brand and products are still top-of-mind. So, don’t let hesitation hold you back. Get started with a limited-scope retargeting campaign that uses UGC you’ve already gathered. Then, watch those customers who are “just browsing” come back and engage further with your brand. 

Retargeting is all about serving personalized ads based on user behaviors. Watch our new on-demand masterclass How contextualization is transforming online shopping to learn more tips that will boost your retargeting (and other marketing) campaigns. 

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How modern marketing strategies miss the mark for shoppers

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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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Product reviews and other forms of user-generated content (UGC) have become the cornerstone of trust and loyalty in the digital marketplace.

• 88% of shoppers use reviews to discover and evaluate products
• 47% say online reviews are an influential source of information, second only to recommendations from family and friends
• Companies that incorporate UGC into their social campaigns see a 50% increase in engagement 
• 84% of millennials say UGC affects their purchasing decisions, while almost half of Gen Z customers say social media is their top inspiration for buying a product 

But here’s the catch — not all reviews are created equal. What transforms a simple product review into a pivotal decision-making tool for shoppers? 

Several things, according to insights from industry professionals we recently surveyed. “A great review isn’t just about a star rating; it’s about validating the quality, setting accurate expectations, discussing performance and functionality, and offering additional tips,” one seasoned product owner told us. “Incorporating sentiment, visual evidence of the product in various contexts, detailed style and design commentary, assessments of comfort and wearability, and, importantly, photographs can turn a good review into a great one.”

We’ll dig into the details customers love to see in good product reviews and guide you through the ins and outs of collecting, compiling, and syndicating this UGC.

To bring these strategies to life, we’ll introduce you to “QualityCouches,” a hypothetical brand we completely made up — but based on real research. By stepping into the shoes of a consumer, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how strategically curated product reviews can elevate the shopping experience, ensuring your offerings stand out in a crowded market. 

The anatomy of a good product review

When reading reviews, shoppers have conscious and unconscious questions that need to be answered. They want to make sure the item matches their expectations. They want to know what other customers think about the product in the short and long term. And they want to get a sense of what the item will be like in real life.

Here’s 13 examples of the specific information they’re looking for in your product reviews. 

1. Value and quality assessment

Shoppers are looking for value for money, and review content is where they find it. They want to see information that makes it easier to plunk down their hard-earned cash on a purchase. And value doesn’t just mean price — they want to know the product quality is worth the cost, too. 62% of shoppers are looking for information that validates the item is worth the money and 59% want to confirm it’s of high quality, according to our Shopper Experience Index.

For big purchases like a couch, a good product review example might include information about the quality of the fabric or its stability, and durability of the item. Users want to see that it’s comfortable enough for a long movie night or Netflix binge. 

2. Product details

When scanning reviews online, 44% of shoppers are looking for validation that what arrives in the mail will match what appears on your website. 

If someone is on the QualityCouches site looking for a new sofa that’s easy to clean and can withstand the wear and tear of a toddler, it’s not enough to see “kid-friendly” or “stain resistant” in a product description. 

Here’s a good example of a product review that could turn them into a QualityCouches customer:

“This couch easily stands up to my three kids. It’s really easy to clean. Yesterday, my oldest spilled cranberry juice on the cushions and it came out easily with some warm water. Highly recommend this couch for households with small kids!”

Even if you don’t have kids, you’ll feel more confident about how easy the couch is to clean after reading a product review like that!

3. Usage and user context

It’s not enough to know a product works. Shoppers want to know if a product will work specifically for them. Examples of good product reviews include context about the reviewer, the problems they were trying to solve, and where and how they used the products. 

• 71% of shoppers are looking for reviews from people who share their interests, needs, or concerns
• 62% of consumers said they are more likely to trust reviews that include information about the poster’s age, location, or other information as opposed to anonymous reviews

For example, this product review that might resonate with shoppers looking for a dog-friendly couch:

“We are empty nesters with two labs that we treat like our children. Our dogs love to cuddle with us on the couch. They shed a lot and we needed something that was easy to clean. This couch is perfect. The material is great. Their fur doesn’t stick to it. It’s also really easy to wipe off slobber and dirt.”

The more shoppers see themselves in the reviews, the more likely they are to buy the product. 

4. Comparisons to expectations

Probably everyone who shops online has been disappointed at one time or another by a product that failed to meet their expectations, leading to higher e-commerce return rates. And no-one wants that. Shoppers want to hear from other shoppers whether your products live up to their promises. 

If you’re shopping at QualityCouches, you want to see examples of product reviews that validate the claims made in the product descriptions. 

The more real shoppers say a sofa lives up to its promises of comfort and stability, the more confidence a consumer will have about adding the couch to their cart. 

5. Style and design commentary

No matter how much effort the QualityCouches team puts into crafting the perfect product description, shoppers will still dig through the reviews to make sure that your definition of “mid-century modern” or “farmhouse industrial” matches their own — 41% of shoppers search for information about what a product looks like in real life when reading reviews

Visual UGC like photos and videos can also appease these shoppers. More on that in a minute!

6. Comfort and wearability

All right, by now shoppers know QualityCouches sells items that look good, but do they feel good? Is the material scratchy? Will it bother their sensitive skin? Will the pillows leave awkward marks on their face if they fall asleep during a boring movie?

A good product review will answer these questions and assure shoppers that the couch is as cozy as it is stylish.

7. Ease of use

Sometimes it’s the big things that make you love (or hate!) a product. But often, it’s the little things. 

For anyone who’s ever had to put together furniture, you can empathize with the shoppers on QualityCouches who are looking for feedback on whether the products are easy to assemble. They might also want to know whether the couch is easy to clean, if the cushions are removable, and how easy it is to set up the pullout bed. 

8. Long-term impressions or performance and functionality

As every shopper knows, you may love an item when it first arrives. But after a few weeks and months? Not so much. 

Consumers are poring through your reviews looking for examples of how your products hold up in the long run. Was the couch still comfortable after six months of use? Did the material fade over time? 

Just because a few weeks (or even months) have passed since the shopper made their purchase, that doesn’t mean it’s too late to ask for a review. Hearing what people think about the product in the long term can help build consumer trust and confidence. 

9. Pros and cons

Negative reviews happen. But that’s not necessarily a problem. Actually it’s a good thing.

Consumers appreciate learning more about a product’s pros and cons from other shoppers. Negative reviews give shoppers more confidence in the authenticity of your UGC, which helps build trust and transparency. 

• 62% of consumers say negative reviews are as important as positive reviews in their decision-making process
• 75% of shoppers say it’s important to read a balance of positive and negative reviews when purchasing to set expectations correctly
• 93% of consumers say they would rather purchase a product with a lot of positive and negative reviews compared to a product with no reviews

Here’s a product review example for QualityCouches that could help a shopper make an informed decision.

“My in-laws spent two weeks sleeping on the pull-out sofa. By the end of the first week, they were pretty uncomfortable. The couch is fine if someone is just spending the night, but I wouldn’t use it for long-term guests. I wish I had bought the Superior Comfort model.”

10. Photographs

Visual UGC like photos and videos makes potential customers even more confident about clicking that “add to cart” button. According to one of the respondents to our product reviews survey, a digital product administrator, “a high-quality review always has photos.”

• 85% of consumers say they turn to visual UGC over branded content when making purchasing decisions
• Over a third of shoppers say reviews with photos are more credible than those without

When reading reviews, 41% of shoppers want to see what a product looks like in real life. Encouraging your customers to share photos and videos of your product in action helps build that trust and confidence. 

