That’s pretty great for customers. But it’s also a huge opportunity for your brand. The average social media user spends 2 hours and 23 minutes a day on social platforms — that accounts for over a third of every minute spent on the internet. Because you now have the chance to engage with your audience in a more meaningful, direct way, you can turn literally every one of those minutes into a potential moment of conversion. 

Chapters:

1. Why does social shopping matter for brands
2. How brands in different industries win with social shopping
3. Access the full benefits of social shopping

Why does social shopping matter for brands

Social shopping addresses a shopper pain point by making it easier for people to connect with what they want to buy. Where social commerce focuses more on selling, social shopping focuses on research and purchases, and improving the whole shopping experience.

Our Shopper Experience Index, an annual report into consumer behavior, tells us that there’s no more debate about the importance of social media and shoppable content. Here’s why:

• Social media is the new search engine. Across the board, 58% of people are discovering products on social platforms. And before hitting the ‘buy’ button, 50% of shoppers are digging deeper, using social media to research their finds
• Young adults are leading the charge. Nearly three quarters (73%) of 18 to 24-year-olds find their next purchase through social media. It’s their mall, their catalog, and their wishlist, all rolled into one
• Buying is the new liking. With 50% of consumers making purchases directly through social media in the past year, the “double tap” has taken on a whole new meaning
• Voice of the customer is key. 78% of consumers feel more confident in a purchase when they view shopper content — that includes creator-, influencer-, and user-generated content

In short, social shopping allows you to meet your customers where they are and where they increasingly prefer to find, research, and buy products. 

How brands in different industries win with social shopping

At Bazaarvoice, we have the pleasure of working with brands across every industry under the sun. We’ve helped beauty, CPG, and hardware companies tap into the magic of social shopping and user-generated content (UGC), lift conversion rates, and increase average order value.

We learned a lot from helping our customers. Here, we distill the most important lessons and fascinating case studies to help you.

Health & beauty

The health and beauty industry thrives on visual appeal. Social media platforms are the perfect stage for brands that fall into these categories. They can showcase their products in action, with vibrant images and videos that do more than sell — they tell a story. 

UGC plays a starring role here. Rich visual content from customers offers authentic glimpses into real-life results and applications (e.g. is the eyeshadow patchy? Does this foundation look good on a complexion like mine? Is this shampoo the key to becoming the star of the live-action Tangled remake?). 

This authenticity is key in an industry where trust and transparency are as important as the products themselves. And if people like what they see, shoppable posts make it easy to click and buy on the spot, turning inspiration into action in mere seconds.

The Body Shop

The Body Shop, a decades-long player in the beauty industry, wanted to enhance its online customer experience. In the words of Indar Chanicka, the brand’s Vice President of E-Commerce, “we set out to fully utilize our social content to drive engagement and use it as a tool to educate customers through their purchasing decisions. We want customers to (…) see the actual products and their benefits through the experiences of real customers.”

To accomplish this goal, The Body Shop integrated social media UGC directly onto product pages. The results? A 28% conversion rate on product pages and a 13% increase in average order value. 

Iconic London

Iconic London is a shining example of how brands can bridge the gap between social media inspiration and e-commerce action. First, they recognized the disjointed experience between social platforms and their website. Then, they set out to create a seamless journey that maintained the authenticity and engagement of social media while guiding customers smoothly to the checkout page. 

Iconic London implemented Like2Buy, a tool that turns your Instagram pictures and videos into informative, directional, or shoppable posts. This approach allows customers to transition from social media to the website without feeling disconnected. 

By coupling UGC, Instagram, and Like2Buy, Iconic London was able to increase conversion rates by 126% and lift average order value by 11% in just 12 months. 

Apparel & accessories

Trying on clothes is a pretty important part of the shopping experience. How else will you know if that pair of jeans fits just right? In the context of e-commerce, apparel and accessories brands have found a savvy way to bring the fitting room to their audience, right through their screens. 

Social media brings fashion shows to every feed. Each scroll is an opportunity to show off the latest and greatest trends, pieces, and styles in action. 

Once again, UGC proves to be a valuable ally. Just like with beauty products, it offers a front-row seat to real-life product demos. Authentic, diverse, and oh-so compelling, this type of content turns everyday customers into the stars of your show, modeling the clothes in their own unique styles and settings. 

