Reviews unlock a 43% conversion jump for Molton Brown
The Molton Brown team sees a 54% lift in revenue per visitor and a 43% lift in conversion rate when customers engage with reviews.
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10.7%
conversion rate
for those who engaged with UGC
Fresh fuses natural ingredients and modern science to create beauty products that promise to perform and transform. The brand’s products are available through major beauty retailers and directly to the consumer at its own bricks and mortar stores, plus its website, a major shopping destination for beauty lovers.
“I think of the fresh.com DTC site as our global flagship. It’s a full-on experience where customers can learn about the brand, shop their favorite products and check out the latest innovation. I want our site to be a place where customers can experience Fresh like never before.” explained Brittany Uhal, Senior Manager of the US e-commerce team at Fresh.
A significant challenge the brand faced was raising awareness and providing an engaging experience for their Customers off and online. In every challenge, there’s an opportunity — and Fresh took it. The beauty brand worked with Bazaarvoice and employed Ratings & Reviews, as well as Retail Syndication, to provide an inviting shopping experience and boost customer engagement. Whilst those who use the Fresh website can’t test the products’ smell, texture, and efficacy before making a purchase, they can read the reviews of those who have.
Fresh launched a sweepstakes campaign to increase engagement
With guidance from Bazaarvoice, Fresh launched a successful summer sweepstakes campaign that resulted in 217 reviews in the first week alone — a 145% increase from its normal rate. The campaign was simple but effective: leave a review on your favorite product from the Rose collection and get a chance to win a $100 eGift card.
The goal was to capture authentic, detailed reviews to build more relevancy, promote evergreen products, and encourage customers to engage in shopping experiences.
“One way reviews really help is by garnering user-generated content [UGC] to make Fresh more relevant to our audience. So obviously, we want all of our products to have a great review system,” explained Uhal.
The month-long campaign resulted in 549 new reviews, which is just over half of the regular monthly amount that fresh.com receives for a product. It also led to an increase in average review ratings — 4.8 compared to 4.6 year-on-year.
“Now we’re actually doing one [sweepstakes campaign] per quarter. We just launched one for our mask category. It’s a great initiative that we’ve been able to take, and we know that this is going to be an always-on strategy. We want to continue to grow it,” said Uhal.
Photo-first review displays enhance Fresh’s ratings and reviews
Fresh embraced its pioneering spirit and became the first beauty brand to implement Bazaarvoice’s photo-first displays, part of our Ratings & Reviews platform, in every product’s review section. Photo-first review displays put visual UGC front and center as the customer scrolls through the product description page. It allows shoppers to get a quick look at the product in action before they read detailed written reviews.
The face mask sweepstakes campaign was instrumental in building up this stock of valuable visual content. “Eleven percent of those reviews [from the campaign] contained photos, which was amazing, especially with the photo-first display,” said Uhal.
Since customer engagement is a major priority, creating photo-first displays is the perfect medium to encourage shoppers to spend more time crafting their feedback. The beauty industry is all about sharing personal experiences, offering recommendations, and finding that “holy grail” product. An abundance of visual UGC, along with reviews, motivates shoppers to contribute to the community and add their own experiences.
“Photo-first displays lead customers to leave more photos of their own, so it was great to see that within the increased reviews,” explained Uhal.
Retail syndication distributes organic UGC across all channels
Although Fresh has physical locations, it elevates digital word-of-mouth across its own global websites and retailers’ websites to promote its products. Beauty brands are very aware that online beauty communities are responsible for catapulting products into the spotlight and creating buzz around new trends.
“In the last few years, multiple beauty brands have seen products go viral on TikTok, and I think every beauty brand, whether they want to admit it or not, is trying to recreate that or understand how to break that algorithm,” explained Uhal.
Ratings and reviews allow brands more control over the process by authenticating feedback and syndicating it across various sales channels. Retail Syndication takes reviews from an original source, say the brand’s website, and pushes them out to retailer and international brand websites. Fresh syndicates its ratings and reviews to its global sites, including the U.K. and Canada, as well as major retailers.
Retail Syndication led to a 7,702% increase in review volume across all online sales channels. That’s a staggering number in any industry, but especially in the beauty world, where shoppers rely on high-quality reviews to provide information on products they can’t physically test, especially for limited edition products.
Fresh found Review Syndication instrumental in launching limited edition products, like holiday gift sets and spring bundles. “It’s hard to get reviews on limited edition products. By the time customers buy them, and have enough time to try them for an authentic review – they will be off the site.” explained Uhal.
Since the limited edition sets often include core products with extensive reviews, Fresh used the Retail Syndication tool to bring the original reviews to limited-edition product pages. By the time the sets were launched, the pages already had hundreds of reviews and visual UGC.
“We know reviews increase conversion and interaction. We wanted our limited edition products to have that as well. It’s been great to see,” said Uhal.
Fresh boosts customer engagement and satisfaction with improved ratings and organic reviews
Fresh partnered with Bazaarvoice to tackle this problem head-on by building up its review volume, bolstering customer engagement, and increasing product ratings.
“Bazaarvoice has had a year-to-date impact of $1.48 million with a 10.7% conversion rate, which is great when we talk about the health of the program,” said Uhal.
With a winning strategy and Bazaarvoice’s guidance, Fresh plans to run the successful campaign every quarter, building stronger connections with its customers and boosting revenue.
Want to see how you too can build trust, boost customer engagement, and impact revenue?
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10.7%
conversion rate
for those who engaged with UGC
About the company
Founded In 1991, by Lev Glazman and Alina Roytberg who saw the need for beauty that was both effective and indulgent. Lev and Alina opened a store offering natural products from around the world, where the ambience was friendly like the food bazaars of Europe. When they couldn’t find products that looked, smelled, and felt as good as they worked, they started making their own. That same passion and pioneering spirit has kept the brand innovative for decades.
“We know UGC isn't the future — it's now. So how do we incorporate all of this great social content from the customers that we already have?”
Brittany Uhal
Senior Manager of the US e-commerce team at Fresh