11. Recommendations and additional tips

Part of the beauty of reviews is that they can provide you and your customers with valuable feedback. Shoppers can learn how to use a product to its full potential, while brands and retailers can find ways to improve and transform the shopping experience — and drive growth. According to our research, the main ways brands and retailers use UGC are:

1. 80% improve the shopper experience
2. 78% increase conversions 
3. 76% improve marketing messaging
4. 74% improve product pages
5. 68% improve SEO
6. 67% reduce returns

Take this QualityCouches product review example:

“The couch is great but the armrests are really narrow. Make sure you have a side table nearby to put your drink, snacks, and remote on.”

This gives shoppers valuable feedback from other customers about where to place the couch in their home. It also gives the brand some interesting insight to bring back to its product team. 

12. Star ratings and summaries

As much as people love in-depth UGC, sometimes they don’t have time to read a bunch of reviews. Star ratings and review summaries help shoppers quickly understand how many people gave feedback about the product, what the overall star rating is, as well as a few pros and cons to consider.

Here’s an example of a product review summary. 

Note the immediate average star rating and percentage of recommendations highlighted in bold, the breakdown of product criteria, pros and cons, and a trust signal to confirm review authenticity. Displaying review highlights in a simple manner speeds up the reviewing process which leads to faster (and more) purchases.

13. Recency of reviews

Real talk: A ton of great reviews, photos, and star ratings from 2020 won’t appease today’s shoppers. They want to know what recent customers thought about their purchase. 

61% of consumers say recent reviews — those submitted in the past three months — are more reliable than older ones.

How to get more authentic and effective reviews

Ready to up your product review quality? Here are three tips to keep in mind. 

1. Make it easy for customers to leave reviews

Shoppers like sharing their opinions. Nearly 70% of shoppers are willing to provide feedback when asked. The secret to collecting more helpful product reviews is to make it easy for customers to submit feedback. Often, all you need to do is send a quick email or two.

Requesting feedback via email can increase product reviews by up to 9x. Sending a follow-up review request email can boost review volume by 50%. 

Struggling to get more reviews on your PDPs? See our guide to requesting reviews from your customers.

2. Ask questions that encourage specific feedback

Now that you know what shoppers are looking for in your product reviews, you know what questions to ask. For example, QualityCouches might ask questions like:

• How would you rate the item’s quality?
• Did our product meet your expectations?
• How would you describe the style?
• Tell us about yourself and how you use the product
• Do you have any photos or videos of the couch in your home?

3. Give shoppers product review examples

In addition to requesting specific information, you can also include examples of product reviews that answer the questions. 

This makes it easier for customers to provide the exact information you — and other shoppers — are looking for. 

Ready to make a bigger impact?

Customer reviews are more than just helpful — they’re game-changers. They can boost your conversion rates, keep shoppers on your site longer, and ramp up your engagement metrics. But let’s be real: Managing these reviews can be tricky, especially for small teams.

That’s where review management tools come in. They’re designed for efficiency, helping even the smallest teams compete and excel. Plus, they give you a clear view of your return on investment for your UGC efforts.

Now’s the time to boost your digital presence with honest, persuasive user reviews. Don’t let operational challenges hold you back. Our solutions can simplify your processes and lift your brand to new heights. Hairhouse Australia implemented our Ratings & Reviews tools to provide shoppers with authentic UGC that inspires purchases, and saw a 35% lift in conversion rate and a 15% increase in average order value on pages with Ratings & Reviews vs. pages without.

You can learn more about our Ratings & Reviews tools here. Or get in touch with our customer success team today to see what’s possible. Together, we can revolutionize your approach to UGC, building trust, loyalty, and impressive growth.

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The authenticity movement: building consumer trust without fake reviews

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For small marketing teams with limited bandwidth, an amplified UGC strategy is one of the most effective ways to boost conversions — without breaking the budget. 

The power of user-generated content in amplified marketing

First, a quick review: UGC is content created by real people to promote your brand. This includes ratings and reviews, photos, videos, and audio that your brand’s customers, followers, ambassadors, or even employees create and share online. 

As the #1 user-generated content platform on the market (in the words of G2) we’ve written a lot on the power of UGC: what it is, why it works, and how to build a UGC strategy for your brand. 

Amplified marketing is the process of collecting and marketing all that UGC to position your customers as the experts of your product and build brand credibility.  

Amplified marketing is like a megaphone for your UGC

Instead of spending precious resources writing content from scratch, building new promotions entirely in-house, and generally reinventing the wheel, amplified marketing hands the mic to a credible source customers already listen to: each other.

Why user-generated content is perfect for lean marketing teams

Combining amplified marketing and UGC offers the most marketing bang for your buck. It’s cost-effective and authentic. It’s also one of the most effective ways to drive customer engagement. Even with limited resources, UGC-focused marketing strategies can achieve incredible results, including:

• 90% increase in average visitor time on your website 
• 50% increase in social engagement for campaigns featuring UGC 
• 20% increase in repeat visits to your site 
• 203% increase in conversion rate after shoppers interact with UGC 

Why reviews are so important in modern amplification marketing

For successful amplification marketing, UGC is king — especially UGC in the form of customer reviews.

95% of shoppers rely on reviews to learn more about products. 85% of consumers say they consider online reviews just as trustworthy as recommendations from friends. So encouraging authentic reviews from your customers is crucial for your brand’s credibility.  

There’s another major advantage to customer reviews: A nearly infinite supply of low-effort, high-impact content for your marketing team (with strategic repurposing, of course). Think of UGC as the printing press for your brand’s ultra-engaging content library. 

How to source high-quality UGC and reviews 

Before implementing an amplified marketing strategy, you’ll first need some UGC to amplify. There’s three main ways to find and create high-quality UGC:

Invite customers to leave reviews

This is often easier than you think — customers love to share their opinions with their favorite retailers and brands. Nearly 70% of shoppers are willing to provide feedback when asked. Request reviews from your customers, just make sure you’re not cherry-picking feedback or review gating. Authentic feedback, even if it includes negative reviews, is important to consumers.

Host contests or campaigns on social media.

You can generate quality UGC by hosting targeted social media campaigns. Start by searching hashtags associated with your brand. This will reveal any enthusiastic customers who have already posted about your products.

Reach out to those users and offer discounted or free products in exchange for more UGC. If your brand has limited organic UGC, you can generate it by simply asking your customers to make content featuring your products with a contest or giveaway.

For example, say your cosmetics team plans a social media contest to generate more video UGC. Advertise the contest on your Instagram stories and feed. Create a hashtag for the promotion. Tell your followers what requirements their videos have to meet and what the prizes are. It could be a free gift or early access to a new product you’re about to launch.

The contest will generate buzz on social media as your customers post submissions and share their videos with followers. And longer term, you’ll have a new cache of UGC to repurpose into amplified marketing material for product pages or paid ads.

Collaborate with micro-influencers or loyal customers for content

To drum up even more chatter on social media, consider partnering with relevant influencers and your most loyal customers — especially if your target audience is younger. According to a Morning Consult report, over 50% of Gen Z and millennials say they trust influencers’ advice about brands and products. You can send influencers samples of your new product and ask them to use a specific hashtag when posting about the product on their social channels. 