Isabella Oliver and Baukjen

Isabella Oliver and Baukjen acknowledge the value of showing their clothes on different bodies. The brand embraces visual UGC to enrich the virtual try-on experience and make online shopping feel as personal and engaging as visiting a store.

Their strategy is simple yet impactful: a monthly hashtag contest encourages customers to share their #BaukjenStyle, turning the competition into a curated display of real-world fashion. 

Bazaarvoice Galleries then takes these snippets and places them on product pages to create a digital window display that’s both beautiful and relatable. The feedback speaks for itself, with customers expressing newfound confidence in their purchases, inspired by seeing the clothes on bodies just like theirs. This confidence translates into tangible results: a 120% increase in conversion rates and a 10% lift in average order value.

We love Isabella Oliver and Baukjen’s approach because it proves that, in the online fashion world, the best way to know if those jeans fit just right is by seeing them in action.

Home improvement

In the home improvement sphere, the phenomenon of social shopping introduces a dynamic where the aspirational is instantly attainable. Instead of just sources of décor ideas, platforms like Instagram and Pinterest become marketplaces where inspiration seamlessly leads to transactions. 

And with a little help from UGC, facilitating this transition becomes easier. Shoppers don’t have to hesitate before buying because they don’t know whether that chaise longue would look good in their homes. You already have a library of relatable content showing them it will.

Dreams

Dreams took their success to new heights with UGC. The brand spotlights their bed frames, sofa beds, and furniture through the lens of real customers’ homes. The #mydreamsbed social media campaign (sensing a #theme here?) showcases customer-inspired bedrooms but also serves as a testament to the power of community in shaping brand perception. 

With high-quality, scroll-stopping images populating their homepage, Dreams has created an engaging first impression that draws customers deeper into their product range. Their strategic use of UGC has led to a 200% increase in conversion rate and a 62% rise in average order value. 

But perhaps more interesting is how the influx of customer photos has informed Dreams’ own creative direction. Octavia Benham, Dreams’ Head of E-commerce, explains how UGC inspires the team and helps them craft their own content. ”Previously, our own product images didn’t look very lived in, but we changed that based on the UGC content we were getting,” she says.

Consumer electronics

Let’s face it: the more expensive the purchase, the more we rely on other people’s opinions and the longer we consider handing over our money. Such is often the case for consumer electronics, where the price tags tend to be heftier and purchases less frequent.

Given social media’s role as the hottest rising star in consumer research and purchase, there’s an opportunity for brands in this industry to share social proof and nudge people towards purchasing in one fell swoop.

Midland Radio

Midland Radio, a leader in two-way communication devices, recognized the untapped potential of showcasing UGC to enhance their digital presence and boost customer engagement. The brand successfully curated UGC from Instagram, Facebook, and other social channels to enrich their site’s content and make it more relatable.

The results speak volumes: a 143% increase in conversion rate and a 27% increase in average order value. But Midland Radio’s approach didn’t stop with collecting and displaying UGC. With tools like Reveal, Showroom, and Like2Buy, they also enhanced their Instagram strategy, making it easier for followers to transition from browsing to buying. 

Food & beverage

Being able to taste a product on social might be a little ways down the road. Thankfully, humans have other senses that food and beverage brands can appeal to. When done right, visuals can almost convey flavors, aromas, and textures (drink if you’ve never “eaten” with your eyes!) 

Social media is the perfect place for storytelling. Food and beverage brands can get creative with their shoppable posts by sharing recipes that feature their products or partnering with food influencers and UGC creators who show the goods in action (yes, this does include eating said goods. There’s a reason mukbangs are still a popular type of content — some people just enjoy seeing other people eat. It is what it is).

T2 Tea

T2 chose to stir up their social shopping strategy with UGC and shoppable posts. They partnered with Bazaarvoice to amplify brand presence and cultivate a digital environment that mirrors the communal and sensory nature of enjoying a steaming cup of tea. 

“Our aim is to create a community of tea lovers,” said Sally Lennox, Head of Digital at T2. “UGC is a way for us to embrace our customers by hearing their unique perspectives and displaying that word-of-mouth content on our digital screens. It provides such powerful social proof when customers can see that others are loving our products.”

