Utilizing ‘Voice of the Customer’ for Competitive Advantage

via Practical Ecommerce http://ift.tt/K8aGsd

JANUARY 9, 2014 • MARCIA KAPLAN

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In the extremely competitive retail environment, merchants are always looking for a competitive advantage. If you haven’t considered using “Voice of the Customer” (VoC) feedback, you may want to give it a try.

VoC involves capturing and listening to what your customers are saying, in their own words in text and speech. It encompasses both solicited and unsolicited comments. Feedback can come from email messages, online chats, forums, social media sites, surveys, and call centers. Ecommerce merchants can glean useful data from these listening posts. When used as a research methodology, VoC can assist merchants in implementing improvements suggested by customers.

While listening to customers has always been important, it is critical in an environment where negative online product or company reviews can destroy a business. New ways for shoppers to critique merchants are constantly popping up. Twitter didn’t exist 10 years ago. Pinterest is less than five years old.

While listening to customers has always been important, it is critical in an environment where negative online product or company reviews can destroy a business.

Well-managed companies need to be both organized and prepared to respond to and act on customer feedback. That means having a systematic feedback program in place with a process for how and when you respond to feedback, and how you integrate customer comments into your business strategy. To be successful, companies must listen and analyze the feedback in the context of business objectives, devise a strategy to respond to customer comments, and implement the strategy in a timely manner.

Customer Experience Specialist Adele Sage at Forrester Research states in her blog, “At Forrester, we describe the continuous cycle of activities that make up VoC programs as: listen, interpret, react, and monitor. ‘Listen’ is all the customer feedback you’re collecting via listening posts like surveys, emails, calls, and comment cards. ‘Interpret’ is the analysis you do on that feedback (and other related data) to understand what it all means. ‘React’ is what you do to fix the experience based on the analysis you’ve done, and ‘monitor’ is how you make sure that whatever you did to react is actually working. It’s critical to go through the full cycle with whatever data you’re already collecting. Because here’s the hard truth: You get no ROI from listening or interpreting. None. Zero. Zip. You only get business results from actually improving the experience.”

What Can VoC Do for an Ecommerce Merchant?

While most unsolicited comments might be negative, once in awhile you get a compliment. Highlight what you did right and try to repeat it. In fact, merchants should view all feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve. Often unsolicited comments are the most revealing and useful because they are not in a structured format (such as a survey) dictated by the business. Sometimes one customer’s suggestion results in new product features that many other customers want as well.

The advantage of using a software tool is the elimination of silos of information — customer service, marketing, and product silos are typical for ecommerce vendors. Integrating feedback from all channels provides for an overall picture that can provide greater insight and lead to better solutions.

Use VoC to:

• Ascertain customer satisfaction with their shopping experience.
• Retain customers and increase market share by meeting their expressed desires. This boosts customer loyalty.
• Increase efficiency by eliminating products and services that customers don’t want.

Should You Purchase a VoC Platform?

If your customer base and the volume of feedback are small, you may be able to manage and analyze feedback on your own without the benefit of a platform or software. However, you must have the time and discipline to review the comments on a regular basis. While you can delegate the analysis to a customer service representative, that individual may overlook a very important piece of feedback, not realizing its importance. Top-level managers have to be involved.

If you have a large customer base, a prominent social media presence, and receive a lot of feedback, a software or cloud solution would be cost-effective. The benefit of using third-party platform is that you get analytics tools such as reports, dashboards, and scorecards and visual results that make it easier to spot trends. A third-party platform or software also offers real-time collection and analysis, something that is critical if, for instance, you sold a product that is defective. By the time you find out about the problem on your own, there could be hundreds of negative comments on Twitter and Facebook and your business might not recover.

While many of the software solutions are designed for large enterprises, there are tools for small businesses. Software covers both speech and text feedback. The speech analytics component requires that telephone calls with customers be recorded.

Among vendors that offer VoC or customer experience management software solutions for small businesses are Allegiance, Mindshare, NICE, and Verint. For cloud-based social listening tools, see “Social Listening: Benefits, Tools, Tips,” a previous article.