How to amplify UGC with easy content creation

You asked, and your customers delivered. Your team now has an abundance of reviews and other UGC to utilize. Now what? It’s time for a little content creation — but there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Marketing amplification is all about using what you have.

• Turn your positive reviews into testimonials, social media posts, or case studies
• For specific user feedback, incorporate the information into relevant blog posts and FAQ sections
• Don’t forget the visual element. Mine your reviews for UGC well-suited to infographics, illustrated testimonials, and video clips

Amplified marketing in action: How to distribute your UGC

After you’ve built a library of UGC, you’ll need to strategically distribute and amplify this valuable content. To make the most of their power, highlight customer reviews at every customer touchpoint, whether it’s paid or organic. This means sprinkling UGC throughout your brand’s social media, emails, website, and product pages. How to amplify UGC in:

• Paid advertising. When your advertising budget is modest, UGC offers the most engagement bang for your buck. Reviews are easy and inexpensive to collect and display across channels. Ads with UGC have 4x higher click-through rates — which leads to a 50% drop in cost-per-click rates. Cost-effective advertising for the win!
  
• Social media and email campaigns. Regularly monitor your social media mentions and hashtags to find organic UGC. Then, share and repost the content with the customer tagged. It’s free and always has the potential to go viral. You can also keep your content calendar stacked with featured testimonials and customer case studies
   
• Websites and product pages. Don’t forget about enhancing your website and e-commerce shop with prime UGC. Shoppers are 6x more likely to make a purchase if the product page contains social content — especially for apparel, food and beverage, home furnishings, health and beauty, and pet products

How to know if your amplified marketing is working 

To accurately measure the success of your brand’s UGC-centric amplified marketing, you’ll need to know what you’re looking for — and the right tools. There’s 3 important metrics to monitor for UGC success: engagement rate, conversion rate, and reach.

1. The engagement rate shows how much your audience loves your content based on the number of likes, shares, and comments — it’s all about the buzz
2. Conversion rate is how successful your content is in turning the engagement into desired customer actions, like making a purchase or opting into newsletters
3. Reach measures how far your content travels and who’s tuning in

Keep in mind these numbers are just starting points. For a deeper dive into other metrics like ROI, CTR, ROAS, and more, check out our primer on metrics for digital marketing success.

Bazaarvoice’s UGC Value Calculator quickly shows you the impact a UGC-amplified marketing strategy could have on your sales. Using 12 months of benchmarking data, the calculator predicts how UGC will increase your brand’s revenue, conversion rate, SEO impact, and even in-store sales. 

Adapt your amplified marketing strategy with UGC-based insights 

UGC amplified marketing is well-suited to lean marketing teams for many reasons — including its flexibility and adaptability.

With basic data from metrics like engagement, conversion, and reach, you unlock valuable insight into which content performs best for your brand. This builds into a positive feedback loop, in which your UGC engagement metrics guide your content refinements for continually better results.

For example, if one type of UGC gets loads of likes but not so many sales, that’s a good indicator that you need to tweak the ‘ask’ or how the product is presented. 

Best practices in UGC amplification

Do maintain authenticity. Don’t gate reviews. We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: when it comes to using UGC in your amplified marketing, authenticity is of the utmost importance. Sharing the good and bad customer reviews is one of the most important things you can do for your brand. Negative reviews offer a fair counterbalance to positive reviews, which builds credibility with customers.

Stay updated on UGC rules and regulations. Legally, UGC is considered a form of advertising when used by brands and retailers. This means it’s regulated by the following consumer protection laws:

• In the US, there’s the FTC Act (and recently issued proposed rules on updated Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising), Lanham Act, and Consumer Review Fairness Act, among others
• The UK has Unfair Trading Regulations
• Australia has the Australian Consumer Law
• As of 2022, the EU has a new Omnibus Directive that specifically relates to consumer reviews in the context of advertising

While each of these laws have different specific details, they all aim to protect customers from fraudulent, deceptive, and misleading advertising. Violations of these laws can be costly — not only financially, but to your reputation as well.

Amplified marketing in action: Real-world examples

Check out these examples of brands amplifying their UGC.

1. Fresh

2. Midland Radio

3. Villeroy & Boch

Key takeaways for your amplified marketing strategy

Remember that your customers are your greatest asset. By harnessing the power of UGC and implementing an amplified marketing strategy, even the leanest of teams can achieve remarkable engagement and sales.

• The vast majority of shoppers check reviews and trust them as much as personal recommendations. This means reviews and other UGC are pivotal for e-commerce brands. Amplified UGC marketing is a cost-effective and powerful strategy for lean marketing teams
• Centering high-quality UGC in your marketing strategy significantly boosts key metrics
  like website visit duration, social engagement, repeat site visits, and conversion rates
• To cultivate effective UGC, set up a system to solicit customer reviews. Host social media contests and campaigns. Collaborate with influencers and loyal customers
• Get the most from your UGC by distributing it throughout all customer touchpoints. Repurpose reviews into content you can use in paid ads, social media, emails, websites, product pages, and more 

It’s all about making the most of what you already have and turning it into a conversion-boosting powerhouse. Here’s to supercharging your marketing efforts without stretching your budget!

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Masterclass: The future of marketing: creators and communities

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From food and beverage and apparel to health and beauty and hardware to everything in between, ratings and reviews play a crucial role in the customer journey. 

But just how crucial, exactly? And how can businesses extract the most value from them? Let’s find out.

Chapters:

1. The business benefits of ratings and reviews
2. How to make customer ratings and reviews work harder for you
3. Don’t underestimate how important ratings and reviews are for your business

The business benefits of ratings and reviews

At Bazaarvoice, ratings and reviews are the center of our business. With a network of over 12,500 brand and retailer sites to support, we undertake a lot of research to understand the value of reviews for businesses and their customers. 

Here are some of our takeaways that prove the power of ratings and reviews, based on some of our latest research.

Ratings and reviews impact everything from sales to SEO

Shoppers are leaving more reviews now than ever. Across our network in 2021, the number of reviews submitted increased nearly 11% year-over-year. Our 2023 Shopper Experience Index found that when shoppers engaged with reviews, there was a 144% lift in conversion rate.

Not only are shoppers converting more readily on pages with reviews, but they’re also spending more money. The lift in revenue per visitor among shoppers engaging with reviews was 162% in 2023, and the average order value was 13% higher. 

Ratings and reviews creates a great avenue for us to get current content on our site and bring attention to our product. That helps us to rank higher in search results and get found better

UX analyst, CPG

Increasing your sales and profits isn’t the only thing that reviews can improve in your business. Brands and retailers we’ve talked to say that reviews have an impact far beyond the product page. According to those we surveyed for our Shopper Experience Index, over half (52%) said they help increase brand loyalty, 53% cited a positive impact on in-store sales, and 63% said that they improve search engine optimization (SEO).

Global brand Petco, for example, launched a sampling campaign to collect more reviews and improve SEO metrics. The campaign led to a 405% increase in review volume, which meant a:

• 67% increase in number of pages ranked organically
• 140% increase in impressions from organic search
• 80% increase in clicks from organic search
• 48% increase in revenue per visit for sampled products

Ratings and reviews help shoppers make confident purchases

According to our 2023 Shopper Experience Index, two-thirds of consumers (78%) claim that reviews impact their purchase decisions. Our 2022 report also revealed that ratings and reviews are the number one online feature shoppers rely on when making informed product decisions faster, more so than product page descriptions, chatbots, and the website’s search tool.