T2 celebrates its fans by capturing and posting social media UGC on its home and product pages with Bazaarvoice Galleries. The brand also implemented Like2Buy and shoppable posts on Instagram so browsers can immediately access the products that catch their eye.

Consumer packaged goods

The landscape of consumer packaged goods (CPG) is a competitive one, with direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies increasingly taking over a share of the market. Building trust and signaling safety is thus becoming more and more essential. 

Many CPG brands are turning to social media to push educational content highlighting how real people use their products to make their lives better/easier/more fabulous. And if there’s a direct path to purchase right there in the posts? That’s the cherry on top.

MAM

Understanding the concerns and desires of parents who want the best for their little ones, MAM UK harnessed the power of social proof. So the brand leveraged real-life experiences and endorsements from satisfied parents to reassure potential customers. 

To amplify their UGC strategy, MAM implemented social commerce solutions, effectively completing their full-funnel marketing approach. Bazaarvoice Galleries allowed MAM to curate and display authentic social photos and videos from advocates, creating beautiful product galleries on their website. 

The strategy made their products more relatable, which translated into engagement and profit — more precisely, a 258% increase in time on site, a 108% increase in conversions, and a 58% increase in average order value. 

Access the full benefits of social shopping

Social shopping isn’t a fad — it’s the new normal. And if you have the right tools and the right partners, there’s no reason why you won’t be able to adapt and thrive. 

Dive into the world of social shopping with the ultimate guide to social media conversion for more actionable tips on how to create captivating shopping experiences that impact your bottom line.

FEATURED RESOURCE

How to define and measure social commerce ROI and value

Read here

The DIY and home-improvement market keeps getting bigger. Between 2019 and 2021, spending on DIY projects grew 44% to $66 billion, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. 

Almost 60% of homeowners remodeled or redecorated their homes in 2022, and 48% made home repairs, according to the 2023 U.S. Houzz and Home Study: Renovation Trends. More than half of homeowners planned projects in 2023. 

All these home projects mean consumers are shopping for home building materials, home decor, tools, supplies, and more. Most consumers shop for what they need for their projects both online and in stores. They seek inspiration and information on social media and via user-generated content (UGC) posted by other DIY-ers — most shoppers always or sometimes read reviews before buying anything.

However, one thing to note about customer behavior and industry trends these days is that inflation is causing many to be slightly more budget-conscious with their DIY and home improvement projects. Our research shows that 55% of DIY consumers plan to re-purpose products that they already have to improve home decor.

Still, in the next year, 66% plan to make decorative changes in their homes, while 58% plan to make wear-and-tear repairs, our research shows. About 20% will take on structural, functional, or major renovations. 

Home improvement trends: Now and next

Using our own research as well as third party insights, here’s a look at how DIY and home-improvement industry trends have evolved over the past few years, what’s on trend now, and what shopping habits you can expect in the near future. 

Now: UGC entices consumers to shop for DIY products 

Millennial DIYers often leverage social media platforms, like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest, for home project ideas and inspiration. Influencers, including everyday consumers, reveal their latest projects and discuss the newest home trends. Retailers and brands need to make it easy for shoppers to connect the dots to purchase on social media. 

Many consumers aren’t planners when it comes to DIY. 35% of DIYers do home projects when inspiration strikes, our research shows. But, they need help choosing the right items. That’s where UGC comes into play. 

UGC is the most trusted form of content, according to 63% of DIY consumers. We’ve found that when DIY shoppers interact with UGC, you can see a 167% conversion lift and 250% RPV boost. Consumers are also more likely to buy items with written reviews and customer photos and videos. 

Most shoppers expect UGC to be easy to find, whether they’re shopping online or in stores for home decor and DIY supplies. It helps them make informed decisions, so it’s important to feature UGC everywhere people shop. 

About 2 in 3 consumers prefer shopping for DIY and home improvement products in-store (that number rises to 76% for consumers over 55). The main reasons they prefer visiting stores in person are to get advice from in-store sales reps and to get what they need more quickly.

Vancouver-based furniture and decor company Urban Barn strives to offer shoppers consistent, unique experiences both online and in stores. The brand has found that even when shoppers visit stores, they research products on its website first. The company has been beefing up its UGC collection efforts by encouraging customers to post images on social media tagged #RightAtHome. 

