How To Leverage UGC to Drive Holiday Revenue

3 Holiday UX Tips to Test before Peak Shopping Season

Hello. I’m Matt, UX designer at Contentsquare.

I spend most of my day speaking to clients from all industries about how to improve their user experience. I share advice, best practices, and data insights from Contentsquare to help point them in the right direction when it comes to UX optimization.

Today, we're looking at User Generated Content (UGC). Nope, I'm not talking about all those countless selfies you've taken during lockdown. But instead, the importance of Instagram and its place within UX — its different uses, how it's no longer just "a trend" and its effectiveness across the eCommerce space.

And not only that, but how Covid-19 has forced a different approach on models and environment, from studio to bedroom photoshoots.

So ahead of the peak holiday shopping season, a time when UX optimization is more important than ever, here is how some of the best brands are utilizing User Generated Content.

I hope these examples will inspire you to consider new tests, but ultimately it’s your customers who should guide your development roadmap. Make sure you’re collecting data, testing, and iterating.

Empathy and the feeling of familiarity - “Shop the Look” and Models at Home

It's no mistake this feature is becoming more popular. On one of your favorite retail sites, you might’ve seen it towards the bottom of the home page, or as a cross-sell on the product page. A large content block with 3 to 6 images, showing real users wearing the item or similar. When clicked, it takes you to that specific product for further inspection.

Now more than ever we need to maintain brand awareness. Customers want to feel connected to the brands they use, and UGC is a great way to help customers identify with a product (compared to a model in a studio).

Data from our 2020 Holiday Playbook shows that interactions and Add to Bag rate both increased significantly once UGC was added to the page.

Beyond fashion

Fashion brands are utilizing UGC, but so are homeware and furniture sites such as IKEA and The White Company.

Allowing users to visualize some bed linen in a fellow user's bedroom, or checking to see the garden table and chairs fits on someone else's balcony is a great way to boost engagement. If you happen to see another user’s living room that looks eerily similar to yours, and that ornament looks fantastic, then it’s a no brainer.

N.B. Cute pooch not for sale

Highlighting different sizes using real people on PDP

It’s not just ‘shop the look’. We're also seeing it play a huge part on category and product pages. Using product images that feature real customers (at home) instead of models (in a studio). Allowing customers to see the product worn by real people (of different shapes and sizes), providing authenticity in its truest sense.

CS METRIC TIPS ON HOW TO VALIDATE IMPROVEMENT:

Monitor the click recurrence and exposure time over each product image to see if users are engaging.
As this feature is typically seen towards the lower half of the page, do you notice a higher than usual attractiveness rate?
When interacted with, do you notice an increase in PDP views and ‘add to bag’ rate?
Does this improve revenue overall?

Interested in learning more, or considering implementing something similar on your site? Curalate and Olapic are a couple I’ve come across and include clients such as IKEA, Adidas, and the Office Shoes example above.

One of our clients, New Look, were able to use UGC to increase product conversion — you can watch the video here.

Author

Matt Christie

Matt Christie is a UX designer at Contentsquare. He spends most of my day speaking to clients from all industries about how to improve their user experience. He shares advice, best practices, and data insights from Contentsquare to help point them in the right direction when it comes to UX optimization.