User-generated content (UGC) holds immense influence in today’s e-commerce environment. Our own review campaigns have shown that UGC – especially in the form of ratings, reviews, and images – drives sales for brands, ensures consumer trust, and helps shoppers make better-informed decisions. Sales increase isn’t the only known benefit of having user-generated content, however. UGC insights offer other equally valuable insights that can be leveraged to impact your entire business as a whole.
Why UGC insights matter to e-commerce managers
Data analysis on UGC for your products offers businesses key information on what types of content are more effective on your website. Consider comparing products with no reviews versus products with some reviews to understand which page is performing better and why.
Such insights also allow you to better understand how consumers engage with your product page. Are they likely to read negative reviews first? Do they value UGC images more than written reviews? Having data to answer these kinds of questions helps you optimize your product page display, which ultimately leads to improved conversion rates.
Other teams that can benefit from UGC insights
Product Innovation Team
Product teams constantly search for new ideas and inspiration to improve or develop brand items. There’s no better way to collect these than through UGC data insights.
For example, a health and beauty checks their UGC data and notices customers asking for a grapefruit scented face wash. They also notice their competitors offer similar products with the same grapefruit scent. Based on both sources, it’s clearly worth the team’s effort and time to draft a proof of concept to bring a grapefruit-scented face wash to the market.
Research and development team
Companies need to listen to what consumers are saying about your product, especially when it comes to constructive criticism. The research and development team can use UGC data to address your product’s shortcomings and improve them for the next launch.
Questions UGC data insights can answer to improve your product include:
- What ingredients need to be adjusted or added to taste better?
- What parts of your product were not stable during use?
- What materials should I change to make the product more comfortable for consumers?
Customer insights team
The customer insights team always seeks to understand current and prospective customers. When analyzing overall brand reviews, they can further enhance their current consumer knowledge to create an even more seamless and positive customer experience.
For example, if consumers often mention that customer service has not been great, then it’s up to the customer insights team to take this feedback seriously by bringing this issue up in internal meetings. This leads to more proper customer support training, which should hopefully lead to a more positive consumer experience and leave customers satisfied.
Don’t underestimate the power of UGC insights
Data sourced from user-generated content should never be underestimated, especially in today’s digital marketplace. UGC insights have the power to transform your company to perform better and improve the brand-consumer relationship. When you leverage such data-driven insights in ways that extend beyond your e-commerce team, your company will have a deepened understanding of your target consumer to create better advertisements, better products, and better conversion and retention rates.