Urban Barn has seen a 59% conversion rate boost, a 29% increase in order value, and a whopping 270% lift in time on site since implementing its UGC strategy.

Next: DIY shoppers want multi-channel experiences 

In the next few years, consumers will continue to seek convenience when shopping for home improvement items. DIY retailers should rise to the challenge and rethink their formats and services. Topps Tiles is a good example. The brand has opened smaller boutique-style storefronts to offer unique experiences. 

Shoppers will embrace online shopping for home improvement purchases more often. Our research shows that consumers are motivated by the fact that more items are in stock online (41%), they can quickly get advice from customer reviews (36%), and they just enjoy shopping online more (34%). 

The DIY brands that are winning offer a consistent, seamless shopper experience across digital, in-store, outdoor, and social media. For instance, Made.com, a British home goods e-commerce brand, has opened a few showrooms to provide this omnichannel experience. 

Over three-quarters of shoppers research DIY and home improvement products online or on social media before buying them. And, more than 40% of 18- to 34-year-olds frequently purchase directly from social media. This highlights the importance of relevant, high-quality UGC in guiding online and in-store purchases. 

Consumers tend to search for UGC on web browsers (45%), retail websites (40%), brand websites (39%), and social media (27%). 

Over half of DIY consumers would be more likely to purchase DIY and home improvement products if more educational resources, like videos and reviews, were available. YouTube is the preferred platform for learning about DIY and home projects, followed by advice from friends and family.

With social media such an important source of inspiration, 31% of consumers also shop there for products for their DIY and home projects. This emphasizes the vital role social media marketing and UGC play in moving consumers through the purchase funnel. 

Bedding and bath brand Parachute features UGC in its marketing mix to show how real customers are styling and using its products in their daily lives. This strategy has helped the brand increase click-through rates by 35% and lower cost-per-click rates by 60%.

By continuously collecting UGC, Parachute keeps a fresh slate of inspiring content flowing in all the time. 

Future: DIYers want personalization and support to shop with confidence 

DIY and home improvement retailers are considered places for consumers interested in tackling these projects to come together, find inspiration, and learn something new. This viewpoint is especially crucial for millennials and new homeowners, who feel that they lack the skills and confidence to complete these projects and need extra support. 

For instance, 60% of millennials can’t put up shelves, and 39% say they can’t decorate. Educational marketing materials and in-store workshops will help engage and build trust among unconfident shoppers. 

Home Depot has long recognized the value of engaging shoppers in this way. The retailer hosts virtual and in-store DIY workshops for all skill levels to help customers learn new skills and become handier at home. 

45% of consumers expect a personalized experience from brands and retailers when shopping for DIY and home improvement products. So, investing in this area can help you maintain a competitive edge. 

Consumers are also interested in tech-focused support. 45% of DIY shoppers have used some type of digital tool to plan their projects, while 25% have used “customized products on brand websites,” and 17% have used augmented reality or virtual reality to visualize furniture in their own space. 

UGC is crucial for attracting DIY consumers now and in the future

There’s one standout and consistent trend when it comes to the home improvement industry, DIY and home improvement shoppers massively rely on what other consumers have to say before purchasing furniture, supplies, home decor, and other things to spruce up their homes.

Ensuring you have a process to collect and distribute UGC will continue to attract customers and build relationships with them for years to come. Learn more about Bazaarvoice’s solutions here. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is the Home Depot Seeds Program?

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

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

How to leverage the Home Depot Seeds Program

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

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

Getting started with Bazaarvoice + Home Depot

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

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

For these brands, it meant more orders and more consumers discovering them via online channels. And companies that had already been following e-commerce trends had a major advantage over those that had to catch up.

Two years later, home improvement marketing trends are focused on customer experiences that bring a new level of immersion to the shopping experience. Customers reward brands that make it easy to get as much product information as possible through live support, mixed reality technology, and user-generated content (UGC).

Top 5 home improvement marketing trends

By 2025, a quarter of all furniture sales will take place in the online channel. For your home improvement brand to win in 2022 and beyond, these are the five marketing trends and tactics to watch.

