The e-commerce industry is taking a steep turn as brick and mortar store brands are also marking their online presence with eCommerce. The biggest leap of the e-commerce industry is visual commerce, which is taking brands to the next level. Now, everything is in favor of the marketers as they are helping their brand take a step ahead by providing exciting shopping experiences to their users backed up by technical innovations.
With this new tech-savvy generation, the scope of online business is increasing every single day. Read about visual commerce for your online businesses in the article below:
What is Visual Commerce?
It is a revolution in the e-commerce industry that enhances how businesses display and sell their products and services online. It utilizes user-generated content (UGC) to drive sales and conversions and heighten user-engagement. In the most essential form, it refers to enhancing the user experience by providing compelling, influential, and enticing visual content that urges them to buy the products right away.
The best part about it is that it works with UGC, which is collected from various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. It enables us to leverage unique ideas from users to display the products and practice effective visual marketing. You can use the relevant UGC to tag your products and display them as shoppable content on your website.
Your website visitors will be able to buy from those images directly; therefore, you will be displaying shoppable galleries. The Analytics feature will help you track and study your galleries’ performance and update it accordingly.
It is an innovative and distinguishing marketing solution that can be highly valuable for a brand.
Why visual commerce for an online business?
As I mentioned above, It is a revolution. So, you obviously want to know how it can help your online business. Right? Here are a few aspects that are essential for a business and how visual commerce enables you to nail them.
1. User-Engagement
Visual commerce works with amazing visual content. People love to watch compelling visuals and engage themselves with visually rich content.
We all know that user-generated content or brand-generated content for social media are both very colorful and vibrant. Integrating them into your website can make it attractive and engaging for the users. The dynamic and creative content also provides variety and new content every now and then giving website visitors more content.
Alongside this, the fact is that integrating user-generated content to the website gives it a human essence. With more UGC, the users could be intrigued by the questions like what is special with the brand and its products, that the customers are so happy.
2. Social Proof
(Starbucks displaying social proof on their social media platforms to build trust)
What is social proof? Proof of something available on social media publicly so that people can access it for their assistance. When people use your branded hashtags and account handles with their social media posts, they generate social proof. Proof that people are using the products of that brand and enjoying them enough to go ahead and post about them. This proof can work wonders to motivate website visitors to turn into customers.
You will then be using the same social proof to tag your products and displaying them on your website for your e-commerce conversion strategy. It will make your products and website more authentic and attractive to the users, which will help you with increased engagement and conversion rates.
3. Builds Trust
When we talk about online businesses, there is too much competition. It is the reason that the user’s trust in your brand is extremely crucial for your brand’s growth. If the users trust your brand and your products, they will refer your brand to other people as well. It is what UGC and visual commerce do; it helps users to trust your brand by displaying social proof.
When you embed UGC powered shoppable galleries on your website, you don’t just display your products but social proof as well. Proof that people are using and liking your products enough to post pictures with them. It influences other user’s trust in your brand. The users can look at the product in action and being used, which increases the trust factor even more. You must have heard the saying ‘you trust what you see,’ this works on the same concept, which is the essence of visual marketing.
4. Higher Conversion Rate
Most people trust UGC more than they trust branded content because their fellow users will not lie about a product experience for no reason. This trust in UGC gives online businesses a chance to attract their users through displaying UGC and gain their trust to try their products.
Studies show that 1 out of 2 shoppers is more likely to buy after viewing relatable content. Research also indicates visual commerce raises CTR by 15-20% and raises conversion rate by 5-7% on average.
When people look at so many other users using your products, it enables them to judge the product in real-life situations and backgrounds. They can trust the product more, and they do not hesitate in going ahead and buying the product. Visual commerce gives them an option to buy the product from those images itself, which prevents delay and increases the certainty about their decision. This provides online businesses with a higher conversion rate.
5. Cost-effective
When it comes to integrating something new to your business or marketing strategy, the first concern that arises in your mind will be the cost of the plan and its execution. It is probably one of the cheapest and most successful marketing strategies one can adopt for their business. All you have to invest in is a visual commerce platform that will help you create shoppable galleries and turn your online business into a visual commerce website.
This solution is not very costly as it uses UGC as a way to sell. You don’t have to spend on any kind of coding as it is all taken care of by the visual commerce platform. You don’t have to spend on models and photographers. Instead, you can just use UGC for tagging and selling your products. It also builds trust and gives you a higher conversion rate. Therefore, the return on investment is high. You earn way more than you spend; the catch is to choose the correct and cost-effective platform.
6. Enhances Brand-user Relationship
(Brand utilizing UGC for its shoppable gallery to build a better relationship with its users.)
The most important relationship for any business is its relationship with its consumers or users. A good brand-user relationship means you are gaining more loyal customers that will think twice to switch to some other brand. To maintain a healthy and effective brand-user relationship, UGC powered visual commerce is the most efficient and effective way.
It gives you a chance to go ahead and deliver a superlative consumer experience for your users. By providing them with real-time and in action product videos and images, you enhance their shopping and judging experience. The main issue that online sellers face is lack of touch, UGC can help you manage that in a better way.
You can also feature some of your best user posts on your website and mention them. It will motivate them not only to create more creative content, but they will stay loyal to your brand. It will also inspire other users to create good quality content to get featured on your website or social media handle. This way, you can enhance brand-user relationships as well as generate better UGC for your online business.
7. Increases Website Vibrancy
As I have already mentioned in previous points that it deals with some compelling and vibrant visuals. Visuals are its main essence, which is the most attractive part of any website. The website’s look can make or break a customer, as it leaves the first impression on them.
Working with engaging and beautiful shoppable galleries for the users increases website vibrancy by the captivating visuals. It helps the brand to attract the users and keep them engaged to explore more.
How can you use Visual Commerce?
There are various visual commerce platforms such as Taggbox that help you with the whole process and make it easier for you to go ahead and turn your conventional online business to visual business. These platforms provide you with many features, such as:
Aggregation feature for the collection of content from multiple social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.
Moderation feature to select the usable content for your website.
Tagging feature for tagging your products on the curated UGC.
Display features for the showcasing of tagged posts on your website.
Analytics feature for studying the performance of your posts for a better understanding of users.
And many more.
Every visual commerce platform has different features and different price plans to offer. You need to do your research well and choose the correct platform that suits your usage and pocket the best.
Conclusion
As already mentioned, it can help you take your online business to the next chapter of e-commerce. I am pretty sure you will agree with me by now.
It is a new trend conquering the market, and you should definitely take advantage of it. It can help you with a lot of aspects, and not using it for your e-commerce website can be like giving up a great opportunity.
Visual commerce is the future of the e-commerce industry, and it is a good idea you start with it right away and stay ahead of most of your competitors. So if you are eager to boost your sales and user-count, start now!
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