The Right Way to Give Feedback

via Peter Bregman http://peterbregman.com/videos/the-right-way-to-give-criticism/

In this video, I talk about how it’s okay to be direct and a little harsh when giving feedback or criticism. We often hedge criticism between compliments. Why is “feedback sandwich” technique ineffective in the workplace?

UIEtips: Announcing our Favorite Articles of 2013

via UIE Brain Sparks http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2013/12/19/uietips-announcing-our-favorite-articles-of-2013/

By Jared Spool

December 19th, 2013

Over the past year we published more than 35 articles. Here are 6 of our favorites in no particular order:

What Makes an Experience Seem Innovative?

There are so many better things we could be doing with our time than standing in line. But if we step out of the line, we lose our opportunity to get the service we want. Who would’ve thought you could innovate around something as simple as waiting in line?

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Since customers think standing and waiting is a necessary evil without alternatives, they may not complain about it. Organizations that focus on the specific activities to resolve their perceived customer objective, may overlook the deep frustration from tool time that’s happening in the gaps between those activities.

Teams that study the entire experience look into those gaps to see from where the deep frustration emerges. Addressing that frustration, when no other product or service has done so, will look innovative to the customer.

Read the article What Makes an Experience Seem Innovative

Feedback Illuminates the Rules

In this article, Dan Saffer discusses how a good microinteraction immediately shares a result with a user. It lets them know the next steps to take or if they’re going in the right direction.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Let’s take a microinteraction appliance like a dishwasher as an example. The dishwasher process goes something like this: a user selects a setting, turns the dishwasher on, the dishwasher washes the dishes and stops. If someone opens the dishwasher midprocess, it complains. Now, if the dishwasher has a screen, each of these actions could be accompanied by a message on the screen (“Washing Dishes. 20 minutes until complete.”). If there is no screen, there might be only LEDs and sounds to convey these messages. One option might be that an LED blinks while the dishwasher is running, and a chime sounds when the washing cycle is completed.

Read the article Feedback Illuminates the Rules

Extraordinarily Radical Redesign Strategies

In this article, Jared Spool discusses how it is common for companies to completely change their website design all at once versus gradually. But it often causes havoc for the user. There’s a strong case for making your redesign practically unnoticeable and slowly releasing small aspects of it.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

It’s your most loyal customers who will hate your flip-the-switch redesign the most. Designers are quick to declare, “Users hate change.” But that’s not it at all.

Your loyal users have invested a lot over the years mastering your current design, to the point where they are fast and efficient with everything they need to do. When you change it, even with something you want to label “new and improved,” all of that investment is flushed down the drain.

Read the article Extraordinarily Radical Redesign Strategies

Meetings: The Canary in the Culture Coal Mine

We all know that a company’s culture is a key factor to its success. Culture isn’t something you can whip up or easily change, but its presences will define what is and is not possible to accomplish. In this article, Kevin Hoffman talks about understanding the effects of an organization’s culture on its processes and outcome.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

The culture of a group or a project team is like water to fish: it is invisible yet everywhere, and it defines what is and is not possible to accomplish. Understanding or changing any aspect of a culture requires immense focused effort and luck.

Read the article Meetings: The Canary in the Culture Coal Mine

A Typical UX Team of One Job Description

In this article, Leah Buley discusses the various ways one can spot a UX team-of-one situation. Few UX jobs are advertised as a team-of-one gig, but there are usually telltale signs that give them away.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

To get a sense of what your colleagues do and don’t know about user experience, take them out to lunch and have a casual conversation. Consider a “Bathroom UX” campaign to promote a broader understanding of the roles and functions of user experience. Employers expect UX practitioners to be able to back up their recommendations and show their work. Employers also might expect the user experience practitioner to challenge and persuade others in the organization to adopt new approaches. UX teams of one sometimes have to be diplomatic, informed, and well-meaning meddlers.

Read the article A Typical UX Team of One Job Description

Five Prevalent Pitfalls when Prototyping

There are five common traps teams fall into with their prototyping efforts. Using prototypes is key when designing, but are you falling into some of the frequent traps with your prototyping efforts? Learn about 5 typical traps and how to prevent them.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

A great prototype can sell an idea better than a specification or other form of describing the design. Seeing the design in action and playing with it brings the underlying ideas to life.

