Today, nearly all consumers rely on user-generated content such as ratings and reviews, Q&A, and customer-submitted photos and videos to make informed purchase decisions. In fact, our research found that a whopping 97% of consumers consult product reviews prior to making a purchase. And 88% seek out photos and videos from other shoppers before buying.

Consumers purchasing food and beverages are no exception. 

In this post, we’ll explore why leading food and beverage brands are making user-generated content a priority and how your food and beverage brand can leverage UGC to attract and convert more shoppers, boost loyalty and improve products.

Why Food and Beverage Brands are Prioritizing User-Generated Content 

Traditionally, food and beverage purchases took place within the four walls of a brick-and-mortar store. And today, the majority of these purchases still happen in physical stores.

But food and beverage ecommerce is certainly growing. A study from TABS found that in 2019, 56% of US consumers made at least one grocery purchase online, compared to 38% in the prior year. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has only sped up this growth. A report from Fabric predicts that online share of grocery sales will approach (or even exceed) 10% this year. That’s four years sooner than previously forecasted.

Online shoppers are actively seeking out user-generated content for various food and beverage products. And this content is positively impacting their purchase behavior. Our own research found that 72% of online grocery shoppers are more likely to purchase a grocery item they’ve never bought before if there are reviews for that product.

Food and beverage shoppers are also turning to user-generated content when they’re making purchases in a brick-and-mortar store — especially when they’re considering an unfamiliar product. Our research found that 52% of in-store shoppers are more likely to purchase a grocery item they’ve never purchased before if there are reviews for that product.

User-generated content gives both online and in-store food and beverage shoppers the confidence they need to try new (or new to them) products. And collecting and displaying this content has a positive impact on the brands that sell these products, too.

UGC Increases Traffic to Food and Beverage Product Pages 

In an ideal world, a shopper would navigate right to your website when they were in the market for a food or beverage product you sell. But the reality is, 70% of shoppers start the purchase journey on Google or Amazon.

The good news is, user-generated content like reviews and Q&A makes it easier for shoppers to find your product pages, even when they’re not starting their search on your website. By continuously collecting user-generated content, your site’s content remains fresh and relevant with keyword-rich, permanent assets on your product pages. Search engines can crawl this content, which helps more shoppers find it. At PowerReviews, we’ve found that brands experience a 20% traffic lift from organic search when displaying user-generated content. 

UGC Boosts Sales of Food and Beverage Products

Once a shopper lands on a food or beverage product page, user-generated content (or the lack thereof) helps determine what happens next. If there’s user-generated content on the page, the shopper is more likely to purchase the product in question.

At PowerReviews, we’ve found that brands can experience a 65% increase in conversion when reviews are displayed on a product page. And they can expect a 6X sales lift when a customer’s question is answered via Q&A.

UGC Enables you to Better Serve Customers  

The content your shoppers submit is full of insights that can help you improve not only your products, but the overall experiences your shoppers have with your brand. This, in turn, will boost loyalty — and sales. 

For example, perhaps you notice many shoppers rave about the taste of an energy drink, but many complain about the cap being difficult to open. This could be an opportunity to work with your supplier to improve the packaging. You can also respond to reviews mentioning the tricky cap to let shoppers know you care about their feedback and are taking action to resolve the issue.

How Food and Beverage Brands can Leverage UGC to Boost the Bottom Line

User-generated content helps food and beverage shoppers make confident purchase decisions. And it helps food and beverage brands attract and convert more shoppers. 

Let’s explore a few ways you can leverage UGC to boost your business results.

Collect and Display Reviews

Reviews are important at the best of times. But in the wake of COVID-19, consumers rely on reviews even more. Our recent analysis found that consumer interaction with online reviews (think sorting, filtering, etc.) has almost doubled compared to pre-pandemic levels.

If you’re not already, now’s the time to start collecting product reviews from your shoppers. The most effective way to do this is to send a follow-up email to your shoppers asking them to submit reviews. Also, be sure the entire collection process is easy for your shoppers to compete on any device. 

Once you’ve started collecting reviews, display this content in a way that’s easy for shoppers to find and consume. Make reviews front and center on your product pages and throughout your website.

Collect and Display Customers’ Photos and Videos

Professional photos and videos of your products are important. But for many shoppers, they’re not enough. As mentioned earlier, our research found that 88% of shoppers specifically seek out visual content like photos and videos submitted by other customers before making a purchase.

Food and beverage shoppers use customer-submitted visual content to better understand product characteristics like size and texture — and to discover new ways to use a product. For example, Canyon Bakehouse collects customer-photos and videos, many of which show unique ways shoppers are using their gluten-free bread products. 

