0:30 Hi, everyone, and welcome to today's session, winning strategies for the modern digital shelf. I'm looking forward to talking with you today about the modern digital shelf and the impact it can have on both your online and in store sales. 0:42 I'm Steph, I'm a CSM here at Bizar Voice, are working as a strategic partner with brands and retailers here in EMEA to help them maximize their return on investment through their UGC programs. 0:52 And I'll be your host for today's session. So why is the modern digital shell so important? According to Forrester, seventy percent of US retail sales will be digitally influenced by twenty twenty seven. 1:06 That's seventy cents on the dollar. Plus both online and in store. If we look at global e commerce numbers, sales are expected to reach about eight point one trillion by twenty twenty six. 1:19 To capture a share of this exploding market, it's important to have an optimized digital shelf that's built to maximize your online presence attract more customers and generate more sales online and install. 1:32 So that's what we're getting into today. We'll cover what is the digital shelf strategies to optimize it. 1:41 How you can expand your digital shelf with UGC and with our voice, and of course any questions we'll take at the end too. Before we start, I'd like to introduce bizarre voice and explain why we have the expertise to help. 1:56 Zargoist is ideally positioned to drive your commerce engine in these three ways. Firstly, through content, tapping into authentic content builds confidence and inspiration among buyers and sellers across the platform being used by one point three billion shoppers a month. 2:12 Secondly, through context. Content is one thing, but our platform also enables you to curate and distribute content at the right time and place. The goal is to turn every touchpoint we shop is into moments of inspiration. 2:24 Our network is currently sitting at twelve thousand brands and retailers globally. Lastly, through communities. We help these brands and retailers with organic content by tapping into our seven point five million member community. 2:36 Of influencers, cocreators, and everyday shoppers, and in turn help our clients get closer to the voice of the customer. Our customers typically have common goals. 2:50 They're looking to grow their market share profitably by increasing the discoverability of their product the engagement with them, the level of conversion that comes from this, and of course, revenue from cost effective improvements and customer experience. 3:03 BazarVoice is their partner of choice due to our solution's superior breadth and scale, which includes ratings and reviews, questions and answers to help prospective shoppers find out more, sampling communities to help generate content, visual and social content, especially with this increasing focus on social commerce nowadays, and insights and reports, which allow our clients to get closer to the voice of the customer. 3:27 So now let's get started by answering the question. What is the digital shell? It's the industry of all the channels and touch points where people discover, learn, and buy from your brand online. 3:39 It goes beyond e commerce and impacts in store shopping as well. With digital touch points that cater to mobile devices installed. Think about the last time you purchased something and how you found out out it. 3:49 Through an influencer you follow on YouTube while scrolling social media, walking down the aisle in store and scamming a QR code, maybe a notification from a shopping app on your phone, maybe you looked at online reviews before committing to your purchase. 4:02 When researching and discovering products online, consumers are all taking different journeys. Providing them with the best customer experience needs being present on all these virtual aisles. 4:14 The digital shelf has come a long way. In the past, shelf space was primarily physical, and brands paid to get their products displayed in prime position. 4:23 And retail success relied heavily on featuring items in the most visible places. This project was also applied to the digital shelf, only the best selling most popular products made it online, based on the idea that shoppers had the same preferences as in store. 4:39 Today, there's no limits the amount of merchandise available worldwide. It's an endless aisle where standing out amidst noise can be difficult, even for well known brands. 4:48 Search algorithms and filters can quickly arrange products based on price, availability, rating, images, keywords. For this level of complexity, and the need to continually monitor, it's not easy to stand out. 5:02 Plus, the Distruishelle is increasingly accessed in store, with in store digital signage and devices, retailer apps, and QR codes. Let's have a look at this in action. 5:13 In our twenty twenty two omni channel report, we surveyed over six thousand consumers globally to better understand how shoppers conduct research before making a purchase. 5:23 As you can see, the roots of a checkout for in store shoppers often involves research online, while the path to the online checkout generally involves a trip installed or a search for social media. 5:34 The shopping journey has become increasingly connected. But as we see here, most purchases begin with product research, which is conducted online, regardless of whether the purchase is then made online or in store. 