It’s no wonder that we focus so much on what the prototype will look like and how it will work. We want to achieve that wow factor with the key decision makers and stakeholders on the project.

As important as the working prototype is, it’s not the most important outcome of a prototyping effort. What’s more important is what the team learns from the prototyping process.

Read the article Five Prevalent Pitfalls when Prototyping

5 Reasons Your Digital Strategy is Failing

Monday, October 14, 2013

The problem with most organizations is that they are afraid to define themselves, because that would lead to the world knowing who they really are. Really? Are we seriously still trying to play footsie with our customers? 

Brands forget that they are personalities. The more they showcase their unique qualities, the better off they are in terms of getting customers, making money and generating social media buzz.

So why are most digital strategies boring beyond belief? Or worse, just a set of goals and tactics, mislabeled as a strategy? 

Digital Strategy: Why You Should Put Customers First

 

The problem is most brands think about what they want to say, instead of focusing on the problems customers want solved. Think of the average person. Know what he’s thinking about? Himself. (It’s true for the female gender as well).

If you really want to shake it up, you MUST STOP PRETENDING, and you must start getting real. This is probably a radically different approach for you, so it will take some time to adapt. 

Start focusing on the results people get, instead of the benefits you provide.

Here are some examples to get you thinking in the right direction:

• We sell books and tons of other stuff online at lower prices. 
• Instead: We get you the products you want to your doorstep in 2 days.

• We design forward thinking technology that gives you access to your own content. 
• Instead: You can carry the equivalent of 10,000 CD’s on one small pocket device.

• We sell luxury jewelry that is timeless. 
• Instead: When you give the woman you love a piece of our jewelry, she will pledge her undying love to you forever.

 

5 Ways to Fix Your Digital Strategy

 
When you focus on the result—or better yet, the feeling you give to your customers when you solve your problems, you’ll have better results. Here are 5 reasons your digital strategy may be vanilla, and how to fix them: 

1. You call it a strategy, but it’s a set of goals: A strategy is a roadmap for how you intend to get to your business objectives or goals. You can pretend that it’s a strategy if it says STRATEGY on top of the brief, with Confidential running across the pages in light grey watermark, but it’s not a strategy unless it lays out where you are, and how you intend to get to where you want to be.

2. You focus on you and NOT your customers: You know what a great way to use this rule is? Ask yourself when you’re creating content: Does anyone care? Will my customers care when reading this? If the answer is no or maybe, rip it up and start again. Make a list of your customers’ true pain points. Then start from there.

3. Provide real solutions: If you can’t tell people how they might be able to resolve their current challenges, then you’re not providing them with real value. People consistently tell us how much they love this blog and how much value they get out of our posts. Do we love hearing that? Absolutely. But what we love even more is that we’re giving people answers to their problems. How great is that?

4. LISTEN & ADAPT: In the digital world, everything is changing all the time. You have to listen to your customers and continually solve their problems, listen for more problems and answer those as well. Social media allows you to do just that. Don’t just listen to the direct conversations customers have about you—listen to the ones they have about your competitors or people in your niche. You never know what you might learn.

5.  Know when you don’t know: So often clients will tell me “they just know.” You have to get out of that mindset. The only way you make decisions is with data. If you want to make important decisions by instinct, you might as well purchase an office Ouija board. If you want to make smart decisions, then use data, and triangulate your research (find 3 data points that support your hypothesis). Otherwise, your “strategy” is useless.

It’s definitely a different way to think. You may have to defend it to the C-suite. But trust me, when you start focusing on your customers’ pain, instead of your own, you’ll find that there are more pain-free days ahead for both of you.

via Online it ALL Matters http://onlineitallmatters.blogspot.com/2013/10/5-reasons-your-digital-strategy-is.html

UIEtips: Meetings – The Canary in the Culture Coal Mine

BY KEVIN HOFFMAN

Originally published: Oct 16, 2013

Understanding the effects of an organization’s culture on its processes and outcomes can be challenging. The culture of a group or a project team is like water to fish: it is invisible yet everywhere, and it defines what is and is not possible to accomplish. Understanding or changing any aspect of a culture requires immense focused effort and luck.