Start collecting visual content both natively and through Instagram. Then, display this content on your product pages and throughout your website to engage and inspire your shoppers. 

Empower Food and Beverage Shoppers to Ask Questions

No matter how comprehensive your product descriptions, shoppers will still have questions. Consider adding a Q&A tool to your website so shoppers can get answers to their purchase-blocking questions right on your product pages.

Make sure your Q&A is searchable so future shoppers can see if their question has already been asked and answered. 

Syndicate Content to Your Retail Partners

If you’re like most food and beverage brands, you sell your products through a variety of different channels. If so, be sure you’re syndicating your user-generated content, including ratings and reviews, Q&A, and consumer-submitted photos and videos. That way, content submitted on your own website will also appear on product pages on your retail partners’ websites.

For example, this review for Hormel’s real crumbled bacon was originally submitted on the brand’s website. But thanks to content sharing, it also appears on the product page on Target.com.

By sharing your review content, consumers can find the content they’re looking for, regardless of where they’re shopping for your products.

Highlight User-Generated Content on Amazon

Today, many shoppers start their purchase journey on Amazon. Ensure they can find all of the information they’re looking for — including social proof in the form of user-generated content.

Of course, it’s important to collect user-generated content natively on Amazon. But to maximize review coverage, you’ll also want to ask your ratings and reviews provider if they make it easy for those who write reviews to share that content on Amazon.

In addition, look for unique ways to highlight user-generated content on your Amazon product pages. For example, you can create an image that includes text from a positive review and add it to your image carousel to entice shoppers to learn more.

Showcase UGC in Your Other Marketing Channels

Food and beverage shoppers trust the opinions of others like them. So look for ways to enhance your marketing initiatives — including emails, organic and paid Instagram and Facebook posts, and retargeting ads — with user-generated content like star ratings, excerpts from reviews, and photos taken by your shoppers.

For example, Brew Dr. Kombucha regularly showcases photos taken by shoppers on their own Instagram page.

And Silk uses the text of a customer review in one of their Instagram posts.

Make User-Generated Content Accessible In-Store  

A PowerReviews survey found that 70% of consumers are interested in accessing product ratings and reviews in-store. And as mentioned earlier, the presence of this content makes a shopper more likely to try a new food or beverage product.

Ensure the reviews, Q&A, photos and videos on your website are easy to consume on a mobile device. And look for opportunities to enhance in-store displays, product signage and product packaging with star ratings, excerpts from reviews or even photos submitted by your customers.

Leverage Insights to Improve Your Business

User-generated content is chock full of valuable insights that can fuel better business decisions for food and beverage brands. But far too often, these insights remain untouched.

Start leveraging the insights from your user-generated content to identify ways to improve your food and beverage products and your customers’ overall experience with your company.

You can start by monitoring the overall sentiment for a specific product, or example, a new iced tea you just released. If you notice it’s mostly negative, you can dig into the content more to identify specific ways to improve the product — or even pull it altogether. 

You can also acknowledge negative feedback from shoppers, which can help you turn negative situations around and show shoppers you are a brand that cares about its customers. This builds loyalty, which then drives sales.

Start Leveraging User-Generated Content to Drive Food and Beverage Sales

Today, food and beverage shoppers depend on user-generated content to make informed business decisions and gain the confidence they need to try new products. This is true regardless of whether a consumer opts to purchase food and beverages online or within the four walls of a brick-and-mortar store.

Food and beverage brands that effectively leverage user-generated content have a big opportunity to drive traffic and sales, uncover actionable insights, and build a reputation as a customer-centric business.

With stores not open to the public, our shopping behaviors have been completely disrupted. As widely reported, ecommerce has become the core channel for consumption. For many brands, it’s the one key aspect of their business that’s going well. 

Many are looking to pivot on this COVID-19 ecommerce phenomenon to pave a path for growth. Read on to learn why building on your ecommerce success via a targeted customer engagement strategy can sow the seeds for long-term revenue growth.

A new Global Shopping Index report published by Salesforce cites some pretty unprecedented digital commerce statistics. But then again, these are completely unprecedented times. 

The number of unique digital shoppers rose 40% year-over-year, caused by this dramatic shift we’ve all experienced in consumer behavior from physical to digital browsing and buying. Digital shoppers drove a 20% revenue growth in Q1 2020, compared to 12% in Q1 2019.

Many brands are reporting increased order volumes in line with what they only usually only see during the holiday shopping season. Our own research backs this up conclusively, and shows brands are experiencing increased page view and purchase volumes. 