But consumers aren’t just using them online. According to research commissioned by Bazaarvoice from Deloitte and Touche LLP, a vast majority (82%) of shoppers research products online before going in-store, and over a third read a product’s reviews on their mobile phones while looking at the same product in-store.  

Our research found that shoppers often turn to ratings and reviews when they’re in the final stages of their decision making process to help them choose your product. 70% of shoppers often or always look at available reviews, and in the first 20 seconds of landing on a product page, high-quality reviews are the most likely type of user-generated content  to convince a consumer to buy a product (21%) — followed by average star ratings (19%) and the number of reviews a product has (13%).

We also found that half of shoppers have been influenced by reviews to buy a more expensive product than planned.

You may be surprised to learn that it isn’t just positive reviews that consumers find helpful. Over half (60%) say negative reviews are just as important in their decision to buy. The majority (62%) say it’s because they contain more pros and cons than positive reviews. Shoppers who usually don’t read reviews say they would like to see more reviews from people like them and more customer photos.

Having reviews displayed on your site is a great first step to winning over your customers, but don’t forget step two — responding to reviews. About a third of shoppers expect businesses to publicly respond to their reviews, regardless of whether their review is positive or negative. Almost half (48%) say brands responding to reviews improves their odds of buying the product. 

Reviews improve your brand’s authenticity

Brand trust is one of the most valuable assets a business can have in today’s retail landscape. According to our recent survey of 10,000 global shoppers, 97% of respondents say fake reviews make them lose trust in a brand. One way to build trust is by handing over the mic to their fellow peers to help advocate for your brand. Over three-quarters of shoppers trust reviews, even more than family and friend recommendations.

It’s not as simple as just displaying reviews, you have to ensure that they’re authentic. If shoppers suspect a product to have fake reviews:

• 56% wouldn’t buy the product 
• 25% wouldn’t buy from the website 
• 81% avoid using the brand again 
• 48% leave a negative review 
• 16% post [negatively] about the brand on social media

The number one factor that makes consumers suspicious that a product has fake reviews is seeing multiple reviews with similar wording (56%). That is followed by review content not matching the product (53%), bad grammar/misspellings (36%), and an overwhelming amount of positive/five-star reviews (36%).

As consumers have become more skeptical of marketing and advertising practices as a whole, they’re constantly evaluating product reviews to look for red flags.

Reviews contain insights about products, processes, and purchasers

Ratings and reviews are an invaluable source of customer feedback. Consumer reviews can help surface issues with products, shed light on new use cases, and inform product innovations. Shoppers want to see businesses use their reviews, both positive (25%) and negative (38%), to make product improvements.

We have countless stories from our clients about ways they have improved their products and processes based on the feedback they’ve received from customer reviews. In fact, 72% of our clients use UGC to improve customer service, 66% use UGC to improve products, and 50% use UGC to improve marketing tactics and messaging.

How to make customer ratings and reviews work harder for you 

While impressive, these results won’t manifest out of thin air. The real magic happens when you set in motion a process to collect, distribute, and manage reviews, designed to squeeze the most value out of these pieces of UGC.

Set up a review collection strategy

In order to reap the benefits, you need to plant the seeds — in other words, you need an ongoing strategy that makes it easy for and encourages customers to share feedback about your products. 

You can request ratings and reviews from your customers through a myriad of channels. If you have a physical store, you can go the face-to-face route and have attendants ask shoppers for feedback after they complete a purchase. The attendant can jot down the answers or direct the customer toward a QR code for an even smoother experience. 

Online options are also aplenty. Review request emails are a common practice (Jeanswest saw a 186% lift in review volume using this strategy, for example), but social media channels, push notifications, and SMS texts are also viable approaches.

When requesting reviews through any of these channels, timing is key. Reach out soon after customers interact with your products, when the experience is fresh on their minds, and they can provide more detailed and genuine feedback. And how you ask is just as important as when you ask — use clear and concise messaging, and avoid overwhelming customers with too many requests or specific instructions. 

Provide incentives in exchange for ratings and reviews

Customers might need a little extra push to share their feedback about your products. This is where incentivized reviews come in: you give customers a reward, like a coupon or entry into a giveaway, and in exchange, they write an honest review about a product they bought from your company. 

Incentives can be small, like discount codes, or slightly more elaborate, like product sampling campaigns (offering samples of your product in exchange for reviews.) McPherson’s Consumer Products, for example, found that 20% of new reviews on its brands’ products come from sampling efforts. According to Sharon Bottaro, the company’s Head of Digital, these reviews, “are providing confidence for people to complete their path to purchase.”

To uphold your integrity and safeguard consumer trust, be transparent about your incentive program. Clearly state that the incentive is for leaving a review, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative, and never pay customers to leave reviews.

Encourage customers to add visual UGC 

It’s a visual-driven world out there, especially in the e-commerce industry. Images and videos from customers give shoppers a better sense of what the products look like in action, and, most importantly, in the real world, without the influence of heavy editing. It adds another layer of confidence to purchasing decisions, which explains why 29% of shoppers look for customer reviews with photos or videos.

Fresh, a cosmetics company known for its natural ingredients-based products, tapped into the power of visual UGC in customer reviews. The brand implemented Bazaarvoice’s Photo-First Reviews Display to put customer images and videos front and center of product pages. Overall, Fresh saw a $1.48 million impact from user-generated content.

When requesting reviews from customers, whether through an email or a sampling campaign, make sure you ask for visuals — people might even prefer filming a short video over writing a lengthy review! Don’t make it a non-negotiable (a written review with no visuals is better than no review), but let customers know images and videos are appreciated options.

Reply to both positive and negative reviews

Customers expect brands to engage with them when they take the time to leave a review, especially if it’s negative. As Anna Kim, Senior Advocate Programs Manager at Webroot, explains, “It’s our responsibility (…) to be responsive to shoppers’ questions and reviews. Someone who is vetting us against another brand sees that we interact with our customers, and that’s a big competitive advantage.”

Webroot practices what it preaches — the cybersecurity software company replied to 70% of its 38,000 customer reviews on retail sites.

When responding to positive reviews, gratitude is the name of the game. Thank the customer for sharing their opinion, and express happiness that they enjoyed the product. Reference specific points mentioned in the review to make your response more personal and show that you value their input.

Negative reviews are a different beast, but they don’t have to be a scary one. As we explained before, having some negative reviews contributes to authenticity, and they can be a good way to unveil problems you weren’t aware of. What you shouldn’t do is ignore them; instead, act quickly, acknowledge the customer’s experience, and offer a solution to the issue raised in the review. If the problem is too complex, invite them to continue the conversation through a private channel like email or phone.  

Amplify ratings and reviews with syndication

If your brand works with retail partners to sell its products, syndicating reviews to their websites is a must. There’s no guarantee consumers will find and buy your products on your own website — syndication gets consumer eyes on your product reviews whether they’re browsing Walmart or Target.

This strategy also benefits your retail partners since they get quality, conversion-optimized content on their product pages without having to invest in technology to do so.

Bazaarvoice has a network of 1,750 global retailers, and regularly helps brands syndicate their hard-won customer reviews to as many partners as possible. For Andi-Co, 100% of reviews on retailers’ sites come from Bazaarvoice syndication efforts, leading to 690x more UGC on retailer sites.   