1. Augmented reality

When shopping for a new piece of furniture, customers want to be able to visualize it in their home. That’s where augmented reality (AR) technology comes in. Using their phone, a customer can see if that new sofa matches the coffee table before they commit to the purchase. As such, AR isn’t a gimmick but a useful functionality that’s a win-win for retailers and consumers. Some AR tools, like Envision, decrease returns up to 80% while increasing sales by 30%.

Pinterest, everyone’s go-to platform for when they need visual inspiration, has released a new AR shopping feature that includes home improvement. The Try On feature works with items from retailers like Walmart and Crate & Barrel and spans 80,000 pins. Because the pins are shoppable, users can easily go from scrolling to ordering, so there’s little friction between discovery and purchase. According to Pinterest, the Try On feature increases the likelihood of users making a purchase by 5x. 

E-commerce platform Shopify also helped the shopping complex Magnolia Market bring an AR feature to its app. Users can preview what decor products would look like in their homes and also take a photo to share with others. They can also manipulate the object to see it from different angles.

When it comes to using mixed reality technology, leave it to furniture giant IKEA to go all out. It already has an AR-powered app (IKEA Place), but the Swedish company has released a new solution that blends AI and mixed reality. Called IKEA Kreativ, it captures an image of a room and helps you decorate it from scratch. It can also remove your current furniture from the photo, so there’s no need to shuffle things around IRL. The kings of home improvement marketing.

2. Buy now, pay later

With rising inflation and an uncertain economy, shoppers are going to think twice before making big purchases — especially if they must pay up front. Flexible payment options like buy now, pay later (BNPL) can increase conversions and expand access to your products. BNPL allows customers to pay off items in multiple installments, usually without any fees.

Over 30% of internet users are also BNPL users, and projections estimate that 79 million consumers in the US will rely on BNPL in 2022 to fund their purchases. 

Home improvement e-commerce stores can offer BNPL via popular providers like PayPal, Klarna, Afterpay, and Affirm, which integrate at checkout. BNPL can also help you when marketing to Gen Z, as they made up nearly 37% of users in 2021 — more than any other generation.

Furniture companies that added Affirm’s BNPL solution include Article and Herman Miller. For Article, it represents an opportunity to build consumer trust, while Herman Miller wanted to bring more payment flexibility to its online customers. According to Erika White, head of communications and corporate marketing at Affirm, its retail partners experience an average order value growth of 85% with its solution.

3. Live customer support

Customers who are making big home improvement purchases sometimes need more information before placing an order. If they can’t find this information on your website, then their next step is to get in touch with customer service teams. That’s where live customer support comes in. It includes customer service agents who are there to help customers in real time, by phone or chat. 

Live customer support is especially important when we talk about online shopping for items that require some technical knowledge. “Lighting is a very technical category. It requires different electrical components, installation. We certainly augment our site experience with live sales teams, based here in the U.S., that are very knowledgeable. Sometimes that will help people feel comfortable making the decision,” explains Anne Berger, chief marketing officer at lighting retailer YDesign Group.

Customer expectations for live support have increased. From 2019 to 2021, the percentage of US online adults who described live online chat as “important” for retailers grew from 27% to 42%. Home improvement e-commerce brands that ignore this are providing an opportunity for their competitors to win over potential customers, making live support an essential part of your online store user experience.

4. Social commerce

For proof that social media is essential to home improvement marketing, look no further than Pinterest. When we plan a redecorating project, we go online to find interior design inspiration. (How are you supposed to know that a glazed tile backsplash is perfect for your kitchen if you’ve never seen it before?) 

So, social commerce bridges the gap between exploring and purchasing, allowing online furniture and decor brands to organically incorporate their products into social media. From Instagram to Facebook, major social networks all incorporate e-commerce features that your furniture store can take advantage of.

Anthropologie, a clothing and home decor retailer, saw a dramatic increase in searches for its home decor on the platform: 1,057% year over year for the “anthropologie home decor inspiration” keyword. To follow up on that success, it launched an exclusive digital catalog on Pinterest for its 2020 spring home collection.

While browsing the catalog, Pinterest users can click on links that will take them to the Anthropologie website, where they can purchase the items.