5:45 So if you're not showing up on the digital shelf, your competitors probably are, and that's why claiming your space and winning is so important. And increasingly, discoveries happening on social. 5:57 If we look at online shopping preferences, see that consumers typically begin their shopping journey online by searching on Google online retailer sites and social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. 6:08 And when consumers are looking for a product, you want them to find you easily in all of these places. Optimizing your digital shelf so it's visible and discoverable is the first half of the equation. 6:19 And the second half is credibility and authenticity. What type of content the shop is looking for when researching? What validates their decision to purchase? 6:30 Is it branded content? Is it user generated content? We can see that seven of the most wanted content types are user generated. Shoppers are looking for ratings and reviews, questions and answers from other shoppers, photos that have been uploaded by people who've already purchased. 6:47 And user generated content doesn't just benefit shoppers. It can improve your ad performance too. According to our ShopR Experience Index, Only seven percent of shoppers said they felt ads with branded photography were effective, but twenty two percent said ads with user reviews made them more likely to buy. 7:05 Brands and retailers themselves also ranked reviews in customer photo and video content as the most influential elements of their sales and advertising efforts. This is because authentic content builds trust. 7:18 People are more likely to trust content from their peers than from a brand. Our shopper experience data shows a third of shoppers view a brand as trustworthy if online reviews are positive. 7:27 However, there's also an expectation to see some level of negative content. Over half of consumers say that negative reviews are just as important as positive reviews and their decision to buy a product. 7:40 So let's have a look at the different ways you can optimize your digital shell to help your business goals. The first way to optimize is by increasing your visibility in search results. 7:53 With the mobile device in every pocket, new social media apps popping up all the time, millions of products are just a click away, but the shopper journey has become complicated, and no two journeys are the same. 8:05 But what they do have in common is a search bar. On search engines, retailer sites, apps, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, the list goes on. 8:13 So the same SEO best practices that improve your Google rankings could also position you for success on the digital shelf. Did you know that over half of all website traffic comes from organic search? 8:25 One of the best ways to optimize your organic search by adding UGC to your product detail pages. The reason UGC is so effective for SEO is because it drives targeted quality traffic to your product detail page. 8:38 Why is this? Search engines use a variety of criteria to determine which search results best match the user's intent. And keyword match and quality content are among the top factors. 8:50 All different types of UGC, Contain tons of valuable keywords used by shoppers to describe your products. In fact, Our Shop Experience Index Report found that sixty three percent of brands and retailers rely on ratings and reviews to meet their SEO goals. 9:08 We also commissioned an independent study with Forrester, which found that bizarre voice clients triple their web page traffic with UGC. Here's a direct quote from one of our CPG clients in the Forrester study. 9:20 We rely on with our voice for search equity. Ratings and reviews create a great avenue for us to get current content on our site and bring attention to our products. 9:29 That helps us to rank higher in search results and get found better. The content and data that drives search results could also work across your install and digital shelf. 9:40 It can help in store shoppers easily research your products online. For example, many of the elements from your PDP can be leveraged on install POS and retailer apps and with QR codes, that take a captive audience to the appropriate page. 9:53 And tagging social content with these same product details could also benefit social commerce. And drive traffic to your PDPs. So why not make it easy for shoppers to search online, in store, and on social media? 10:08 The second way to optimize your digital shelf is through social content, which has obviously changed the game in recent years. While traditional PDPs surround a product with supporting content, social media can often be the first step for consumers learning about your products. 10:21 Ninety seven percent of gen z shoppers say social media is their top source of inspiration and convenience matters. Over half of the shop is saying they're more likely to buy a product or social media if they can click a post and get product info directly from there. 10:35 To maximize your social channels impact on your on your digital shelf, leverage UGC drive traffic and revenue by turning your social media channels into shoppable storefronts. 10:46 Consider using social commerce tools to deliver this. As an example, one of our features like to buy can transform your Instagram feed into a sales channel. 10:55 So your followers can read your blogs, browse products, and make purchases. There's also galleries, which can bring social content through to your sites, as well as have to inspire customers there. 