Equally fascinating is the fact that organizations actually have two cultures. Their espoused culture is the one they claim to have, and the one which is promoted to customers and employees. They also have an actual culture, which governs how things truly go down and may contradict the former. For example, nearly all design firms speak of having a highly democratic, hands-on culture. However there are some decisions made in the style a dictatorship: people’s salaries, clients, even the selection of desks and equipment. It isn’t efficient or fun to get a group of twenty five people to collaborate on selecting a printer. When looking at troubled teams and companies it isn’t difficult to find stark contrast between their advertised and actual cultures. As a result of that culture contrast people feel disenfranchised, teams are less effective, and goals aren’t met.

Dave Gray, author of The Connected Company, spends a lot of time looking at how workplace cultures interfere with (or amplify) organizational ability to be responsive to customers and environmental challenges. But he has no interest in providing that as a consulting service. As Dave so eloquently puts it,

“Culture is a minefield. It’s a quagmire; like getting into a foreign war. (As a consultant) do you really want to get involved? I would rather create self-help tools.”

One of those tools is culture mapping. Like the origin of any good tool it has a background in a practical application solving an immediate problem.

“In 2006, my company was going through this kind of transformation. Our culture had been very process-driven and it needed to become more innovative, more entrepreneurial and more team-oriented. To help with that transition we created a visual map of the culture we wanted. We put copies of the map in every meeting room and on every desk, and we frequently used the map as a guide when making decisions.”

A culture map is composed of habits, elicited by asking a lot of questions to the individuals that comprise a culture. Those habits represent existing behaviors that are repeated because they are successful. For example, a team knows intrinsically not to ask the boss certain questions because enough people have asked those questions before, and suffered the consequences. As behaviors are repeated over time, they become easy and routine, even subconscious. But when confronted with a change in the environment that may necessitate breaking those habits, people are very unlikely to do so. The map is a tool to help reveal those behaviors, and explore how and why the mold could be broken.

In my work as a design strategist and consultant, I’m not asked to do a lot of cultural analysis, so I don’t always have the opportunity of building an entire culture map. But I find myself constantly having to adapt to the unique culture of each client I work with. And luckily, there is a tool already in place which will provide me with solid cultural insight without having to convince them that I need to examine their culture in gory detail: the meeting.

Meetings and Culture

Meetings in organizations surface some of the best and the worst of these habits, all bundled into a complex package. For a troubled team, you'll be hard pressed to find a better place than a meeting to expose tensions between the actual and advertised culture. Imagine a company whose leadership takes the organizational mission very seriously and espouses that employees are its best asset. But in meetings, things like this happen:

• Teams speak to each each other with distrust or disbelief.
• Meetings start late, and are unpredictable in length, running long or ending early.
• People aren’t provided with adequate time or material to prepare for meetings.
• Productive, healthy conflict is avoided or ignored.

Any of those sound familiar? But don’t worry. In this environment, a meeting is a tremendous opportunity to reveal some of the larger cultural tensions an organization may have, but are invisible at first. Just like the canary in the coal mine is used to demonstrate the presence of invisible deadly gases in a mine, a meeting can be a tool that you use to uncover problematic aspects of a culture before traveling too far down the tunnel of a project.

The Canary: Introduce a Feedback Loop

When I’m tasked with going into a new culture as a design consultant, I need to familiarize myself quickly with the culture of my client. In addition, the project team is introducing a new, hybrid culture that imposes constraints to the way we get things done. For that reason, I ask two simple questions at the beginning and the end of each of meeting. At the beginning I ask

“What would you like to get out of our time today?”

I write down on the whiteboard or easel, clearly so everyone can read it from where they are sitting, a summary of what each person said and who said it. At the very end of the meeting, before we leave the room, I ask each person directly

“(Name) - did we address your concern today?”

