Takeya increases sales on retailer sites by 30%

Takeya increases Target sales by 30% with UGC

People love Takeya’s water bottles and pitchers—and they love to share that experience. To support the brand’s rapid growth, Takeya leverages user-generated content (UGC) to expand globally with confidence. Takeya made a splash in its market by actively increasing the quality, volume, and reach of the content to keep winning new customers.

The insulated water bottle manufacturer uses ratings, reviews, and social content from customers on its site and distributes the content to Target.com and a dozen other retail sites in the Bazaarvoice Network.

“We make great products that people love. So, as we grew our business from an e-commerce standpoint, taking those positive sentiments from our website and syndicating them effortlessly is critical and helps us grow our retail sales,” said Jordan Gold, Director of E-commerce at Takeya USA.

Takeya credits UGC with helping prove the quality of its products and generating more sales.

“We estimate that adding more reviews to Target.com has helped us increase sales by 30%,” said Gold.

Takeya’s own collection efforts and syndication account for 98% of its 100,000 total reviews in the retail channel, including its 38,500 reviews on Target.com. The brand also has 100% product coverage (the number of products with at least one review) at Target, which is especially impressive compared to the average benchmark of around 24% in the drinkware category. When visitors read reviews on Target’s site, they are several times more likely to buy.

“Shoppers are always going to be compelled to buy products with the most reviews, so we never reach a threshold where we no longer need more,” said Gold. “There’s also the recency benefit, where consumers are most interested in the latest reviews and don’t consider old ones as valuable.”

Though a majority of its sales occur in the retail channel, displaying UGC on its own site yields measurable results. Takeya sees a 58% conversion lift and 40% higher revenue per visitor among those who read reviews on the brand’s site. It also drives visitors to the product pages in the first place.

“The more reviews, the better the SEO. We’ve heard this from retailers. Having that content on their sites improves our visibility on their search engine. We’ve seen our SEO improve drastically over the last couple of years as a result,” said Gold.

Takeya’s also uses Bazaarvoice to gather images on social channels of customers using its products in their everyday lives. Like ratings and reviews, this visual UGC is automatically posted on its product pages on retail sites like Target.com and provides an additional layer of rich content that inspires shoppers and compels them to buy.

“Showing real people using our products in a lifestyle setting gives us powerful social proof and is reinforcing the real-world value of the products,” said Gold.