11:05 Seventy four percent of shoppers want to see social content from other consumers on brand's websites. Turn social content into shoppable experiences that drive sales wherever shoppers are. 11:17 Social's a great way to curate fresh original authentic content that already exists and has been created for you. Now while content is king, distribution is definitely the queen, and she wears the pants. 11:31 The key is to recognize that UGC doesn't just belong on social media. While plenty of tools exist to get content onto social media, to really take advantage of social UGC, you need a solution that can distribute that content to multiple consumer touch points and make it shoppable. 11:48 Shopping anywhere requires shoppable content to be everywhere. Now here's a great example, because I've always customer River Island added social and visual use generated content to its homepage. 12:01 A dedicated landed page and its product pages to showcase consumers in the clothes, giving that authentic lifestyle content. Visitors who engaged with the visual UGC drove over a hundred and eighty four percent lifts in conversion rate, with forty five percent increase in average order value. And they spent twice as much time browsing the sites. 12:24 The third way to optimize your distro shelf is through sampling. It's important to make sure your products have the type of UGC that resonates with shoppers at every stage of a shopper journey, and proactive sampling can be a great way help across all the product lifestyle stages you see on this slide. 12:40 Looking at the case of new products, sampling in advance can help make sure there's UGC content ready from day one to help reassure and convert shoppers, helping you drive a successful launch. 12:53 Sampling can turn your ideal customers into loyalist and advocates. We surveyed over six thousand influencer community members who participated in sampling campaigns. 13:02 And ask them what they did next. Sixty three percent became a customer purchasing the product they sampled. Of those, ninety seven percent purchased at least one additional product from the brand. 13:14 And finally, eighty seven percent became advocates recommending the brand to friends and family. We recommend working with a partner who can hyper target your ideal customers to get the most out of your samples and higher quality use generated content. 13:29 Our customer data reveals that brands that use bizarre voice sampling show an average two point seven one percent higher conversion rate than those that don't. An example of a powerful sampling program comes from Kraft Heinz, a Visar Voice client. 13:44 We matched them with a hypertargic segment of shoppers from our community to generate the content to support the product launch of three new dressing ranges. 13:54 Activating the right consumers at scale created thousands of reviews and social media content. This campaign surpass its goals, delivering twenty thousand reviews and thirty nine million impressions across social media. 14:05 The earned media alone returned over five times the program investment. Now while we're on the topic of collecting content, When it comes to collecting UGC, the best strategy is to diversify your collection efforts, and this is the conversation we're having often with our clients. 14:22 In addition to sampling, you can consider loyalty community requests, review request emails and texts, callouts on product packaging and social media sweepstakes. 14:33 Let us know your thoughts and be in for a chance to win. These are easy to implement strategies that can help jumpstart your collection efforts and build your library of user generated content. 14:43 It also helps to ensure you have a fresh supply at UGC. Remember, your best content impacts every phase of the buyer journey from discovery to consideration to purchase. 14:56 This content helps attract shoppers to the modern digital shelf and converts them into buyers. And the more content you have, the more you drive sales and long term growth. 15:06 The ones you have this great content, it's important to get it to all the places that matter. Getting customer ratings, reviews, questions, and answers, and visual content, everywhere products are sold, both online and in store, is a significant challenge for brands and retailers. 15:21 The content collection and syndication can solve this problem. Syndication is a content distribution method that allows brands and retailers to share and display customer content across all their digital touch points. 15:33 It helps brands ensure their content is available everywhere consumers are shopping and helps retailers deliver an exceptional shopping experience with plenty of content across all products. 15:43 It also maximizes a brand's investment in creating content by making it visible everywhere. Just a per plug in here for bizarre voice, Contense indication is only as powerful as the network that drives it. So besides the network really matters, the forest study found that the Brazar Voice Network provides businesses with a ten times increase in content syndication, a three times increase in content coverage of products. 16:06 I e three times as many products were covered with UGC than before. With over twelve thousand brands and retailers, it's the world's largest content syndication network main reason companies choose bizarre voice, but we don't stop there. In addition to retail partner sites, we distribute content across search engines like Google, and social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. 