As some States begin to reopen, most Americans remain uneasy about venturing out, with one study showing 67% are uncomfortable going into a retail store. Given this ambivalence, expect ecommerce to remain robust for the foreseeable future. 

‘Don’t Rest on Your Laurels’ 

Brands have an incredible opportunity to continue this momentum by driving even more digital engagement – both in acquiring  new customers and nurturing their existing/loyal customer base. 

Matt Powell, Vice President and Senior Industry Advisor at the NPD Group underscores this opportunity, “Ecommerce has been a lifeline for many brands and retailers. More and more customers are shopping online, and for products they likely would have never bought pre-pandemic. I believe we can expect consumers to continue moving online as we ease our way out of the crisis. Now is the time for brands and retailers to double down on their online business. ‘Digital first’ must be the mantra of retail now. Don’t rest on your laurels, as there is always room for improvement. Make your website the best it can be.”

During this time when consumers desperately need to feel connected and assured that a brand can be trusted with their business, some are leveraging customer content to deliver the improvements Powell talks about. Customer stories offer powerful validation that build trust and authenticity by highlighting how consumers are engaging with your brand and the products you offer.

Most importantly, they are proven to help drive increased site traffic and purchases. Even a single product review can make a big difference to your bottom line.

According to our extensive ratings and review data (we analyzed 168k product pages, 28 million orders and 321 million page views), we found that the more reviews displayed for a product, the higher the conversion rate. But, even a small volume of reviews has an impact. To illustrate this point, a jump from zero to one customer review results in a 7% increase in conversion levels for that product on average. This increases steadily until you hit 50 reviews, which we consider the sweet spot. At this point, the lift in conversion rate is 21% on average… Pretty impactful numbers!

Pro Tip: Focus Your Customer Content Strategy on Mitigating Returns 

Brands experiencing a high volume of ecommerce orders can typically expect at least some returns. Product returns have always been the achilles heel for retailers, and even more so now in the COVID-19 wake of shuttered storefronts and economic uncertainty. 

Returns seriously erode revenues. In one study, Boston University researchers found returns cost manufacturers and retailers as much as $100 billion annually or 3.8% of revenue.

But the same study found that customer content – or more specifically, product reviews – help consumers make better purchase decisions and lead to fewer product returns. Bottom line: online product reviews are critical to enhancing strategic competitiveness, boosting revenue and reducing costs.

Why? Customer content answers questions upfront, supporting consumers’ efforts to select a product that fits their specific need. Think about it: if – as a browser – you’re faced with a product page that includes product images submitted by customers and maybe even Q&A-type content, you are far more likely to obtain the answers to any questions you have (i.e. around issues ranging from size/fit to color and plug any unconsidered gaps in the product description), while also demonstrating relatability – all in a uniquely scalable and authentic way.

This does more than sell merchandise, it can help ensure the product – once it leaves the distribution center – doesn’t come back via the returns channel. 

Steal These Customer Engagement Best Practices

Over the years, PowerReviews has worked with leading brands to help them formulate killer customer engagement strategies to drive high-octane ecommerce growth. I’ve taken the liberty of making a list of these — in some cases, noting particular COVID-19 implications that make these especially relevant right now. 

Is your ecommerce/digital team employing any of the above customer engagement strategies? If you are a PowerReviews customer, reach out to your Customer Success Manager to discuss the best strategies to leverage our solution to achieve your objectives. If you’re not a PowerReviews customer, we’d love to hear from you.

Reviews are one of the top factors influencing a shopper’s decision to make a purchase. And as it turns out, consumers have started to depend on reviews even more during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our own analysis found that throughout March and April, consumers engaged with reviews prior to making a purchase at double the rate they were previously. 

Thanks to widespread stay-at-home orders and social distancing measures, more consumers are shopping online. And clearly, reviews help them make informed purchase decisions. 

Of course, reviews benefit brands, too. Reviews are proven to boost traffic and conversion, while providing actionable insights that can help a brand improve its products and the customer experience.

Reviews also give brands the opportunity to engage with shoppers and resolve customer service issues, which foster loyalty and contributes to a strong reputation.  

In order to reap these benefits, though, brands must closely monitor their review content. All too often, this is a time-consuming process — and one that’s inherently flawed. Content slips through the cracks, which can tarnish trust. And because data is often siloed, a brand never gets a complete, accurate picture of how they are (or aren’t) meeting consumers’ needs. 

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Review consolidation — the process of aggregating all review content across channels into one dashboard — can ease the burden and make it easier to manage your brand’s online reputation. 

Let’s take a closer look at where shoppers are reading and writing reviews, how review consolidation works and how it can positively impact your business. 