Introducing a simple feedback loop like this one into meetings will certainly not change the culture overnight. But it will start to introduce trust and open dialogue that will shine a light on the more challenging parts of the existing culture. The self awareness of a group’s strengths and weaknesses that will emerge from doing this exercise is what makes teams (and people) shine.

Want to learn more?

In less than one week, Kevin will lead a full-day workshop at the User Interface 18 Conference in Boston. His workshop, Leading Super Productive Meetings will show you how to develop empathy, trust, and collaboration in order to run effective design discussions. Plus, you’ll learn all about the visual listening and “who-do” frameworks to better understand and communicate with your teams — and manage conflict, too. Learn more about Kevin’s workshop.

About the Author

Kevin is an independent UX consultant, writer, and speaker whose client list includes Google, Harvard, The US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Zappos. He formerly worked as the director of user experience for Happy Cog in Philadelphia. You can follow Kevin on Twitter @kevinmhoffman.

via UIE Brain Sparks http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2013/10/16/uietips-meetings_culture/

Improving the Critique and Design Process

By Lauren Cramer

October 2nd, 2013

Giving critique is not an easy task. Doing it constructively and effectively without hurting someone’s feelings or coming off as cruel and inflexible is difficult. Being able to successfully critique and create design studios is so important we’ve dedicated many articles and podcasts to the topic, along with a full-day workshop.

In this post, we’ve listed out some great free articles and podcasts on this topic. But you can really dive in deep at this year’s User Interface 18 Conference in Boston, October 21-23, 2013. In Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry workshop Building Consensus in Critiques and Design Studios, you’ll learn how to organize energizing workshops that rally your teams to explore designs and achieve the best possible results. You’ll discover how to reach consensus, improve the conversations you have around design, and create open feedback loops your teams will actually use.

Here’s some reading about design studios and critique

Building a Cohesive Design Team – Jared M. Spool
Jared discusses team characteristics that lead to successful designs.
Goods, Bads, and Dailies: Lessons for Conducting Great Critiques – Jared M. Spool
Jared explains how child magicians and Pixar Media have mastered critique and how you can incorporate this into your design process.
Collaboration through the Design Studio: An Interview with Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry
Jared M. Spool
Jared interviews Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry on using a design studio as a process to improve team communication and achieve design goals.
Design Studio Workshop: Adding up the Benefits – Jared M. Spool
Jared explains how a design studio workshop can help your team work through various design challenges and the benefits these workshops bring to the team.
What Goes into a Well-Done Critique – Jared M. Spool
Receiving a critique is probably one of the hardest things we’ll do in our work. Giving one is equally as difficult. It’s hard to do well and easy to do poorly. As we’ve been working with teams over the last 20 years, we’ve accumulated an understanding of what goes into a successful critique. Here’s what we’ve found.

Listen to what the experts say about design studios and critique

Adam Connor – Design Studio: Building Consensus Early in Your Design Process
Getting two people to agree on something is a difficult task in any aspect of life. Getting a whole team to agree on a design, where underlying feelings, ownership, and organizational hierarchy are involved, can be an even greater challenge. That’s not even counting the dreaded “swoop and poop” scenario. The trick is to get everyone involved early in the design process and a design studio is a perfect tool for just that.
Adam Connor & Aaron Irizarry – Building Consensus in Critiques and Design Studios
Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry believe that critique is not just a design-centered skill that exists to make sure you’re doing things “right”. Instead, they see it as a living and breathing process of analysis and adjustment.
Adam Connor & Aaron Irizarry – Collaboration through Design Studio and Critique
Adam explains a design studio, and breaks it into three steps: sketch, present, and critique. Both Aaron and Adam believe that critique is often a misunderstood part of the process. Anyone can give feedback, or have a gut reaction, but critique is a more thoughtful and deliberate process. Critique is more analytical and needs to be measured against goals.
Adam Connor & Aaron Irizarry – Discussing Design: The Art of Critique
Critique is an integral part of the design process. Contrasting from feedback, critique is more focused and specific. Often, rather than a gut reaction, it is framed within the context of a dialogue. It is centered around arriving at an understanding.