Make ratings and reviews a part of your marketing strategy

Displaying reviews on your website is a no-brainer, but why stop there? Incorporating reviews into your offline and digital marketing can significantly enhance its effectiveness — according to our 2022 Shopper Index, almost half (40%) of consumers say UGC makes them more likely to buy a product from an ad. Beyond product pages, here’s where you might consider displaying this rich UGC:

• Social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Social commerce continues to grow as social becomes the new search — over half (58%) of shoppers say they often discover a product or service through social media, and 42% say social media impacts their purchasing decisions. Adding reviews to your posts both amplifies positive content and gets the conversion machine that is user-generated content in front of an audience that’s primed to discover and buy new products

• In-store displays. If you have a brick-and-mortar presence, display reviews and ratings near relevant products to bridge the gap between online and offline experiences and nudge shoppers toward making a purchase
• Emails. Use positive reviews in your email marketing campaigns. For example, when promoting a product, include a customer testimonial that speaks to its benefits. Tailor your emails based on the products customers have purchased and include reviews from similar products to encourage repeat purchases, cross-sells, and up-sells

Don’t underestimate how important ratings and reviews are for your business

While some might think it’s difficult to quantify the importance of ratings and reviews, the above statistics prove their power.

There’s a variety of ways that they are useful, both for businesses and their customers. And not only are ratings and reviews absolutely necessary to today’s consumers during the purchasing process, companies are missing out on sales, profits, and priceless information without them, as our own research below shows.

Learn more about how important ratings and reviews are here. Or get in touch directly below to see how you can get started with Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews.

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After all, retailers and consumers know the importance of product reviews and ratings — 88% of shoppers read reviews before making a purchase. As the ultimate in user-generated content (UGC), ratings and reviews are an integral part of building your brand’s credibility.

But when it comes to review gating, we’re here to say: don’t do it.

Review gating isn’t worth the legal or reputational risk — and companies who gate reviews miss important opportunities for growth and revenue. 

What is review gating? 

Review gating is the practice of filtering out negative reviews or only publishing positive feedback from customers. Given the importance of customer reviews for e-commerce — especially for small and medium businesses — many brands feel pressured to use review gating to achieve or maintain a glowing online image.

Some companies even take it a step further by paying for fake positive reviews or attempting to silence potential negative reviews by burying non-disparagement clauses in their terms and conditions. This is thankfully now illegal per 2016’s Consumer Review Fairness Act. 

The importance of authentic reviews in the digital economy

So what’s better than a perfect slate of 5-star reviews? Authenticity.

It may seem counterintuitive. But sharing the good, bad, and ugly feedback from your customers is one of the most important things you can do for your brand. This is because negative reviews offer a fair counterbalance to positive reviews, which builds credibility with customers. 

Trust us. As a pioneer in the ratings and reviews space, we’ve seen thousands of negative reviews over the last decade — and we’ve witnessed how clients who embrace the feedback ultimately see more success than those who try to avoid it. 

Why do some businesses use review gating?

There’s no doubt about it — with a crowded marketplace and high consumer expectations, brands and retailers are under enormous pressure to maintain a perfect online image. For some companies, especially smaller companies, this pressure can make review gating tempting.  

Usually, this comes from a well-intended — but unnecessary — fear of negative reviews. In our experience, the companies that resist review gating and instead welcome authentic feedback see more sales and customer loyalty over time.

Instead of trying to suppress negative comments, brands and retailers should embrace them as an opportunity to learn and improve. 

The direct consequences of gated reviews

Review gating isn’t just bad form — it’s a real legal risk. Review gating clashes with the Federal Trade Commission’s stance against restricting negative reviews and soliciting biased ratings.

Additionally, companies that gate reviews are likely in direct violation of the terms of service for most review hosting sites. If caught, your business risks having content removed or the account suspended.

Beyond platform penalties, inauthentic reviews erode customer trust. Your prospective buyers expect to see positive and negative reviews. When they don’t, they’re skeptical. In fact, products with at least some negative reviews are known to have higher conversion rates than products with only glowing feedback.

The unexpected benefits of negative reviews

Consider the case of MeUndies. The underwear startup makes it a point to respond to every single one-to-three-star review customers leave. 

“We’ve noticed that plenty of customers would leave a negative review and then would not reach out for help, even though their problems could be pretty easily solved, for example, if they received the wrong size or style,” said Ross Houslander, Senior Retention Lead at MeUndies. 

So Houslander’s team monitors and responds to every review. When a customer sees these responses, it fosters trust and confidence when shopping with MeUndies. Shoppers know that if they ever encounter an issue, the brand will proactively resolve it. By effectively managing negative feedback, MeUndies:

• Boosted customer engagement with new review collection strategies
• Fostered long-term loyalty by establishing its reputation as a responsive and customer-centric brand 

How to handle a negative review 

Sooner or later, you’re likely to receive a negative review. When this occurs, stay calm. How you respond is the most important part. Think of negative reviews as direct instructions from the customer on how to earn their loyalty in the future.

When addressed properly, negative reviews can fuel growth. Respond professionally to customer complaints by apologizing for the letdown and outlining a plan to get things right next time. 

By embracing negative feedback and addressing concerns head-on, your customers will notice and reward you with long-term loyalty. 

Review gating isn’t worth the risks

Gating reviews doesn’t just stunt your growth —  it can directly harm your brand. If your ratings are exposed as biased or fake, expect a major backlash from customers. This can lead to long-term or even permanent damage to your brand reputation. 

The unique vulnerability of small businesses

For small e-commerce brands dependent on word-of-mouth marketing, authentic reviews are even more important. Compared to the robust resources of larger brands better suited to weather PR crises, small businesses usually:

• Have more direct relationships with customers 
• Are more reliant on online reviews for sales and credibility 
• May not have the resources to recover from the fallout of a review gating exposé 

Alternatives to review gating

So, how should a small business handle reviews?

With vulnerability and authenticity. To start, invite and encourage all your customers to leave reviews. Welcome the opportunity to build constructive communication with your customers. And resist the urge to censor or react defensively to negative feedback — there’s a more productive way to respond. 

To build your small business’s authenticity, skip the review gating 

Building an authentic brand starts with reviews. Small and medium businesses are particularly vulnerable to the legal and reputational risks of review gating. But these brands also have the most to gain from constructive handling of negative feedback.

Sharing honest customer reviews is one of the most important things you can do for your small brand. Authentic reviews offer valuable insights into how to better serve your customers, highlight unique growth opportunities, and build your brand’s reputation for transparency and integrity. Ironically, how you respond to your negative reviews can make your positive reviews even more credible to your customers. 

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Shoppertainment is more than a buzzword. It’s an emerging method for boosting shopper engagement, driving conversions, and creating customer loyalty. 

What is shoppertainment?

Shoppertainment is the art of combining e-commerce (the “shop”) with engaging activities that surprise and delight consumers (the “entertainment”). It’s the digital equivalent of an in-store special event or, for those who might remember, the sign spinners that used to dot the side of the road.

And for smaller teams, shoppertainment can be a more cost-effective and rewarding approach to marketing, opening doors to innovative strategies that can significantly enhance the customer experience.

The value shoppertainment brings to e-commerce 

As most retailers and brands know all too well, online shopping is always changing. Finding ways to stand out and make the shopping experience more engaging for customers is a top priority.

Shoppertainment helps brands and retailers get more customers’ attention. It also creates customer loyalty and more personalized buying experiences. 