Live commerce (shopping while watching a livestream) is also making waves in the retail industry, with conversions close to 30% (almost 10x higher than traditional e-commerce). Although live commerce is much more popular with clothing brands (furnishing and home improvement only make up 3.6% of live commerce events), this creates an opportunity to focus your home improvement marketing strategy on attracting this consumer attention.

In Korea, IKEA has already piloted a live shopping solution. During the livestream, IKEA home improvement experts talked about their products and shared tips, while viewers could ask questions and make orders.

5. User-generated content

Images, videos, and written reviews all fall under the umbrella of UGC. Since UGC comes from real people and not the brand, it plays an important role in providing social proof and assuring consumers of the product’s high quality. And UGC has a major impact on consumers — by using customer photos and videos, you can increase the likelihood of purchase by 66% and 62%, respectively.

You can grow UGC for your home improvement marketing strategy in several ways. One is by introducing a product sampling program that gives out items for free in exchange for honest customer reviews. Home Depot Canada partnered with Bazaarvoice to create the Seeds Sampling program to increase UGC for four new Philips WiZ products. The added product reviews resulted in a 68% higher conversion rate compared to other products that weren’t included in the program.

Another way of encouraging UGC is by launching contests and challenges on social media. Furniture and houseware retailer Made.com launched a campaign that invited customers to share photos on Instagram of its products in their homes with the hashtag #MADEdesign. Participating customers had the chance to be featured in a new digital and print campaign which was a strong incentive to take part in the contest.

Build your customers’ trust in your home improvement e-commerce brand

New consumer behaviors and marketing trends have allowed home improvement brands’ e-commerce businesses to flourish. In the UK and Germany, for example, more than 50% of consumers now turn to online shopping for furniture and home improvement.

Home improvement marketing isn’t immune to broader trends in retail, such as social commerce, but it does face unique challenges. Customers take more time to research and buy furniture and other home furnishings (as opposed to clothing), so providing them with innovative ways of learning more about your products is essential.

Solutions that establish customer trust grow UGC with genuine reviews. The reviews boost your customers’ confidence, which results in improved conversion rate metrics — just in time for you to take advantage of the growing number of online home improvement shoppers.

Learn more about home improvement marketing, trends, and solutions.

DISCOVER MORE CONSUMER TRENDS

Bazaarvoice Shopper Experience Index 2022

Read now

Oak Furnitureland is doing just that. Using Bazaarvoice’s platform and services, the British retailer is capturing the steady flow of user-submitted photos of its beautiful hardwood furniture, sofa collections and ranges of accessories inside homes. Then it’s turning those shots into its strongest sales tools.

The results are astounding. Stocking its website galleries with real, authentic photos of lived-in furniture arrays, Oak Furnitureland has increased visitor time on site by 281%, and more than tripled conversion rates for consumers scrolling through for ideas.

User-generated content (UGC) has always been a great vehicle for marketers to tap into to drive engagement. It creates confidence. It instills trust. And it generates revenue. Up to 62% more revenue per visit in some cases.

But to leverage UGC’s potential, retailers need a platform to channel and amplify its benefits. Oak Furnitureland partnered with Bazaarvoice to grow its brand in a number of ways, starting with improved use of UGC. Here’s four key benefits Oak Furnitureland gained using Bazaarvoice’s platform and services.

1) Amplifying its brand promise: ‘Real Furniture for Real Homes’

Oak Furnitureland engaged with Bazaarvoice to curate the best UGC content from existing customers for display throughout the customer journey. User-submitted photos showcase the furniture’s high quality and how it fits into consumer lifestyles, supporting the brand’s appeal to the broadest possible audience.

2) Building Galleries with UGC

Oak Furnitureland leveraged Bazaarvoice Galleries to distribute content easily and effectively across theme pages and timely campaigns. Easy-to-build, customizable carousels and gallery pages feature product tags, enabling customers to discover new products.

Best-in-class Galleries workflows enable Oak Furnitureland to source and organize content into streams for different purposes. Platform features also make rights requests a breeze, saving marketers time and reducing stress.

3) Drive engagement and turning traffic into sales

Attracting a steady stream of visitors starts the e-commerce process. Getting visitors to stay — and buy — takes it to the next level. Using Bazaarvoice Galleries, Oak Furnitureland inspired people to learn about products as they scrolled through compelling images and videos. The tools helped to double the engagement the company was seeing with non-Galleries traffic. Just as important, more browsers turned into buyers.