via UIE Brain Sparks http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2013/10/02/improving-the-critique-and-design-process/

Seamless omnichannel experiences start with better internal communication

By JENNIFER OVERSTREET | Published: SEPTEMBER 16, 2013

Be the first to comment | This entry was posted in Events, IT/Operations

Today, improving the customer experience is top-of-mind for retailers. But sometimes the complexity of a company’s internal processes make it hard to deliver a seamless customer experience across all channels. As the Shop.org Annual Summit approaches, we spoke withAbnesh Raina, CEO and Founder of PlumSlice, our event blog sponsor and one of the more than 200 solution providers exhibiting in the EXPO Hall, about the challenges inherent in retail product management.

Abnesh Raina, CEO and Founder, PlumSlice

What opportunities do you see in the way companies currently approach product management?

I see a lot of opportunity in addressing the disconnect between those involved in communicating with suppliers, internal stakeholders and even with the customer. With suppliers as well as internal teams located around the globe now, it’s easy to see how this can occur, especially if your number of items is large or growing fast. And with customers shopping a myriad of channels, engaging them with your products is even more critical. Getting correct and relevant product information to the customers across all channels is also an issue that challenges companies.

Could you give us an example of that?

If you’re sourcing your products from different countries, there are time zone changes and varied moving parts at each supplier’s location. Despite this complexity, you need to ensure that a jeans style, for example, meets all specifications and doesn’t ship with the wrong inseam or wash. Another related example is if you are publishing information for different sizes of these jeans or even for the same size on different channels like e-commerce, mobile, catalog or stores. This product information needs to be consistent across all sizes as well as channels. I am sure you heard of the issue where one retailer had a shopper who sparked a controversy on Twitter after discovering that the same gray dress was listed as “Manatee Gray” in the plus-size version and simply “Heather Gray” in the “Missy” category. The company had to scramble to apologize for the snafu.

So how can companies avoid these kinds of problems related to product management?

We have developed a solution that brings this product management coordination into the cloud via a collaboration dashboard. This streamlines the back-and-forth with these multiple suppliers, and encourages faster handling of production issues. Mistakes are minimized since errors are avoided or caught quickly.

It’s critical to provide consistent, accurate product information across the enterprise so that team members have one “data point of truth” for both internal and external use. With customers shopping on mobile devices, on company websites, and in brick-and-mortar stores, consistency of product information is absolutely critical to success. Customers now expect a seamless experience regardless of the channel they use to browse or purchase the product. Retailers must deliver consistent product information—such as pricing, product mix, messaging and availability—across all channels.

Where do you see an opportunity to build more customer engagement?

Typically, retailers get most of their feedback after goods are shipped, and either praised or returned, but we believe very strongly in bringing the customer upstream in the process, as early as the inspiration and design stage. We have designed our collaborative dashboard with a customer component so that customers can be engaged early on in the development of new products. Since some companies have to plan a year in advance for a trend, really listening to the customer will further ensure they don’t miss out on the next big thing!

And since customers are talking about their wants and needs on social media, retailers need to be listening at all times. Our dashboard pulls in information from social media channels as well as blog and news feeds as part of our enhanced listening to the customer. We also enable management of targeted visual surveys and inspiration tiles. We want our dashboard to be a place for select customers to pin their inspirations so the experience is more interactive. It can create a powerful sense of ownership by the consumer for your brand.

Sounds like an exciting time for PlumSlice. What’s next on the horizon?

We’re in beta mode right now and getting great interest from beta users. In listening to suppliers and retailers on the front lines, we see the PlumSlice solution meeting a great need for better communication and collaboration among all stakeholders. For more information, visit our website and download our ebooks on the cloud and peak planning.

via Shop.org Blog http://blog.shop.org/2013/09/16/seamless-omnichannel-experiences-start-with-better-internal-communication/

6 Ways to Encourage User Generated Content

AUGUST 23, 2013 • ARMANDO ROGGIO

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User submitted content like product reviews, guest blog posts, and rich media provide online retailers with excellent and marketable resources that might boost site traffic and encourage additional sales.

