Retailers know that including user reviews on product pages can increase sales, after all, when was the last time you purchased anything on Amazon without reading the customer reviews? Reviews can increase the average value of each order, improve customer loyalty, and even increase traffic. For fashion brands specifically, the ability to rate the fit, quality and value of garments is of instrumental importance when purchasing online. A picture says a thousand words, of course, and for many brands, ratings and reviews have evolved to include user-generated photos. On Rent the Runway, for example, you can even search photos filtered by people who have self-identified as having a similar body type.
The introduction of new site features can be a laborious process for many larger ecommerce fashion sites, however, making vendors who offer a turnkey solution for bringing user-generated photos to the forefront of great value. Lululemon, Free People and Now Dolls Kill have chosen NYC startup, Olapic to offer customers this new way to shop.
Olapic is seeing a 5X increase in engagement with Olapic’s photo galleries (compared to text user reviews) and sales conversion increases between 3-30%. Shoddy Lynn of Dolls Kill explains, “Just like its customers, Dolls Kill has built its look from street style and hard-to-find underground labels. As a result, the ability to share these new looks with each other is a big part of our culture and the culture of our customers. We knew from the start that we needed to implement some kind of social media sharing tool base on visual content to inspire our customers and build a community, but until we found Olapic, there was no solution for online retailers capable of doing so. Olapic has enabled us to create a real connection between our customers and our brand.”
Fashion brands are becoming more open to including how customers wear and style their items on their own domain because there is such a plethora of outfit shots already being taken and shared through social media. Also, Olapic offers manual controls so that brands have final say on all images that make it onto the site, allowing for quality control. As a representative from Olapic commented, “ however your customers have decided to express themselves, we have a way to collect that content and make it useful for the brand.” Some of these ways include hashtags, direct submission, widgets, email, Facebook and API.
There is a value that goes beyond just assisting with immediate sales. Olapic explains that “users are sharing information about how they use clothes (which ones are more popular, how they combine them, what are the most common reactions, etc.) and we can use all that information to help our clients to make better decisions like styling looks based on what photos increase conversion the most.”
Fashion brands considering adoption of user-generated photo reviews should know how their existing customer is currently capturing or creating content or taking outfit photos and ensure that messaging and functionality aligns with social behavior.