Oak Furnitureland added Like2Buy as a social commerce solution to drive traffic to its website and boost conversions. When it calls out a specific product in an Instagram feed post, Oak Furnitureland includes a Like2Buy link in its main profile bio. Conversions increased by 248% and average order value jumped 21%.

4) Easy access to UGC with moderation services

Managing an increasingly active stream of social content can be a challenge. Just finding the right image to fit the right campaign theme can take time. Oak Furnitureland streamlined the process using Bazaarvoice moderation services, saving time and ensuring that each entry adheres to the brand’s guidelines for imagery.

To learn more about Bazaarvoice’s work with Oak Furnitureland and how you can drive engagement, read the full case study here.

FEATURED RESOURCE

Webinar: Ignite engagement during the buyer journey

Watch now

“We turned from being a brand that was of less importance to some retailers; we became of greater importance to them.”

Launching a brand that’s loved in one market into a new territory where it’s not known at all is a huge hill to climb. As a product or brand manager, you’ll need to convince new retailers that your brand is of good value and worth stocking to drive sales, strengthen retail partnerships, and increase distribution. You’ll also need to create new brand advocates and increase lifetime customer value. 

Beko ANZ was trying to navigate this exact situation, and with Bazaarvoice’s help, they managed to figure it out in just eight months. See how they:

• Saved more than $100,000 a year on insights and analysis 
• Placed products into more stores and strengthened retail partnerships 
• Syndicated and distributed product reviews that elevated their brand and drove sales 
• Built and solidified connections with customers

Chatting with Amanda Hart, Marketing Manager at Beko ANZ

Beko is a leader in domestic home appliances, active in more than 140 countries, and Amanda’s worked for them for just over four years. 

“Beko is quite a small and new subsidiary in Australia and New Zealand. So, I looked at some of the bigger subsidiaries around the world for inspiration. I went to our Beko UK website and I noticed straight away on their homepage that it talked about how 96% of consumers recommend our products and I thought, well, that’s pretty powerful; I want that too! Without reviews, no one in our part of the world and America too would know who we were.”

Amanda’s search to find the right ratings and review solution was kickstarted by a website relaunch. 

“We were rebuilding our website and researching review platforms. We needed something affordable with a global reach and found that Bazaarvoice offered both.”

What was the biggest obstacle?

“Finding a review platform solution with a global reach. A customer and our digital team recommended Bazaarvoice. Armed with feedback and research, I said I already know what I want, I’ve done the research, let’s go.” 

Let your customers do the work

In order to introduce its brand name and products to the Australian market, Beko used what works best: User-generated content. By letting customers do the talking, they’ve been able to sell more online during the pandemic and get their products into more stores as the COVID-19 situation has improved in Australia. 

The result? A whopping 30,000 product reviews on retail sites. 

Beko now has more than 30,000 reviews on retail sites from syndication—mostly gathered from post-interaction emails sent to customers after registering their appliance—which accounts for more than half of all Beko product reviews on those sites. Increasing review volume has also helped Beko become retailers’ favorite vendor.  

And they achieved all this in a mere eight months.

“Retailers that we were only just starting to really talk to in New Zealand that have not really done work with us in the past, are looking at the numbers going ‘Holy wow.’ They’re quite blown away with all the reviews that we’ve gotten and that they can get access to. We turned from being a brand that was of less importance to some retailers to one of greater importance.”

Also not to be underestimated has been the power of reviews in nudging new customers towards clicking add to cart. 

“Beko consumers have a very high loyalty rate once our products are in their home. So, that’s where reviews become important to me because I want to give that first time consumer a bit more reason to buy us. The average amount of reviews on a washing machine is probably about 200 reviews. Our customers trust the word of 200 other individuals out there before they’d trust an ad.” 

$100,000 saved in consumer research

Beko have also saved $100,000 a year on consumer research using Bazaarvoice Insights & Reports. 

“If you have 15 reviews and they all talk about the same product flaw then it needs to be looked into. Once we notice a pattern from our reviews we can take it back to the team. They’re engineers and they want to do things right. Once they’ve got that data, they’re able to implement changes,” says Murat Doram, Product Manager at Beko. 

