- 88% of consumers want user-generated content of clothing
- 73% of people view customer photos are more valuable than product photos or influencer photos.
- According to ComScore, brand engagements goes up by 28% when consumers are exposed to a mixture of UGC and professional content.
- 67% of consumers (73% of Gen Z and 70% of Millennials) say it’s important for brands to provide them with a personalized experience
- 92% of marketers believe the majority of their content is viewed as authentic meanwhile 51% of consumers view les than half of a brands content as authentic.
Now, let’s take a look at how UGC or IGC ends up on the PDP including some great examples of how brands manage to offer and authentic and on-brand experience through UGC.
UGC vs IGC
When talking about user-generated content, it’s often unclear if someone is describing both user-generated content and influencer-generated content. Especially when we take into account some of the statistics above, there is some expectation that consumers might confuse UGC and IGC.
But when we discuss PDP below, and how brands can integrate this type of content, there is a very big difference. IGC will be easier to incorporate because this content is often done in collaboration with the brand to ensure that the content is in line with the brand aesthetics. While UGC could nearly be anything, truly. If customers can upload images to the review you might get a customer in a styled image or your product laid out on a messy bedspread. It may not match your brand aesthetic but it doesn’t get more authentic than that.
Where does it go?
There’s no correct answer other than it should be incorporated somehow. And likely, many departments will be involved in finding this answer. If you decide to incorporate it on your product pages, then someone will need to be involved in sourcing the images. Or maybe you’ll choose to repost UGC only on social media, which will be at the discretion of your marketing department. This might hint at why only 16% of brands have a UGC strategy.
Below the Main Product Images:
UGC can be integrated just below the primary product photos. This way, customers first see the professionally shot images and then get a feel for how the product looks in real-life settings through user-submitted photos. Because these images are separate from the main product images they are often featured in a UGC-specific gallery or carousel usually with a label that refers to ‘real’, ‘community’ or ‘get the look’.
Some brands like Everlane ask their customers directly to submit their images to the website. Everlane also uses a small section at the bottom of the product description section to show “Everlane On You”. It comes across as curated yet not quite full-blown IGC content. While others opt for an Instagram like feed
Reviews and Testimonials:
Many e-commerce platforms leave UGC for the review section. This has many pros, as it doesn’t require the work that goes into incorporating UGC for brands and retailers like Zalando and Everlane mentioned above. Often, review images feel like an afterthought, quickly added in to show the color or prove that it’s as presented in the product images.
53% of consumers say they consider reviews with photos more credible than those without. Source: How to use visual UGC to grow your brand
That’s also where the downside of review images lie. They may not provide the full ‘lifestyle’ or inspirational content that some consumers look for. One of the biggest arguments for incorporating UGC is it allows you to incorporate more content on your PDP that you may not be able to capture or shoot yourself.
Some brands take it a step further by dedicating an entire section of their website to UGC. Berksha is an excellent example, as not only does it have a giant gallery of UGC, but you can also search through the gallery based on keywords.
Featured
The final location that we’ll cover in this blog post seems to be the least popular—mixed in with product images in the main image gallery. I don’t think I have to dive too deep into why this isn’t popular. There’s no control or likely minimal editing to these images. While you may be putting your customer front and center, which is a nice sentiment, product images still have the important job of selling the product.
For example, I can’t think of FashionNova without thinking about influencers. And that’s for good reason: In 2019, they spent $40 million dollars on influencer marketing. It’s been a major investment, and it only makes perfect sense that they include those images in the main gallery.
But it’s not only about the investment; for FashionNova, it’s about the brand. The images they use fit in perfectly with their brand aesthetic. It just works for them.
Zalando takes a slightly different approach. Some of their products are accompanied by a section below the product image and descriptions to show inspiration from influencers. Zalando gives them their own dedicated landing pages on their website. If you find someone's style you like, you can follow them on Zalando and get inspired by all their looks.
While I think UGC is an easy win, I don’t think we’ll see it in the main gallery for many brands anytime soon. But, it seems that it is influencing what ends up on the PDP.
Inspired Content
We have now entered a new level of meta where the content on the PDP is replicating social media content. It’s the perfect combination of creating content that feels authentic and relatable to the customer while ensuring the quality and brand standards are met. This blog post from Lucid E-commerce explains how they UGC inspired videos were made and increased conversions by 46%. This isn’t the only example, plenty of brands have been playing around with this concept from selfie style PDP images to PDP videos that almost look straight off of TikTok.
So, where does it belong?
First of all, we believe it does belong on the product detail page! UGC or IGC offers your customers another chance to envision styling the products and incorporating them into their life. It can build authenticity and trust as well. There is no correct answer to how and where and it should be placed on the PDP. It’s all about how it fits into your brand and product storytelling.