9 Best Ideas To Increase Website Engagement With User-Generated Content

Gone are the days of conventional marketing and advertisements! Marketing strategies have evolved from stacked photos to consumers uploading real content bringing along the authenticity factor and the social proof from customers themselves.

Roughly, 30% of the time millennials spend consuming all media is spent on User Generated Content(UGC). They find UGC as a great way to discover new products.

Especially when it is about the digital landscape, marketers & brands are always exploring opportunities that can increase website engagement and deliver a superlative experience to users.

This article talks about leveraging user-generated content to increase engagement on websites for users.  

User-Generated Content: Explanation

UGC abbreviated for User Generated Content, also known as Consumer Generated Content, it is the content created by users.

UGC is all about users posting images and videos on their social media platforms, sharing their experiences and reviews about products or services, their feedback to online queries, etc.

It serves brand marketers with considerable opportunities to mine for social media content, video logs, and images narrating compelling stories of users and showcasing them on their websites through a social wall. 

It helps to connect with the target users in a more personalized and authentic way.

Recommended – Manage Your User-Generated Content Rights

User-Generated Content For Website Engagement

Here are some of the best ways to leverage user-generated content for your online storefront i.e., the website to escalate your business growth and success. 

1. Make Your Website Come Alive

As the internet & access grows along with the consumption of mobile devices, the demand for attractive and entertaining content is also increasing.

Now, instead of creating content continuously for the website, visual user-generated content on the website is a better option to bring vibrancy and make your website lively. 

Due to the diversity of content created by a huge number of users from different demographics, you have the freedom to choose the best & most vibrant visual content for your website to attract users. 

Visual content is also popular for higher engagement and user attention-grabbing compared to other forms of content. 

2. Visual Assistance in Decisions Making

Visuals have a huge role in today’s age as the people are shifting towards eCommerce continually. Earlier, consumers had the option to see, touch, and try the products before purchasing. 

But with online commerce, it has become almost impossible to test the product first-hand before buying. So, visuals become a necessary element in shaping the consumers’ decisions. 

Visual user generated content marketing helps the consumers in understanding the real aesthetics of the products, its characteristics, authenticity, trustworthiness over the brand, and infusion of a sense of security among the consumers. 

Also Read – User-Generated Video Content Guide

3. Social Proof Engages Users 

There is no better alternative to building social proof than promoting user-generated content as your brand’s voice. Social proof is a massive influencer of online purchase decisions for consumers.

Looking for trustworthiness, authenticity, and reliability is a priority for the consumers in the digital ecosystem due to their concerns over security & fraudulent activities. 

Displaying UGC using a live hashtag feed building tool like Taggbox builds social proof, and social proof helps in driving user engagement and conversions for your business. It also helps in generating credibility, enhanced brand image, and positive organic marketing. 

4. Next-Level Engagement With Gamification

Who would want to miss an opportunity to post their pictures and win a gift in return? Well, you could use this trick to attract user-generated content in return for giveaways and gifts. 

You could organize gamification elements like games, leaderboards, contests, or questionnaires or any activity to engage users on your website. As an engagement reward, the winners could be awarded goodies or gift cards or vouchers.

It attracts potential customers and increases the traffic on your website for sure, and also, at the same time, it increases the word of mouth marketing for your brand.

You could also create a point system that could be redeemed by your users later on. It retains their frequent visits to your website and encourages them to engage on your website more frequently and also inspires brand loyalty.

5. Brand Advocacy For Extended Engagement

Having positive UGC about your brand displays brand advocacy among the consumers. So, leverage UGC to increase brand advocacy and create a chain reaction for an extended engagement. 

Make your customers know what your brand stands for and what are the values you pursue through your brand. It helps you resonate with the audience who believes in the same values.

For this purpose, you may integrate a social hub on your website, which may display user-generated content from different social media platforms regarding your product and brand. You may include images of customers using your product, conveying the values your brand stands for on a social wall.

An inspirational social media wall on your home screen also leaves a long-lasting effect on the minds of first-time users. Placing CTA buttons at strategic touchpoints is a great move to enhance conversion rates.

Also Read – Benefits Of User-Generated Content

6. Digital Point-Of-Purchase Marketing

Point of purchase marketing is a retail marketing technique where the brands place products near the checkout station in their stores to instigate consumers to spend more time & purchase more products and increase sales. 

User-generated content can be leveraged as an asset for the digital point of purchase marketing by adding UGC reviews and visuals about other similar and quick selling products on the checkout pages. 

It is not an idea to enhance primary user engagement but to draw augmented engagement once the user is at the end of their purchase funnel.

Engaging visual UGC is a great way to capture consumers’ attention at the final stage, where UGC also positively influences purchasing decisions for the consumers. 

7. Leverage Users’ Creative Minds

As we discussed earlier, gamification being the motivation for engagement. Similarly, recognition is also a huge motivator for users. So you install a UGC feed on your website and leverage the creativity of the users. 

Create your unique brand hashtag and ask the users to share their creative ideas & inputs relating to your products & brand, and display it as UGC feed on your website. 

It will encourage the users to share their entertaining & creative content in exchange for featuring on the website and gain recognition. It will bring both user engagement and a creative hub of content for the website & brand.

8. Empower Advertising With Social UGC Wall

Using authentic user-generated content in advertising boost sales conversion to greater heights. Ads with UGC tend to get 5 times more click-through rate. 

As an extension to the last idea, you can create a social wall of user-generated content and add your advertising content to that wall.

Displaying user-generated content assisting your promotional message and showcasing this social UGC wall on the homepage of your website is a great way to attract customer engagement. It leaves a long-lasting impact on the minds of the audience.

If your brand is somehow not that visibly appealing, then including UGC into your social ads gives you something extra to attract customers. Let your customers narrate their stories on your social media wall.

9. Build a Valuable Community

Users love a familiar and personal experience. Building a community for your brand personalizes the whole experience for a user. It also increases the trust factor between the brand and the user. 

It transforms your customers to your preachers. It also helps to establish that personal link with the customers. Well! To be sincere, creating a community is effective but challenging, to begin with. 

You can start by engaging your users with some questionnaire about their experience with your products or highlight your user’s reviews. It will make them feel that their feedback is valued. It also helps new users to get a relevant review of your products easily.

Creating a community also acts as social proof for your aspiring customers. Their queries about your product can come to rest over here and convert them from being an aspiring user to an existing customer, thereby boosting your conversion rate.

Conclusion

User-Generated Content(UGC) is a powerful marketing tactic that has proved its effectiveness in enhancing sales conversion rates and user engagement over and over.

Using stock photos for your brand is costly and outdated. Using UGC brings a dynamic touch to your entire UGC campaign. It provides you with easy access to a diverse hub of authentic content, freshness & uniqueness, cost-effectiveness, and many more benefits. 

So, start using a UGC platform Taggbox to include UGC into your marketing strategy and increase website engagement & conversion for long-term brand growth.