What can you do with Yotpo?

Yotpo’s user-generated content platform has led to $1bn in Shopify sales. Here’s why.

I recently bought a camera online, and while I was browsing I found my eyes immediately going to the yellow stars next to the title. 3.5 stars? Nah, I think I can do better. More than the product descriptions, I look for what other (real) people have said about their experience with the product.

I’m not alone - in fact, websites that display testimonials on their products have a direct increase in sales. One test even found a 34% conversion increase by sticking reviews on their homepage. Another test found that putting star reviews on a Facebook ad made shoppers twice as likely to buy. 70% of consumers trust other consumers’ reviews over marketing content. And, 64% of consumers proactively search for reviews before buying something.

This trend makes total sense. Before we buy something, we want to know if we’ll like it. We look for other people who have had an experience with it and don’t have an incentive to lie to us for marketing reasons. User-generated content (UGC) is the basis of social media, and it’s becoming evermore important in marketing strategies for all companies. 86% of businesses utilise UGC in some way. The good news? People are contributing more reviews and other user-generated content than ever, and it’s just going up.

What User-Generated Content means for your business

Credibility

This is a big one. One of the most important things that people look for when buying online is trustworthiness and credibility. You can’t see the product for yourself, so you hope that if you’re reading enough stuff from real people who’ve experienced it, you’ll get a sense of its quality. It’s pretty obvious, but if you have a bunch of people without an ulterior motive endorsing your company, you’re better off than if it’s just “my mom thinks I’m great”.

Higher conversion rates

Of course, the basic point of eCommerce is to make sales. User-generated content is an effective marketing tool that consumers use to make decisions about if and what to buy. UGC is especially important in markets that are emerging and people are hesitant about the products themselves, and for markets that are quite saturated and people have tons of choice for which company they buy from.

Better engagement with your customers

UGC helps you make sales to other customers, but it also gives you valuable feedback about how your business can grow. This idea is sometimes overlooked by marketing writers, but I think it’s extremely important. A big issue for a lot of businesses is getting a real feel for what their customers like and dislike about their products. Sure, you can guess, but getting real responses is so much more useful for product development and marketing decisions. You can design post-purchase surveys and hope to get responses, but increasing the amount of real reviews and testimonials your company has, you’ll get very useful feedback on your products and services at the same time.

Yotpo means being strategic about UGC marketing

For businesses looking to start getting their customers to share positive feedback and post user-generated content, it can be intimidating at first. Before you have a stockpile of good reviews, one bad one can ruin your average. How do you entice people to share videos and photos, reviews and ratings?

That’s exactly what Yotpo specialises in.

Yotpo is an app that integrates with Shopify, focused on getting merchants reviews from their customers. They automatically reach out to your customers, asking for reviews and ratings, then put that content directly on your site in strategic places. Their analytical tools help you see what’s working and how much of your sales can be attributed to user-generated content.

One of the nice things about Yotpo is that it is mobile-first oriented. We know that most people are using their phones for a huge part of their email and shopping tasks, and Yotpo sends out quick, simple, mobile-friendly emails to encourage people to submit content.

There are other ways to get user-generated content that we’ve mentioned before. Using Instagram influencers or creating a loyalty program with perks for reviews are two examples. Yotpo does something different - it uses the sites you’re already connected on (like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc) and helps you get and manage content in a way that works well for each of those sites. Basically, it uses whatever marketing channels you’re already on to start getting UGC, rather than you needing to approach new people.

So, what are the differences between Yotpo and other review apps? Read more here.

How do I get Yotpo?

The Free Plan

You can start with a Lite version of Yotpo, which will automatically email people after they’ve made a purchase asking them to leave a review, and will stick a review widget on your home page. It’s free! Give it a shot.

Pro and Powerhouse

These are one and two levels up from the free plan, and let you seriously up your game with user generated content. These meat-and-potatoes Yotpo versions include features like:

Show off review stars in a carousel or tab
Add stars to Facebook or Instagram ads
Add a Question and Answer section from users
Send coupons or incentives for writing reviews
Leave thank you or other comments on reviews
Upsell products in emails
Create a custom review form for different kinds of clients
Get a dedicated help-desk for customers or moderator for comments

Visual Marketing Suite

Visual marketing is a pretty big deal. You can add the visual marketing suite to their Pro or Powerhouse plans, which let you collect user-generated photos and display them as ads or in carousels on your site. If you go big and get the Visual Marketing Suite Plus plan, you can also use Yotpo for your Instagram and Pinterest marketing entirely.

Enterprise Plans

Yotpo also has the option to custom-design a plan for growing or large companies.

You can take a look at their full list of features and figure which plan might be right for you here.

Install Yotpo for Shopify here.

Looking for more information?

We’re here to help you diversify your marketing strategy, build a beautiful eCommerce site, and grow your online business with Shopify. Here are a couple of extra things to check out when you’re installing Yotpo.

Yotpo’s follow-along video for integrating with Shopify
Yotpo’s installation guide for Shopify

You can also get in contact with us for more information about working with user-generated content.