Ask any brand or product manager and they’ll tell you the same thing: Launching a well-known brand into a completely new territory is hard. Really hard. But, it doesn’t have to be. Utilising the right global product reviews platform will drive your customer ratings and reviews, in turn increasing distribution, strengthening your retail partnerships, and boosting your sales. Just ask Beko! Read the full Beko success story now.

Featured resource

Webinar: How to respond to negative reviews like a pro

Watch now!

That’s why the home improvement giant partners with Bazaarvoice to get more high quality reviews onto its website. Home Depot Canada launched several solutions and features that improve customer experience and help its suppliers optimize their user-generated content (UGC) on the Home Depot Canada website. 

It’s a win-win situation for everyone, creating a better experience for customers and boosting sales for both Home Depot Canada and its vendors. From launching its own tailored sampling program to syndicating visual UGC, here’s how Home Depot Canada successfully injected thousands of quality reviews and photos into its website. 

1. Home Depot Canada inspired more confident purchases by increasing UGC with Home Depot Seeds 

Bazaarvoice and Home Depot Canada partnered to help brands get more UGC with its Home Depot Seeds sampling program. The sampling program puts products in the hands of Home Depot Canada shoppers who are eager to try new products, in exchange for providing honest product reviews on the Home Depot Canada website.

Home Depot Canada vendors are encouraged to use the review-seeding sampling program strategically throughout the year for seasonal, exclusive, and new products, or any products that need new reviews, as reviews recency matters. Bazaarvoice helps Home Depot Canada vendors decide which products to sample, identify the perfect audience for your product, and guide the brand throughout fulfilment. 

Home Depot Canada invested in reviews collection because UGC drives sales. Customers who interact with UGC are 2X more likely to convert and 93% of consumers say online reviews do impact their purchasing decisions. Reviews help customers validate their purchasing decisions and feel more confident in products. 

The sampling program is a relatively low-cost, tangible solution that allows Home Depot Canada vendors to easily get feedback, and increase their ratings and reviews coverage on Homedepot.ca. It’s been so successful in fact, that Home Depot US vendor partners are now interested in using it to collect reviews for their Canadian exclusive items and new product launches. 

Click to watch Home Depot Seeds 101

2. Home Depot Canada expanded its reach with French translations 

Almost a quarter of Canadians (22.8%) speak French as their first official language, but 92% of Home Depot’s reviews are in English. As many as 40% of customers won’t buy if they can’t read content in their language, so it was imperative for Home Depot Canada to enable French translations on its site to make its UGC more accessible for its French-speaking customers.

Luckily, turning on Bazaarvoice’s Review Translations feature was a quick way to expand Home Depot’s reach to French users and allow shoppers to translate UGC into their native language on-demand.

3. Home Depot Canada invested in more visual content on its site

Another simple and fast way Home Depot Canada enabled more engagement on its website was by launching photo syndication. 

Photo syndication is the collection and distribution of visual UGC for a brand to the websites of retail partners who sell the brand’s products. Brands, or third-party providers on their behalf, collect photos taken by customers using a variety of methods, including post-interaction emails, sweepstakes, social media, and sampling programs. For our clients, Bazaarvoice authenticates the collected photos and then matches brand content to the product catalogs on retailer websites. 

Photo syndication helps retailers deliver an exceptional shopping experience by showcasing plenty of content on all of their products. But it doesn’t just help retailers. Brands can leverage photo syndication to ensure their most inspirational content is available wherever consumers are shopping. 

A majority of consumers (62%) are more likely to buy a product if they can see photos taken by other customers, according to Search Engine Journal. The surveyed consumers said photos help them make purchasing decisions for a myriad of reasons, including helping them see the quality of a product and seeing the product in action. 

After enabling photo syndication, Home Depot Canada saw a big return: there were over 900,000 photos available within the Bazaarvoice Network to instantly syndicate to Home Depot Canada. Now, 937,472 syndicated reviews have photos attached, 1,398,076 total photos have been syndicated, and 109,481 products have syndicated reviews with photos.

Home Depot Canada made a name for itself in the retail industry with its innovative—yet simple—approach to collecting more UGC for its vendors on Homedepot.ca. 

Get in touch with us here to learn more