Where Shoppers Write Reviews

Before exploring the mechanics of review consolidation, it’s important to understand the burden of manually managing reviews. And the best place to start is to take a look at where shoppers are writing and reading reviews. 

Most brands sell their products through a number of different channels. For example, a health and beauty brand might sell a moisturizer directly through its own eCommerce website, through a network of retail partners (e.g. Target, Walmart etc.) and on eCommerce marketplaces, such as Amazon. Of course, shoppers can write products reviews on any of the sites where the item is sold.

To further complicate things, shoppers can also write reviews about a store location, website, mobile app or the business itself on other platforms and channels.

For some brands, managing this content means someone logging into a dozen or more dashboards each day, determining which content needs action and manually assigning it to the appropriate person or team to handle. In order to respond to a review, they have to log back in to the appropriate dashboard.

This process is inefficient and leaves a lot of room for error.

How Review Consolidation Works 

Recently, however, a growing number of brands have started to use review consolidation technology. Review consolidation technology centralizes reviews written across all of the channels mentioned above into a single dashboard. That means a brand uses one dashboard to see reviews, engage with and respond to them and escalate them to the right team — regardless of where the review was written. 

Some review consolidation tools connect with a CRM like Salesforce to automatically create services cases and alerts, based on keywords or the star rating. Brands that also use Salesforce Service Cloud can see and manage all customer service issues in one spot, regardless of whether the issue originates from chat, email, social media, phone or a review.

5 Ways Review Consolidation Benefits Brands

Before investing in review consolidation technology, it’s important to understand how it can help your brand foster authentic engagement and boost your bottom line.

Let’s take a look at five key ways review consolidation positively impacts brands. 

1. Saves Time

The most obvious benefit of review consolidation is that it saves time. Your customer care or marketing teams are no longer required to comb through various sites each day in order to effectively manage reviews. 

Instead, these teams can focus their time and energy on activities that will build your brand’s online reputation and drive revenue growth. Customer service teams can focus on engaging with shoppers. And marketing teams can spend their time developing strategies and campaigns to attract and retain customers.

2. Provides a Holistic Picture of Performance  

Reviews are a gold mine of insights that can be used to help your brand better serve its customers. But if you’re managing reviews from several different platforms, it can be difficult to garner those insights. Each platform reports on different metrics, and data is siloed. 

Let’s go back to the moisturizer example we used earlier. You notice the average star rating for the moisturizer is high on your own eCommerce website. But the average star rating is significantly lower on Amazon. You’re getting little bits and pieces of data here — but what’s the full story? 

When you consolidate your reviews into a single platform, you get a more comprehensive look at how a particular product — and your brand as a whole — are performing across all channels. You’re better able to identify strengths and weaknesses and understand overall sentiment for each product. And you can see how this performance changes over time. 

With comprehensive insights, you’re better equipped to make smart, data-based decisions for your business. For example, if that moisturizer generates one- and two-star reviews across all channels, you can dig deeper to identify ways to improve it — or pull the product altogether. 

3. Allows for Quick Resolution of Customer Service Issues

Many times, a negative review simply reflects the tastes and preferences of a specific consumer. For example, a reviewer might indicate they don’t like the taste or texture of a protein bar. But in other cases, a negative review can be indicative of a larger issue that needs to be addressed and resolved. For example, if a review indicated a shopper got violently ill after eating the protein bar.

If you manually manage your reviews, it’s likely some of this negative content will slip through the cracks. And this can carry some big consequences for your brand’s reputation. For starters, you’ll have an angry customer with an unresolved issue that’s likely to ditch your brand altogether. A survey from Gladly found that half of people will switch brands after just one or two bad experiences.

And future shoppers will see the unresolved issue, which is likely to deter them from purchasing your products. What’s more, highly regulated industries like pharmaceuticals must follow FDA guidelines on handling complaints in reviews. If they don’t, they risk fines and a damaged reputation. 

With review consolidation technology, all of your content is in one place so you don’t have to worry about missing a critical review. What’s more, if you also use review consolidation technology and Salesforce Service Cloud, all of your customer service cases are available in one location, regardless of whether they were initiated through a review or another channel like email or chat.

Plus, issues get automatically routed to the right person based on factors like keyword or star rating, so they can be resolved quickly. Shoppers will see that you care about their concerns, and you’ll build a reputation as a compliant brand that listens to its customers.

4. Uncovers Opportunities for Authentic Engagement with Shoppers

Of course, it’s important to resolve issues that come up in negative reviews. But positive reviews also offer opportunities for brands to authentically engage with shoppers. Even a simple “Thanks for your feedback. We love having you as a customer!” can go a long way in fostering loyalty.