Even better, it can inspire consumers to create and share user-generated content (UGC). When you encourage people to share branded hashtags on social media or update followers on the results of an online competition, it creates organic word-of-mouth marketing, which is priceless when it comes to building trust. 

Shoppertainment examples

Set your shoppertainment strategy on the right path with these actionable examples.

Live shopping streams and real-time product showcases

Some might say shoppertainment’s roots go back to the 1980s and ’90s when TV channels like QVC and HSN were in their heyday. 

These channels aired live shows that featured engaging hosts talking about a product or service. Shoppers could call in with questions or share their experiences in real-time. Often, the products were incentivized with a sale that only lasted as long as the show. 

Today, livestream shopping streams that showcase products in real time offer the same experience on a more modern channel: social media. Consumers can watch live streams of brand ambassadors promoting their favorite products, from anywhere they are. It’s what they want to see too, with 51% of consumers saying live shopping is the shopping experience they’re most excited about.

Instead of calling in with questions or recommendations, consumers leave their feedback in the comments. Brands and retailers can then use those comments to guide other consumers’ purchasing decisions.  

Shoppers can buy directly through links provided during the livestream, using coupons that expire when the livestream ends. Like QVC and HSN of yore, these live shopping streams and real-time product showcases are engaging and interactive. They put the “entertainment” in shoppertainment. 

Virtual try-ons 

Virtual try-ons tap the power of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to allow consumers to “try on” clothes, accessories, and makeup before making a purchase. 

This form of shoppertainment is also popular in the home decor and furnishing space, where consumers can virtually see items like couches and tables in their homes before making a major purchase. (And, for anyone who’s ever bought the wrong couch knows, a major regret.)

As the above chart shows, 74% of consumers are excited that brands are enhancing online shopping experiences with AR and VR

The immersive shoppertainment experiences that VR and AR offer are practical — maybe bright orange isn’t the best shade of lipstick for you. They’re also fun. Who doesn’t want to see what a green velvet sofa would look like in their living room?

Virtual try-ons can create an emotional connection with consumers, boost sales, and drive brand buzz. When consumers interact with products linked to AR experiences, brands can see 94% higher conversion rates.

Gamified shopping

Gamified shopping is a form of shoppertainment that encourages consumers to participate in branded contests for a chance to earn free products or discounts. These experiences can range from “spin to win” pop-ups to sophisticated video games.

Like other forms of shoppertainment, gamified shopping is fun — and an effective channel for boosting brand loyalty. 

• 70% of shoppers want gaming elements incorporated into online shopping
• Gaming features also help attract younger shoppers — over 80% of Gen Zers play mobile games often, and 70% of millennials play daily

The key is to give shoppers a reason to play. Based on our research, the top driver for participation is the opportunity to unlock a discount or reward. Other shoppers want to join and engage with communities that share their interests or connect directly with the brand.

Gamification marketing is great for getting consumer attention, but it also delivers valuable data that can be leveraged throughout your marketing efforts. You can offer an exciting reward in exchange for a customer’s name and contact info. Shoppers’ feedback about your products is also powerful UGC that can be used throughout the buying cycle. 

Interactive quizzes and personalization

A quiz funnel asks website visitors to answer questions relevant to a brand or retailer’s product line. The answers then generate personalized results based on the shopper’s needs.

A vitamin brand, for example, might ask shoppers about their health concerns and goals. The final result could be a list of product recommendations — and maybe a coupon code. 

For customers, the product recommendations deliver personalized content, which is important to today’s shoppers. (More on that in a minute.) For brands, the quizzes are an affordable way to collect valuable data that can be used to segment customers, guide future campaigns, generate better leads, and increase conversions. 

Shoppertainment collaborations

In this form of shoppertainment, brands and retailers bring their customers and brand ambassadors into the content-creating experience. 

This can include letting a select group of influencers take over your social media channels for the day. You could also interview customers and feature their insights on your blog and social media. 

If you think you need to join forces with a big-name celebrity, think again. Keep reading to see why you don’t need to partner with a major influencer to have a major impact.

4 shoppertainment ideas for small teams

Shoppertainment works for all marketing teams, but here’s some ideas for those on leaner budgets.

Curate and showcase existing UGC

UGC is unique in that it goes beyond just shoppertainment to deliver engaging content that helps people make better shopping decisions. 

Almost 90% of consumers read reviews when shopping online, and 78% say reviews are the “most influential” factor in their purchasing decisions. According to our Shopper Experience Index:

• More than half of shoppers say they’re unlikely to buy a product that doesn’t feature any type of customer opinion-sharing content
• Over 75% of consumers say reviews and Q&As affect their purchase decisions 
• 69% agree photos of products taken by other shoppers have an impact on their purchases 

This content can be used throughout the funnel to build trust and improve engagement. What’s even better, your customers are creating content for you, making it a relatively low-cost investment. 

So how do you get UGC?

Sampling. Establish a user-friendly program for customers to receive samples and provide reviews. Encourage customer engagement and gain insights by offering free products for honest feedback. This builds a community of brand advocates, amplifying your brand’s reach

Reach out to recent customers. Email customers who’ve recently purchased your products and invite them to share their feedback. We’ve seen brands increase their review volume by as much as 50% with these simple email requests. Emails are also the perfect opportunity to thank customers for their purchases and build brand loyalty

Share content that already exists (with permission, of course). If people are already posting about your brand on social media, you can comment or message them to ask for permission to use their content in your marketing. More than a quarter of shoppers report that companies have done this — so you’re not alone

Host UGC-driven contests

Another way to increase your UGC collection? Make it a game. Tapping into the power of gamified shopping makes it easy to build a stockpile of user-created reviews, photos, videos, and more. 

You could host contests on your social media channels to get customers to create content in exchange for free products or discounts. Boost your exposure and engagement further by incentivizing shares and reposts. 

Work with micro-influencers to create shoppertainment content

As we mentioned earlier, in today’s influencer marketing world, you don’t need to partner with big-name celebrities or people with massive social media followings. These types of influencers don’t resonate with shoppers like they used to. 

Instead, consumers tend to favor the opinions and advice of real people, who are often more open to participating in campaigns with smaller budgets.

• 64% of people want brands to partner with everyday social media users more than anyone else 
• 33% of consumers say their trust in regular social media users has increased over the past five years

Use UGC to create personalized shopping journeys

Personalization is leveraging customer data to deliver tailored messaging about the products and services they care most about. 

Shoppers have become more willing to share their information in exchange for deals and exclusive offers. Consumers appreciate that brands and retailers take the time to learn about their needs — and then take steps to meet them. 

• 25% of consumers say they’re interested in personalization in shopping

What kind of personalized experiences are shoppers looking for? Loyalty programs, discounts, and free samples all go a long way in turning customers into repeat customers. 

Shoppertainment: Helping small teams do more with less

UGC-driven shoppertainment helps small teams create experiences to stand out from the competition and build customer engagement. In addition to boosting customer satisfaction, these experiences also help reduce return rates, increase sales and conversions, and drive customer loyalty.

Best of all, because many of these experiences leverage content created by your customers, they’re also more affordable — and sustainable — for teams with small budgets. 

More sales for less money? Win-win. 

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A retail marketer’s guide to satisfying experience-hungry shoppers

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When it comes to advertising, they want messaging to be genuine and not too salesy and images not to be too perfect. They want you to share the same values they hold dear and appreciate their feedback. The more authentic you can be, the more you’ll build relationships with consumers. 

