Fruitful Ways User-Generated Content Elevates your E-commerce Business

When it comes to online marketing and sales, there is no alternative to content. A variety of content forms can be utilized to promote your products. No matter whether it’s a text, image, audio, video, animation, infographics, or a combination of them, they are a marvelous way to engage clients with your e-commerce brand. Whenever we think about website content, we reflect on the brand-generated texts, images, videos, etc. But we can derive similar types of content through the audience as well and that we know as user-generated content (UGC). We will throw light on the ways user-generated content elevates your e-commerce business in the later part of the write-up.

What’s user-generated content (UGC)? Any idea? Let’s clarify it. User-generated content mainly refers to the textual and visual content related to your business created by people connected with your business. They can be fans, influencers, browsers, and customers of your brand. If we look at the e-commerce brands currently, many of them are struggling to produce compelling content and failing to hook the clients. This is where UGC comes into play as through it an e-commerce company can deliver spellbinding content to the shoppers.

Types of User-generated Content:

Customer Reviews

Comments & Testimonials

Social Media Content

Forum Posts

Blog Posts

Video Content

Case Studies

Customer Reviews:

Think of a brand’s customers having a great experience using its products or services and reviewing positively thereafter. But naturally, the company will be zealous to publish their reviews on its website. It’s a very value-rich content for the customers as based on positive reviews, a company can attract a wealth of clients. No matter whether reviews are direct ones or from third parties like Google review, Facebook review, and Yelp review, they can gradually up the audience interactions. Once a shopper thinks of buying a particular product online, he/she hunts for customer reviews at the bottom of the product page and makes up his/her mind whether to buy the product. Customer reviews, however, can be both in textual and visual forms.

Comments & Testimonials:

Comments show up generally beneath blog posts and social posts of a brand. This type of content is made normally by those people who are highly attached to the brand’s products or services. If anyone receives any bitter experience with the products or services can also leave a comment. What’s key here is that comments can be a wonderful medium in an online store for buyers to know the utility of products. Many commenters can even be satisfied customers of the store and recommend certain products for buyers to pick up. There are brands that design a whole of a testimonial page to showcase the compliments of the customers.

Social Media Content:

The traction of social media is on the rise. Not millions but billions of people throughout the world are active on different social media platforms. Every day, they are sharing a multitude of content on these platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. Out of them, many are connected with various brands whether they are hotels, destinations, e-commerce shops, etc. People share their experiences with these brands through texts, images, or videos. Tactical deployment of these contents can help brands to attain genuine customers.

Forum Posts:

A forum consists of a community of people where people ask questions or engages in discussion on a variety of topics. No doubt, this creates loads of user-generated content. Many a time, they also talk about the pros and cons of various companies, their products, and services. These types of data can be handy for brands to sell their products or services. However, it will be stiff for these brands including online shops to pick and manage useful data out of the unlimited resources. In this case, they can join these forums as members, hear out what clients are saying, and do the needful.

Blog Posts:

Besides a company when a blogger creates blog posts and connects brands in his/her writing, it’s UGC. There are so many bloggers active on various platforms including social media. Just imagine, if a brand produces any product maybe a watch and a blogger writes a review on it on social media platforms, it will surely promote your brand. Bloggers normally give reviews through their “how to use” tutorials and posting videos. No matter whether it’s B2B or B2C, blog posts from bloggers are always productive for companies including e-commerce companies.

Video Content:

If you browse YouTube, you will find scores of videos dealing with different brands. There are many genuine customers who after grabbing products from different brands, make videos on them. They display unboxing, appearance, features, and functioning of products through their video contents. If you wish to buy these products come across one of these videos showing endorsement by actual users, will it grab your attention? Most certainly, yes. It takes plenty of time to produce peachy videos and so many brands hold events and contests awarding their customers to collect positive videos from them.

Case Studies:

This type of UGC is a bit different compared to the above ones. Case studies are created with the collaboration of both brands and clients. A client after buying and experiencing a product from a particular brand writes an elaborate review on the product, its pros and cons, and areas of improvement. This type of content brand including e-commerce companies can easily leverage their websites to drive new customers. Utilizing case studies on different products at your website lets visitors go through the views of genuine customers helping them make a better decision about grabbing products. It enhances your audience engagement and reaches at the same time.

User-generated content is free to use and can aid your e-commerce business to grow. Along with running a paid advertising campaign, you can make use of this type of content. In order to prompt customers to share UGC, you can offer incentives and freebies regularly.

Let’s share some effective ways user-generated content can multiply your e-commerce business.

Elevates your Organic Presence:

When it comes to buying products online, what do shoppers do usually? Any guesses? Well, one of the primary things that they do is the online research. They hunt for product reviews, testimonials, video demonstrations on their preferred products, and so on. They also look for forum discussions on the pros and cons of products by genuine customers. This is where high-quality user-generated content comes into play. No doubt, as a brand, you will create peachy content to promote your company. But UGC will reduce your effort to a great extent and assist to drive traffic to your website.

Tackles with the Fake Negative Reviews:

If you are running an online business, you have to anticipate both positive and negative reviews coming from your clients. Negative reviews are pretty normal and show you the areas of improvement you have to make. But what about fake negative reviews? What do we mean by that? Many a time, you sell products and get positive feedback from all your customers due to the utmost quality of the products. But yet you see negative reviews coming from certain quarters without any valid reasons. These are fake negative reviews and given by your rivals. Superior UGC can combat as well as neutralize this type of negative feedback and keep your business thriving.

Acts as a Social Proof:

Social proof is a very handy tool when it comes to selling products online. People seek trustworthy materials before they pull the triggers on online products. Whether they are product reviews, testimonials, or other forms of UGC, injecting them into your website boosts the confidence of the potential customers besides expressing existing customers’ voices. Apart from that, every e-commerce company has an e-mail marketing campaign that includes e-mails for new product launches, promotions, and abandoned shopping carts. If we think about the last one, injecting videos and gifs of real clients using products can automatically up the conversion. Likewise, when it comes to product launches, featuring influencer reviews can do the job perfectly.

Community Building is Key:

You may be an expert on your products but that doesn’t mean your customers are ignorant. At least, they have grounding about the products they wanna buy. But surely, to make a buying decision, they would like to be cocksure about their preferred products. What we would recommend is to build a platform on your website through which your potential customers can interact with the existing customers. Their conversations will act as powerful user-generated content. In this way, a community will grow within your domain and this relevant content will contribute to the optimization of your site too. Before buying a product, a person can ask several questions to the existing customers and buy the product with full contentment.

User-generated Content, the Key to Success:

No doubt, you will create compelling content and execute paid advertising. But UGC is essential when it comes to building trust among the prospects. When new clients will see existing clients complimenting an e-commerce brand and its products, they automatically show curiosity towards that brand. User-generated content fixes the pain-points of the customers and improves the visibility of your online brand. Bear in mind, many people including your existing customers will create UGC in every nook and corner. The onus is on you to properly utilize them and catch the attention of your lead. On top of that, don’t forget to highlight that “it’s not our words but the words of our happy customers”.

To wind up, nailing an e-commerce business requires multiple things to think over. There isn’t any shortcut or secret formula to ace online business. But what we can assure you is that properly executed user-generated content can expand your business opportunities. With UGC, you can lessen customer acquisition costs, improve customer lifetime value, and create brand awareness. Altogether, get things in perspective and focus on providing the supreme user experience. Success will be beneath your feet, we promise……