When online shoppers can choose from hundreds of retailers selling similar or even identical products, it is important for ecommerce marketers to look for opportunities to differentiate. One way of separating a retail business from its competition is to provide content that is either useful — in that it helps folks complete some task, achieve some goal, or make a better decision — or entertaining.

What follows are six suggestions for encouraging your shoppers and site visitors to submit content that in turn you can use to get more site traffic and, hopefully, additional sales.

Let Shoppers Know You Want Content

It sounds obvious, but there are plenty of times when just letting shoppers know that you want content, whether reviews or pictures, is enough to encourage them to submit something.

Consider putting a large link or button on product detail pages that asks visitors to publish a review. You may also wish to put a “Latest Reviews” section on category pages or even on your site’s home page, including a link or button for submitting a review.

You may also be able to get users to post content in social media. A retailer in the northwest, as an example, regularly asks customers for photos on Facebook. The Facebook post might ask for shoppers to post their a picture of their favorite boots or shoes or to show off what they have done with some item purchased from the store.

Reward Users for Blog Posts, Videos, and Photos

Shoppers may be willing to provide content in exchange for some reward.

A multi-channel farm and ranch chain, as an example, gives customers a $25 gift card for published blog posts. A teenaged girl’s posts about horse training have generated hundreds of site visits.

A user-generated blog post and photo about horse training produced hundreds of visits to a retailers’ website.

Similarly, two bikini makers — Malibu Strings and Wicked Weasel — are famous in some marketing circles for encouraging attractive gals to submit photographs or even videos of themselves wearing the company’s bikinis in exchange for free swimsuits. This user-generated content has attracted so many site visitors that Wicked Weasel has even set up a social media network specifically for bikini fans, wearers and watchers. Both retailers employ the user-generated content as photography on product detail pages, category pages, and on their respective home pages. Many visitors come to check out the pictures and buy something too.

In these examples, shoppers get a known reward for submitting the content.

Use Contests to Encourage Contributions

Contests are another great way to get user generated content. Typically there is a single prize offered and users submit something in order to get a chance to win that prize.

A couple of years ago, retailer Crate and Barrel ran an ultimate wedding contest. The promotion garnered more than 7,500 entries and gave Crate and Barrel some good content, including photos of the winners and descriptions of the Crate and Barrel products those winners liked best.

As another example, many stores run photo contests around Halloween. A pet toy retailer might get dozens or even hundreds of photos, which would be great content for product pages, blog posts, or social media sites, with a pet costume contest.

Ask for Product Reviews

Many online shoppers trust product reviews to help them make buying decisions or even choose a retailer. For this reason, it can be a good idea to ask customers to submit product reviews.

Beyond adding links to reviews and asking for reviews on your website, you can invite customers to write a review in transactional emails. When a shopper receives a shipping notification from your store, consider including a short message asking for a review.

Your message might say something like, “Your order is on its way. We realized that you haven’t yet had a chance to open the box, let alone get an idea of how well you like the items you ordered, but we still want to ask that once you have formed an impression about the products or about service you let us know. Your feedback is really important to us. Here is a ‘write a review link’ if and when you want to let us know what you think.”

Remember that you should not offer shoppers rewards for submitting reviews or — worse yet — rewards for submitting positive reviews.

Find Field Testers

Another way that an online retailer might be able to encourage user-generated content is to ask select customers to test new products.

If you have a particularly good customer who has made several purchases, and you have new products that shopper might like, consider asking the customer to test the new product and write short blog post about the item.

The customer may feel special, remember you asked for her to test the product because she is a highly valued customer, and the content could encourage other shoppers to try the new product too.

Ask Shoppers Their Opinions

Another way to get some good user content, especially around new products, is to ask shoppers their opinion.

A retailer of western clothing was considering a new line of women’s jeans last year. The retailer published several photos of the new jeans on Facebook and asked followers on the social network to comment about the jeans. “Should we bring these into the stores?”

You could use a similar approach. If a product is in fact brought in, the customer comments can be used in ads promoting the product or even as copy on the product detail page.

via Practical Ecommerce » Articles http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/57580-6-Ways-to-Encourage-User-Generated-Content