16:28 The entire Zervoice network gets content in front of over one point three billion shoppers every month. And it's not just ratings and reviews. 16:36 Questions and answers and custom photos and videos are syndicated to. Getting more product related visuals indexed by pages like Google images and Google Shopping. 16:46 Visarvoic customer Nicole is a great example of this multichannel approach. This is a premium cycling gear company using consumer reviews and images to create authentic connections with customers. 16:57 Customers who engage with this on-site gallery are five times more likely to convert and are spending twelve percent more on an average order. Working a bizarre voice, the call's increased focus on UGC has paid off. Overall, the company now sees a thirteen percent higher average order value for products and reviews, a one hundred and fifty five percent increase in revenue per visitor, as well as a hundred and twenty five percent increase in conversion rates. 17:23 Finally, the fifth way to optimize your Distru shelf is by leveraging insights. Use generated content from your product pages is an excellent source of feedback to optimize your products and programs. 17:35 Think of it as you're always on focus group telling you what is most important to them. Proactively listening to what customs are saying can help you improve your product pages and address possible objections. 17:46 For example, Raintings and reviews can help you understand what customers love most about a product, or maybe what needs improving. Customer questions and answers can help you identify communication gaps between your brand and your customers. 18:00 Mind your UGC, like photos, reviews, customer Q and for insights into what customers like, dislike, or maybe don't know about your products and incorporate customer feedback into your product detail pages. 18:12 Use your customers' words to surface how they feel about your product at scale. Keywords from customer feedback can also help your products appear in search results and can be used to optimize your SEO campaign and reach more leads. 18:25 Remember that ratings and reviews and questions and answers are a direct line, direct line of customer feedback that can help flag product floors, inform strategic decisions, and enable you to make key adjustments that maximize customer satisfaction and sales. 18:38 You can do all of this with the ResARVoice Insights platform. And what about insights from your social properties? That's another excellent source for insights. 18:48 If you're looking to leverage social media content to drive revenue on your site, Visarway has one of the best social analytics packages out there. It allows you to post with confidence using forecasting tools that indicate when your followers are online, analyze social trends with AI that identifies content that will perform best. Analyze top media by views, product clicks, and revenue attributed to each image. 19:11 Measure success on posts and stories across all of your channels in one place, gain competitive insights based on how your competitors are performing on social, and export results to PDF to easily share and celebrate your success with the team. 19:26 Let's have a look at Bizarro's customer Unilever, which sets the bar for leveraging insights from UGC across the company. The company recognized the value of UGC content beyond increasing conversion and traffic. 19:37 Unilever acts on reviews to improve products and enhance the customer experience across the business. Customer feedback provides an ongoing source of data informing R and D customer service, quality teams, and all and sharing info with how product is performing. 19:55 So let's briefly touch on how Zervoice can help. It's not going to be a surprise to anyone here that UGC content drives sales. Product reviews, photo galleries, questions and answers at the core building blocks to supercharge your digital shelf. 20:09 This content helps convert shoppers browsing products online into confident patch services. When shoppers interact with relevant UGC, brands and retailers see up to a one hundred two hundred and three percent left in conversion. 20:22 Well as increased revenue per visitor and increased average order values. And who doesn't want that? The Zarvoices market leading product suite is an end to end platform forms that empowers brands to harness the power of used generated content and support your digital shelf strategy. 20:38 We've created a platform integrated products and partnerships ecosystems that helps grow your business by making it easier to generate, curate, distribute, receive, and analyze authentic content. 20:51 To wrap it up, here are some key takeaways from this session. Your digital shelf influences the majority of retail sales, both online and in door. 21:00 So it's worth investing in generating and curating the content that meets shopper needs to make confident purchases wherever that may be. And last, tap into the wealth of consumer insights that can help you optimize your digital shelf. 21:14 If you're looking for a partner to help optimize, we'd love to hear from you. Now we have a few minutes for Q and A. Some questions have already come through on the chat, but feel free to add any others as well.
