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What is UGC? If your brand encourages customers to share photos of your products using your brand’s hashtag, then you’re already leveraging user-generated content. User generated content, or UGC, it’s a strategy that helps you increase customer engagement with your brand on social media.
Now, it’s time to consider how you can boost your website’s performance with content from your customers. Why not feature it on your eCommerce site and product pages through a UGC platform?
In this post, we will dive into how a UGC platform can benefit your eCommerce site and enhance the online shopping experience. You’ll also find tips on how to use today’s technology to get the most out of your UGC strategy.
Exactly what you were looking for, right? Let’s get started!
User-Generated Content (UGC) is five times more effective in driving conversions than professionally created content. It’s a powerful tool for engaging with your customers and encouraging genuine connections. By gathering content shared by your customers on social media and integrating it into your website, eCommerce pages, and marketing initiatives through a UGC platform, you can create a dynamic social shopping experience that engages both loyal and potential customers.
By showcasing content from a community of loyal customers around your brand, you add a human touch that feels more authentic than traditional advertising. This also helps potential customers see real people using your products, building trust and social proof in your store. They, too, may eventually share a photo or video with their new product, fuelling a virtuous cycle of engagement.
First, if you already have UGC on social media, it’s time to gather it up.
One way to collect content is to use your brand’s hashtag, inviting your customers to share their experiences. Each time a user posts a photo or video with #YourBrand, you can capture and store it directly in a User-Generated Content platform that integrates with your eCommerce site. It doesn’t matter which social network you’re using—platforms like Flowbox connect seamlessly with all major eCommerce platforms!
With all this content gathered, you can organise the content your customers create for you. Here’s where the fun begins: selecting the photos and that best reflect your brand image to display directly in the online shopping journey through galleries, carousels, or mosaics.
For example, the Spanish brand ALOHAS showcases user-generated social media content on the homepage of its eCommerce site.
User-generated visual content on social media becomes a compelling element in the buying journey, letting customers see genuine, relatable emotions associated with the product.
Through these galleries, customers can further interact with the content, clicking on specific images to explore more and continue their shopping journey.
Seeing the original post allows customers to sense the purchaser’s satisfaction with their purchase.
But don’t just take our word for it—statistics make it more reliable. Let’s see how to analyse the performance of these UGC campaigns.
Marketing is more effective when you target the right audience. So, it’s crucial to analyse your customers’ social media content to better understand your brand’s demographics.
UGC platforms can also serve as a database for analysing customer content, allowing you to see where users come from and who they are.
Furniture brand Kave Home encouraged customers to share photos with the hashtag #KaveHome on social media and generated such a high volume of social content that they needed a platform to fully harness all the visual content users were sharing.
By actively promoting the #KaveHome hashtag, this top-tier brand chose Flowbox to help organise and filter the content and monitor performance.
With insights on when and where the content originates, and who is sharing it, Kave Home gained a comprehensive view of its strategy’s effectiveness and collected key data for future campaigns.
Understanding your user community helps define your brand’s market profile and identify specific audiences for increased engagement on Instagram. An active and well-followed UGC creator who frequently posts for your brand could even become your next brand ambassador.
A UGC platform can help you identify who these creators are. UGC platforms don’t just collect and organise data. By integrating customer-generated content into the shopping journey, you offer an authentic and familiar experience for customers to choose your products. This way, you can further strengthen your strategy.
A smooth shopping journey is essential for making sales on your site. The easier the connection between searching, viewing, and checkout, the more likely conversions will increase. Once you’ve created the Lookbook for your eCommerce display, it’s time to link your products to your customers’ content. Take inspiration from watch brand CLUSE, which also uses Flowbox to offer shoppable content.
From this stylish gallery, users can click on a photo just like they would on social media. But the real magic happens next.
Shoppers are transported directly to the content alongside the featured product from the photo or video. In an instant, they can go from viewing the best of your social content to seeing exactly how they, too, can get the look.
Integrating user-generated content (UGC) into your eCommerce store gives your buyers the social proof they need to see that your products aren’t just reliable—they’re desirable. When customers see real users wearing or using your brand, it creates a connection that’s hard to replicate with professional content. Why? Because seeing others identify with your brand or a specific product encourages new customers to do the same.
Connecting your products to these photos is a natural next step to creating a seamless social shopping experience. With Flowbox’s MultiProduct Linking tool, you can even connect multiple products, showing how users mix and match items from your brand.
Using a UGC platform makes this process straightforward, and tools like Flowbox Recognize simplify it even further.
Flowbox Recognize leverages the latest in image recognition technology to identify products in customer photos, allowing you to instantly link UGC to items in your catalog. For brands with large and constantly changing inventories, this tool is invaluable for streamlining customer content across various marketing channels.
Once UGC is linked to products, you gain access to a vast array of data, helping you showcase exactly what customers want to see. Let’s explore how to turn this data into authentic engagement!