Review consolidation makes it easier to identify these opportunities for engagement. Your teams can see all reviews — and respond to them — through one platform. And because they’re not spending their time manually routing reviews, they can focus on building authentic connections with shoppers. 

5. Facilitates Strong Partnerships with Retail Partners

If you’re like most brands, you sell your products through a network of retail partners. If so, you’re well aware that good brand/retailer relationships are key to mutual success.

Of course, retailers want to partner with brands that manufacture quality products. But they also want to work with brands that take good care of their customers — even when something goes wrong. One key way retailers measure this is by how quickly a brand responds to customer service issues. If you habitually fail to respond quickly (or at all) to issues that are raised in reviews, a retailer may opt to partner with a different brand…and you may lose an important channel for revenue.

With review consolidation technology, you don’t have to worry about missing a review and failing to respond per your agreed upon service level agreement (SLA). Instead, retailers will see that you’re a dependable brand that cares about its customers. 

Consolidate Reviews to Grow Your Brand

Ratings and reviews are beneficial to consumers and brands alike. But brands must effectively manage their reviews in order to experience the benefits. Consolidating all reviews into one platform makes it easier for brands to engage with shoppers, build trust, and grow revenue. 

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This blog was originally published by our partner, Reputation Studio, which offers review consolidation capabilities to PowerReviews customers. Visit the dedicated section of our website to find out more about the complementary technologies our solutions integrate with. Alternatively, reach out to us direct.

We are relentless in our pursuit to make our PowerReviews platform easier-to-use. We are focused on this objective day-in and day-out. And this is why we’ve recently made significant upgrades to our API technologies while building a number of new exciting third-party integration partnerships. Now realize even more value from your PowerReviews solution. Read on to find out more. 

Table of Contents

• What’s new at PowerReviews on the integration front?
• What is an API and how does it help PowerReviews clients?
• What is the benefit of having these integrations?
• What third-party systems do PowerReviews integrate with?

What’s new at PowerReviews on the integration front?

Our team just launched new API capabilities, which is really exciting. Our API enables us to integrate our platform with other third-party systems, which in turn, enables our clients to:

• Integrate the customer content they collect with other important partner systems
• Send the data they collect anywhere in their tech stacks
• Build custom web and mobile applications

The PowerReviews API supports bulk imports and exports of data while still providing clients with quicker data transfers — all while keeping sensitive data safe. Plus, we’ve added brand new, competitive endpoints for managing everything from orders to products to moderation.

We also just launched a brand new API documentation site. We built this site with developers in mind, to help our clients and their teams through the integration process. 

What is an API and how does it help PowerReviews clients?

Technically, an API is an Application Programming Interface. Non-technically, APIs allow our system to communicate with other systems. 

What does this mean if you’re a PowerReviews customer?

For one, our API allows us to build powerful and valuable integrations with complementary third-party technologies. We are realistic enough to know that we’re not the only third-party vendor our customers typically work with on a day-to-day basis, so our API allows our technology to talk to the other technologies — creating significant usability improvements and driving exponentially greater value.

Second, these updates give brands and retailers another way to implement our solution. Building custom applications leveraging our new Enterprise API is best for larger organizations that may not want to implement our Javascript on their site. As an alternative, they can instead use our API to collect and display customer-generated content.

What is the benefit of having these integrations?

The PowerReviews platform offers a ton of value. And these other technologies also offer a ton of value. Combined, they add up to more than the sum of their parts.

These integrations allow organizations to seamlessly extend the reach and impact of the customer-generated content they collect through the PowerReviews platform by connecting it with the other important technology systems they use.

What third-party systems do PowerReviews integrate with?

We have integrations with the following partners, which means no development work is required to pair our technologies together. If you are already a PowerReviews customer and would like to explore activating one of these integrations, your Customer Success Manager will be able to provide more details.

Integrate PowerReviews with:

• Sprinklr: Amplify your PowerReviews review content across social media with Sprinklr. 
• Zendesk: Manage and respond to customer issues left in reviews, alongside any others received through the Zendesk platform.
• Astute: Blend human and artificial intelligence to enhance consumer review engagement, through our integration with Astute.
• Reputation Studio: Improved reputation management with in-the-moment response to customer review content from within Salesforce

We also have partnerships in place with all the main ecommerce platforms. Integrate our ratings and reviews platforms into stores hosted on Shopify, Shopify Plus, Magento, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

And we’re just getting started. We’re working with a number of other technology vendors to integrate our platforms with theirs to deliver even greater value. If you are interested in finding out more – or indeed are a vendor which would like to establish an integration with our solution(s) – reach out to us today!