Review marketing can help you achieve all of these things. It’s especially a game-changer for smaller marketing teams looking for efficient, yet effective marketing solutions. 

What is review marketing?

A review marketing strategy refers to collecting user-generated content (UGC), such as customer reviews, photos, videos, or anything else created by an individual and not your brand, and using the content in your marketing campaigns. 

Consumers consider UGC to be the most authentic type of marketing content and trust it as much (if not more) as recommendations from friends and family. 88% of shoppers consult product reviews before buying anything, and 78% say reviews are the biggest influencer on their purchases. 

Retailers and brands find UGC to be useful for improving customer service, products, and marketing messaging. For marketing teams with tighter budgets, tapping into review marketing can give you the biggest impact. Here’s why — and, some guidelines for how to do it. 

UGC and its place in modern advertising

Shoppers want to see UGC wherever they encounter your brand. That’s why review marketing is so powerful. Plus, 86% of brands and retailers recognize the impact of UGC. 

Ads featuring UGC experience 4x higher click-through rates, and they help retailers and brands reduce their cost-per-click rates by 50%, according to our own research. You can also increase consumer trust when you feature UGC in ads. 

Reviews are the king of UGC. 22% of consumers say ads that feature reviews increase the likelihood that they’ll purchase a product. And among brands and retailers, 64% rank reviews as the most influential aspect of their sales and advertising strategies. 

How small teams benefit from using reviews in marketing ads 

Reviews from real-life customers are some of the most valuable content you have. To harness their power, you need a review marketing strategy to collect and feature them in your advertising. 

Highlight customer reviews at every touchpoint — on social media, in emails, in stores, and on product pages. Consumers appreciate having easy access to this content wherever they shop. 

When you have a smaller marketing team, using reviews in ads is crucial. Here’s how you can benefit from review marketing. 

1. It’s cost-effective

Many marketing teams have been dealing with lean budgets lately. UGC is the solution. Reviews are easy and inexpensive to collect and display across channels. When you feature UGC in ads, you have the potential to see a 50% drop in cost-per-click rates. 

2. It resonates with consumers

Your customers are already talking about you. Developing a review marketing strategy to use review content in your ads will boost the authenticity factor. With authentic reviews, you can create impactful ads that resonate without the need for extensive creative resources. 

3. It enhances credibility and trust 

Shoppers trust the opinions of their peers. Using reviews in your marketing shows that you value consumer feedback and makes shoppers feel confident buying your products. Leveraging genuine user views can help smaller brands or businesses establish trust and compete with bigger players. 

4. It boosts engagement 

Ads containing UGC see 4x higher click-through rates. That means better engagement and more bang for every advertising buck. Consumers will take notice when they see that you’re showcasing reviews. 

Guidelines for choosing the right reviews 

A successful review marketing strategy depends on showcasing your most compelling reviews. These tips can help you encourage your customers to leave reviews and use them in a creative way to inspire shoppers, boost engagement, and drive sales. 

Engage with your community

The most effective UGC comes from real people who love your brand and products. These reviews feature high-quality, honest, and authentic content. The best way to collect it is to build a community, and there are several ways to do it: 

• Host a sampling campaign, where you offer consumers a product in exchange for a review, to increase reviews and sales
• Create branded hashtags on social media that are catchy and consistent with your brand. This helps consumers easily reference you in their posts.
• Comb social media platforms for mentions of your brand or product names, use Google Analytics to track on-site traffic, and look for instances where someone tagged their location at your brick-and-mortar location
• Send a review request email soon after someone makes a purchase with a link to make leaving a review easy. 
• Run a social media contest asking consumers to create content about your brand for a chance to be featured in your marketing

Note that whenever you use a customer’s feedback in your ads, you need to ask them for permission. It’s not safe to assume that just because they tag you in a post or use your hashtag that they want their content used in your marketing. 

Integrate reviews creatively

Consumers consider ads that feature UGC, including testimonial ads, to be authentic and relatable. They trust reviews from their fellow shoppers — mainly because of social proof, which is the idea that people often replicate the behaviors that they see from others. 

While it’s tempting to just include positive reviews in ads, 60% of consumers say negative reviews are just as important to them when making a purchase decision. Putting a creative spin on negative UGC and including it in your ads will make consumers take notice and make you seem more relatable. 

Just look at Snowbird Ski Resort. After receiving a one-star review saying the resort didn’t have enough easy-to-ski areas, the company repurposed the content into an ad targeting advanced skiers and thrill-seekers.

The ad was a hit — it attracted lots of attention, and the brand features these ads on its website. 

Follow UGC advertising regulations 

Review marketing is cost-effective, easy to put together, and gets results, but it’s still advertising. Therefore, it must follow certain consumer protection regulations and laws. Making sure everything you do is on the up and up heightens your authenticity and trustworthiness. 

Your UGC advertising strategy must follow these guidelines: 

• Treat all reviews equally. That means you shouldn’t just collect, moderate, and display only positive reviews. All honest, authentic reviews — negative and positive — should be treated the same. Don’t discourage or reject negative reviews, or only ask for positive reviews. Be sure to publish negative reviews, even when you don’t agree with them 

• Never allow or post fake reviews. Doing so is the epitome of inauthenticity. Fake reviews include those written by bots or real people who never purchased or tried your products, or that have been edited to appear more positive

• Disclose any material connection between reviews and a merchant. Consumers expect reviews to be written by real people who purchased an item and shared their feedback. If you have a relationship with a reviewer (they’re an employee, for example), you must disclose it. Otherwise, you risk losing credibility, and you could potentially violate consumer protection regulations

• Divulge any benefits provided to the reviewer. If a reviewer received anything in exchange for a review, it needs to be disclosed. That includes sampling campaigns or paying influencers to post or write reviewers

• Display disclosures prominently. Make sure these disclosures or incentives are clearly stated and prominently visible. There’s no standard wording that should be used, but it should clearly convey information to anyone reading the review and stand out enough for the reader to notice it 

Monitor and iterate

Your review marketing strategy doesn’t end after creating and running a review ad. You need to track metrics to gauge its effectiveness and make tweaks based on what you learn. Plus, the ad will most likely inspire others to leave reviews, and you’ll have fresh UGC coming that you’ll want to use in your review marketing. 

Using Bazaarvoice’s Insights and Reports gives you access to an easy-to-use dashboard where you can track different types of UGC for your brand, including reviews and social media posts. Bazaarvoice also has a UGC moderation program to help prevent low-quality, fake, or fraudulent from getting through our network. 

Monitoring data related to your review marketing campaigns will ensure they’re striking the right notes. You’ll know what type of UGC resonates most and is generating the best results. You can use these insights for future campaigns. 

Creating your review marketing strategy

Consumers trust reviews, more so than traditional marketing messages. They read reviews just about every time they purchase something and rely on this content to provide accurate, credible information. Collecting UGC and creating review ads appeals to shoppers — they feel confident buying from you, and they’ll tell their friends. 

Review marketing is a cost-effective, convenient strategy for small marketing teams with lean budgets. Consumers are already talking about you online and sharing their feedback. Capturing and displaying this UGC drives results, builds trust, boosts engagement, and inspires shoppers.  

To get started, join expert speakers Matt Phillips, Director of Customer Success at Searchspring, and Ashlee Meerscheidt, Technical Account Manager at Bazaarvoice, as they share their insights and tips on leveraging reviews for optimal results in this on-demand masterclass: How to boost product discovery with reviews.

