Product page optimization: The Body Shop's 13% average order value growth with Bazaarvoice Galleries

The Body Shop has been a beacon in the beauty industry for over four decades, strongly emphasizing ethical sourcing and environmental consciousness. Originating as a British cosmetics company in 1976, The Body Shop aimed to make natural, ethically sourced beauty products accessible globally. Today, it operates approximately 3,000 stores across 69 countries and is recognized worldwide for its commitment to social and environmental causes.

As e-commerce began to dominate the retail landscape, The Body Shop recognized it needed to ensure its digital presence was just as captivating, informative, and authentic as its brick-and-mortar stores.

“We believe the customer should have a voice. We want to know their opinion because it gives us an opportunity to do better. To understand. To Improve.” said Indar Chanicka, Vice President of E-Commerce, The Body Shop.

Harnessing the power of user-generated content

Recognizing customers seek genuine endorsements, The Body Shop already leverages Bazaarvoice’s Ratings & Reviews, Questions & Answers, and Sampling, to improve SEO, to boost conversions, and generate customer engagement. But with the rise of social content to inspire its customers’ path to purchase, they knew there was more to be done.

“Galleries was a big win for us. Bigger than anyone expected. We set out to fully utilize our social content to drive engagement and use it as a tool to educate customers through their purchasing decisions. We want customers to understand what our products are about, beyond ratings and reviews; we want them to see the actual products and their benefits through the experiences of real customers,” said Chanicka.

Recognizing the transformative power of social media, The Body Shop got started with Bazaarvoice Social Commerce. The Body Shop has the perfect mix of branded imagery and consumer-generated images that show its products in real life situations. This move offered a more immersive and interactive shopping experience and blurred the lines between social networking and e-commerce.

“The Bazaarvoice platform was so much more robust than other social commerce platforms we were looking at, it was the right decision,” Chanicka said. “Bazaarvoice is performing well for us in terms of conversation and engagement.”

But the biggest win for The Body Shop was the introduction of Bazaarvoice Galleries on its product detail pages. By showcasing authentic photos and videos shared by their dedicated customer base, Galleries showed The Body Shop products in diverse real-world scenarios. Through campaigns and incentives, customers were urged to post their experiences, bridging the gap between online browsing and the tangible in-store experience.

Optimizing with data-driven insights

In order to redefine the e-commerce experience and better understand its customers’ online behaviors, The Body Shop integrated Contentsquare’s digital experience analytics platform with Bazaarvoice.

The Body Shop gained granular insights into how consumers interacted with user-generated content, particularly in Bazaarvoice Galleries. By analyzing heatmaps, session recordings, and conversion funnels, they could pinpoint what content resonated most with their audience and optimize it further.

The Body Shop moved its Gallery position to just below the fold and yielded impressive results.

“We decided to bump it up on the PDP because it was having such a great response rate from customers. Customers clearly wanted to see more of that type of content and so it caused us to even to prioritize where the module was sitting on the page. And now it sits directly below the product itself,” Chanicka said.

The Body Shop saw a 13% rise in its average order value after integrating Bazaarvoice Galleries. Moreover, Galleries quickly became the second-highest converting element on their website, boasting a 28% conversion rate on product pages.

Embracing the future with an eye on the past

The Body Shop’s journey from Ratings & Reviews to Social Commerce and Galleries underlines the company’s commitment to delivering an authentic and enriching online customer experience, which has significantly impacted the company’s bottom line.

After this success on product pages, The next step for The Body Shop is to work with Bazaarvoice, Contentsquare, and Monetate on a Homepage optimization project.

“We’re gonna push this out to the homepage to category landing pages, and editorial landing pages on the site. Again, the data from Contentsquare was what helped us to make this decision,” Chanicka shared.

In addition, The Body Shop is in the process of migrating from it’s old social scheduling platform to Bazaarvoice Social Publishing globally.

Explore the transformative potential of Bazaarvoice Social Commerce and Galleries.

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