A UGC platform allows you to ensure you’re always displaying top-quality content. This means selecting the most effective UGC and guaranteeing it gets great visibility. But how do you know which UGC performs best?
Flowbox’s Top Photos feature is designed precisely for this. This tool analyses which photos resonate with your customers by key metrics like conversions, impressions, and click-through rate (CTR), giving you complete control to filter as needed! The platform even lets you track the actual revenue generated from each piece of content.
Next, the Evangelist tool provides insight into where your top-performing content comes from (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube) and who your key UGC creators are. With this information, you can better understand who frequently posts your brand’s products, offering deeper insights into your audience.
When you find the content you love, the Pin feature ensures it remains at the top of the gallery. This tool lets you keep your best UGC visible in galleries and carousels, ensuring that all shoppers see your top user content.
For instance, let’s say CLUSE has collected, published, and analysed the performance of a popular photo.
Based on impressions and conversions, the photo has successfully inspired customers to purchase. And, if it was posted by a well-followed creator who embodies the brand’s image, CLUSE can pin it to ensure it stays at the top of the Lookbook.
Where else can you amplify your UGC? Let’s talk about ads!
With a UGC platform, you can also incorporate customer content into your next set of Facebook or Instagram ads.
For example, eyewear brand Meller saw a 13.9% lower cost per click on Instagram ads featuring UGC compared to those showing professional brand photos. This content was gathered using Meller’s brand hashtag!
Getting this right is essential, but don’t worry: requesting media rights within a UGC platform is simple. Once you have permission from the user, you’re all set! You can then send the image directly to Facebook Ads to launch your UGC campaign.
This content not only circulates on social media, earning clicks and engagement, but it continues its work on your website, strengthening your brand image and trustworthiness.
Once you start integrating UGC into your site with a dedicated User-Generated Content platform, you’ll want to use it for all your products. Now, let’s see how a UGC platform simplifies the organization of your best content.
We hope you have so much UGC that you need a little help organising it. That’s where your User-Generated Content platform comes in.
UGC isn’t only about your online community. If your brand doesn’t primarily collect content via social media, UGC can still adapt to fit your brand and content type. AC MILAN used UGC to boost merchandise sales. By segmenting UGC into site categories, such as different players, they used fan interests to drive sales. When shoppers click “Shop by Player” on their site, they see all the UGC filtered for that specific collection.
You can use Flowbox’s Collections feature to gather content into various galleries based on genre, product, location, style—whatever category suits your needs! This way, customers can browse UGC relevant to the products they’re interested in, creating a tailored, engaging shopping experience.
This feature is especially valuable if you have a UGC gallery or carousel on your homepage but want to filter content on individual product pages. When a customer clicks on a product they’re interested in, they can see the latest looks featuring that specific item.
Instead of showing impersonal product photos, you’ll offer more engaging images and videos that showcase the product in a real-life context—modeled by the very players it was designed for, including figures that AC Milan fans would idolize. And the best part? You’re not the one telling them how great your product is—your fans and customers are!
Another way UGC can improve your eCommerce strategy: You can see which products have the most UGC. If you see that you’re lacking customer photos for a particular product, you have the perfect idea for your next giveaway! Or an incentive to get your customers to produce the content you need.
Looking for fresh, creative ways to showcase customer content? Our User-Generated Content platform is here to support you in bringing all your wildest UGC dreams to life. If you’re still in the brainstorming phase, here are a few inspirations to get your creativity flowing.
Because a good CHOUFFE ought to be shared! With a look that perfectly complements their product, they created a lookbook that invites users to showcase the fun and charm of their product. This approach encourages customers to share genuine moments of enjoyment, building a vibrant community around the brand.
Maxi-Cosi, the beloved children’s products brand, showcases its versatility through UGC, featuring products in a format filled with smiles and vibrant colours.
When it comes to gathering, publishing, and analysing customer content, a User-Generated Content platform is the ideal solution. Integrating photos and videos is effortless and works wonders for your eCommerce storefront.
Authentic engagement, social proof, and a reliable brand image are crucial elements for online sales—all achievable by integrating UGC across your eCommerce site, product pages, and marketing initiatives. With these benefits and a 19% increase in conversion rate in CLUSE’s case, implementing a UGC strategy is clearly the right move.
As a platform, we aim to grow alongside our clients and help spread the message of brands that bring a positive impact to the world and effectively use UGC to promote this message.
On our page, we feature the Flowboxer of the Month recognition, awarded in 2023 to ALOHAS for their commitment to sustainable production and effective use of UGC.
There’s no doubt about the power of a UGC platform for your brand’s eCommerce success. If you’re ready to explore how to integrate it yourself, or if you still have questions about what user-generated content is, we’re here to help.
Visit our informative resources on User-Generated Content!
