Visual Reviews For E-commerce: A Complete Guide
Marketing with visual reviews is a powerful way to cut through the content clutter, reach online shoppers, and build brand awareness.
When this power is used to collect customer reviews, the impact is manifold. Visual customer reviews can create social proof, enhance brand awareness, teach buying inspiration, and boost sales.
According to research by The Intent Lab, 59% of consumers think visual information is more important than textual information across categories, indicating their influence – so why tell when you can show and tell?
What Are Visual Reviews?
As the name suggests, visual reviews are shared by brands’ existing users in the form of images and videos featuring their experience of any product or service.
Over 85% of consumers specifically look for visual content submitted by other existing consumers before making a purchase. You can win users’ confidence in your brand and drive on-site conversions by displaying customer-generated visual reviews on your key web pages(product or review), social media handles, and ads.
72% of the shoppers are more likely to purchase a product with reviews featuring visuals alongside textual content.
Now that we know the impact that visual reviews can have on the business let’s dive in to know the benefits that can be derived.
Benefits Of Including Visual Reviews For eCommerce
User-generated visual reviews help improve sales at every step of the customer journey, from product discovery on social and digital channels to converting leads on product pages. eCommerce brands can extract a lot from visual customer reviews. Let’s find out.
Win Trust Easily & Tap Into Impulse
Customers seek reliability and relatability before they make purchase investments. Smart marketers understand this and include visual content generated by customers across their marketing channels – on social media handles, product pages, social ads, and email marketing.
Visual reviews and other kinds of content users create are 3 times more authentic than brand-generated content.
Further, these product visuals can inspire potential users to try the product, helping brands successfully tap into their impulses.
Grow Sales Across Channels
Online shoppers often feel unsure about a product if they can’t see it in person. While brand-produced visuals of products might aim to showcase their versatility, they can only go so far.
Showcasing user-generated visual testimonials of products can help potential buyers determine the authenticity of the depiction and ease their purchase anxiety.
Moreover, with reviews attached to these visuals, it becomes possible to have a brief knowledge about benefits or imagine how it’d look. Thus inspiring shoppers into buying the product and improving your sales figures across channels.
Improve Mobile Shopping Experience Of Buyers
A majority of social media users access mobile phones. This makes it essential for brands to deliver experiences that are easier for them to absorb. As this demographic of audience is mostly distracted, doing multiple things at a time, captivating attention, provided the limited patience, is challenging.
Many shoppers seek to scan through and attain product information quickly. Seeing product visuals coupled with user testimonials allows them to understand the product in a matter of seconds and make decisions to buy.
Further, with social media channels becoming shoppable, brands can tag products on the visual customer review post, gather trust, enhance mobile shoppers’ experience and easily turn inspiration into conversion.
How Can You Inspire Users To Share Visual Reviews?
As lucrative as this strategy is, having users share visual testimonials might be intimidating. So, here are a few ways in which you can inspire content creation.
On-site Visual UGC Uploads
On-site visual UGC, reviews, and ratings upload feature by Tagshop allow users to directly share their images featuring any brand’s products/services alongside reviews & ratings instantly on its website.
The on-site uploads button allows users to share upto 3 images at once, write reviews and provide a rating with those images.
By setting up this feature, brands can inspire their existing customers to submit their visual experiences alongside a rating and get featured on the website. This content being authentic will create social proof and instigate potential customers to check the brand out.
Send Post-purchase Email Requests
Post-purchase email is a convincing way to get customers to share visual reviews of products brought by them.
The impact of social proof is beyond social media or websites. Incorporate existing visual reviews and ask your shoppers’ community to share their visual views of the product.
Glossier, a beauty & skincare brand-has become proficient in sending emails boasting social proof. UGC is incorporated throughout customers’ journeys, enhancing their email performance.
When a visitor browsed through the product page without closing a purchase, an instant email reminder is sent with UGC visuals of the products left in their cart; after a new product delivers, customers get an email asking them to leave a review share visuals featuring their latest purchase.
Social Media Reshares
The Social media has become the new print ads, the only exception being – people like to ‘see it to believe it.’ Your users’ content sharing on social media platforms featuring their experience with products can intrigue a vast majority of people to browse, learn, and try your brand out.
Social media reposts, though, are a mainstream way of encouraging more participation from the users. You can choose from a variety of options available to run hashtag contests targeting user experiences, giveaways, hashtag campaigns, or repost visuals generated by the existing users to inspire more.
How Can You Use Visual Reviews In Your Marketing Campaigns?
You don’t want to sit on the heap of visual reviews generated by your users. Leveraging it smartly can benefit in winning the trust and boosting brand awareness. Here are a few best ways to use visual user experiences in your marketing campaigns.
Activate Abandoned Carts
One of the biggest loopholes in their sales and marketing funnel is shoppers who add products to their cart and then abandon them at check-out for eCommerce brands.
But, by implementing an abandoned carts email strategy inclusive of visual reviews given by your customers, you can begin to activate them.
These emails remind customers of the products they left in the cart, attracting them to purchase what they are already so close to buying. By adding visual reviews, you create relatability while igniting the receivers’ imagination. Thus further encouraging them to buy cart products and proceed to check out.
Here is how you can do it:
- Remind your customers of the most-rated product that their shopping cart contains with user-usage visuals. Add an attention-grabbing subject line to give a boost to your open rates.
- Most abandoned cart emails sent to customers usually include the name of the product and price(or discounted price). But by adding visual reviews alongside ratings, you can give a dose of FOMO on the go. This can compel them to complete the purchase ASAP.
Incorporate In Social Ads
92% of the users trust authentic user-generated content more than traditional ads. People look upto users and their experiences to discover products that they can introduce into their lives.
Leveraging visual customer reviews in social ads can prove to be an influential ally in your social media marketing strategy. As it humanizes brands and becomes a reliable source of information for potential customers.
Research shows that ads based on UGC get four times better click-through rates and a 50% drop in the CPC.
Additionally, by incorporating user reviews in your social ads, you can easily reach out to your potential customers. Also, attract their attention and lure them into knowing more about your brand. UGC coupled with professional content in ads can boost brand engagement by 28% on average.
Product Page Visual Reviews Galleries
Product page galleries are shoppable UGC galleries on the product pages of the eCommerce website or store. In an eCommerce funnel, these pages are the most important, as this is where the user decides whether or not to go ahead with the product.
Hence, product pages must strike the right chord to be able to turn leads into customers. One effective way of doing this is by incorporating trustworthy, real, and beneficial information and images on these pages.
Here, leveraging visual UGC alongside reviews and ratings can give a brief idea about the product and boost sales. 53% of consumers find visuals more important than just ratings and reviews.
In-store Displays
Visuals are no longer ‘illustrations’ to support texts. Instead, interactive visuals take the lead in narrating the story of the brand. The digital display set up in the store then becomes a delivery engine for experiences.
Digital displays have given a new face to the traditional method of offline marketing. They easily attract the audience’s attention, keep them hooked and convey a wide variety of information all at once.
Share visual reviews given by users right at the time shoppers are closing their purchases to upsell. These visuals being eye-catchy, can also easily keep the engagement of the shoppers intact.
Wrapping It Up!
Leveraging visual reviews for eCommerce is an innovative and lucrative way to bring the in-store experience online.
Brands can join in on their customers’ conversations, build social proof, improve the shopping experience and conversions. It’s about time for you to put visual experiences shared by your customers to work in the online shopping journey.