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

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

What is a sales channel?

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

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

What are the top sales channels?

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

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

How to boost your sales channels strategy for retail

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

1. Use visuals to enhance product detail pages

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

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

Boost PDPs with UGC photos 

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

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

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

Use sampling to fill PDPs with visuals

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

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

Hannah Kredich, Category Specialist, Petco

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

Display UGC across channels 

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

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

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

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

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

2. Enhance relationships with online retailers

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

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

Use UGC to stand out with retailers 

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

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

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

Create win-win retailer relationships

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

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

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

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

3. Analyze and benchmark performance insights at retail

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

Assess product performance 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Analyze and optimize data 

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

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

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

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

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

How to optimize UGC to boost your retail sales channels

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

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

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

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Getting customers to write those reviews, however, can be tricky. 

This is where incentivized reviews come in — done correctly, these reviews help build trust between existing customers, potential customers, and your brand. We’ll cover the best practices of incentivized reviews, including how to source them, disclose them, and more. 

Let’s get into it. 

Chapters:

1. What is an incentivized review? 
2. How to get authentic incentivized reviews
3. Can you incentivize Google reviews?
4. Why you should use incentivized reviews
5. Get help from the UGC experts 

What is an incentivized review? 

Incentivized reviews are collaborations between a brand and its customers. The customer leaves reviews about their experience with the brand’s product or products, and in exchange, the brand gives them a small reward. It’s a symbiotic relationship: the brand gets social proof of the quality of its product or service, and the customer gets a discount code, loyalty reward points, or some other thank-you gift.

Essentially, you’re acknowledging the time and effort it takes for customers to write a review and expressing your thanks. 

But incentivized reviews can be a double-edged sword for companies. Used well, they boost your connection to potential customers. They’ll see fellow shoppers giving their honest assessment of your product or service, which will (hopefully) drive them to purchase it. 

Used poorly, they can be dangerous to your brand. You need to be transparent about which reviews are incentivized by clearly labeling them. Potential customers could end up feeling like they’ve been tricked if they later learn that a review was written in exchange for a discount vs. seeing that disclosed upfront. 

Authenticity is vital in today’s market, and it’s important to have that come across in reviews. 78% of shoppers surveyed in our recent research said that product reviews were the most influential factor when they were making purchasing decisions. 

How to get authentic incentivized reviews

We’ve already touched on one of the best practices of incentivized reviews: clearly labeling them with something like an incentivized review badge. But in order to label them, you first have to get them. 

Getting authentic, valuable, incentivized reviews is important, and it can definitely be a challenge — customers are busy with so much competition for their limited time and attention. You have to balance offering a significant enough reward to customers that they feel appreciated for their time and effort without attracting those who would write a fake review just for the reward.

But don’t despair. It’s far easier than it seems! These best practices will ensure you’re getting genuine reviews that will help your brand grow organically.

Source them from your customers 

The easiest way to get a review is simply by asking for one. Reach out to your customer mailing list directly or tap into your customer community. Find your customers where they’re already browsing, such as in a branded community space, on social media, or at in-person events. 

These methods take more time and effort for your team if you don’t already have an existing outreach strategy in place. You’ll need to consider available resources before you decide to build your own brand community from scratch or dedicate your design team to creating in-store collateral asking for reviews. 

No matter how you start your customer review outreach, a targeted sampling strategy will help you engage with your customers right away. That means reaching out to consumers and offering a product sample in exchange for an honest review. (Be sure to emphasize that last part!) These samples can be trial sizes, virtual samples, full products — whatever makes the most sense for your brand. 

What does that look like in terms of driving conversions? Petco’s sampling program saw a 48% revenue increase on sampled products!

If a sampling program isn’t something your brand can handle logistically on your own, and you don’t have the resources to outsource it, you can start simpler with your incentivized review strategy. Offer discounts or a promo code in exchange for reviews, emailing customers soon after they’ve made a purchase when the product is still top-of-mind. You can also run a sweepstakes contest with extra entries earned by providing reviews. 

Avoid common pitfalls with incentivized reviews

Sending a discount or coupon code is one thing, but you never want to pay shoppers outright for reviews. Paying for reviews directly discourages honest feedback, as reviewers might feel obligated to say nice things about the brand since they’ve been paid for their time. They’re less likely to admit what could be improved about a product, which is also valuable feedback for your team.

Paid reviews also make anyone reading the reviews feel like they couldn’t possibly be getting unbiased information about the product — avoid it at all costs.

And while incentivized reviews are great, they’re just one tool in your UGC toolbox. You shouldn’t rely on them exclusively in order to build trust in your brand. Be sure to put them in the mix with organic reviews and user-generated content from social media and any other digital platforms where your customers are active. 

Can you incentivize Google reviews?

No, essentially. Technically you could, but you shouldn’t incentivize Google reviews. Google has their own reviews policy but you should never offer incentives in exchange for positive reviews or incentivize customers to remove negative reviews. If you’re caught doing it, your business can face serious consequences:

1. Possible fines from the FTC — up to $50,000 per review
2. Google’s algorithm will punish you and push you way down in search results
3. Your review(s) will be taken down by Google
4. Your brand reputation will take a huge negative hit

Why you should use incentivized reviews 

It all comes back to building trust with your customers — the more they trust you, the more likely they are to recommend you to their friends, family, and online networks. Gotta love that good old word-of-mouth marketing! It builds brand loyalty and maybe even a little buzz. At the very least, the more your brand gets talked about, the more your brand awareness increases. 

All of this also applies when it comes to reviews. They’re opinions coming straight from other shoppers, after all. According to our last Shopper Experience Index, 22% of global shoppers agree that UGC content — including reviews — makes them more likely to buy a product from an ad. 

Incentivized reviews illustrate authenticity in your brand reviews and in your brand as a whole. You’re willing to put your products out there in the hands of consumers so that they will honestly tell you what they think of them. 

But the best reason to use incentivized reviews? They work. Incentivized reviews have been shown to generate huge impacts on brands’ marketing efforts. Kraft Heinz earned 39 million impressions from incentivized reviews in just three sampling campaigns.

They’ve been able to boost their product launch success by getting new products out to hyper-targeted consumers and asking them for their honest feedback. 

And instead of partnering with macro influencers, Rimmel London decided to implement a targeted sampling program. This resulted in a 44% sales lift. That’s huge given they were faced with the dual challenge of raising awareness for a beauty product and reigniting interest in one of their core products. 

Get help from the UGC experts 

Get incentivized reviews right — using an authentic exchange with your customers — and you’ll ultimately get more business. 

One option is tapping into our 7.5-million-strong Influenster consumer community for an existing pool of shoppers who are already excited about the brands they love and eager to discover more — 98% of their review content is added organically and is non-incentivized.

Capturing UGC organically can be a challenge, but the Influenster community is highly engaged, and we saw this as a good way to drive purchase intent.

Michael Kremer, CMO, Pacifica Beauty

The large proportion of organic reviews gives incentivized reviews more authority — these reviewers are seasoned and aren’t just in it to get free stuff! They’re sharing their feedback because it’s something they’re genuinely interested in doing. 

Bazaarvoice will help you with an incentivized review program as part of your strategy to generate authentic UGC, increase brand awareness, and cultivate lasting brand loyalty. Get in touch below to get started. 

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