Say no to "photo fraud"! Nearly 74% of consumers prefer real user reviews

A picture's worth a thousand purchases study by Bazaarvoice , a product review and UGC (user-generated content) consulting firm , shows that visual content and UGC content are influencing consumers' online purchasing decisions.

The survey results show that in addition to social media channels, nearly 74% of consumers prefer to view pictures and videos posted by customers who have purchased products after receiving them on brand and retailer websites, rather than official professionally shot images.

Additionally, based on survey responses from more than 8,000 consumers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States , 62% of consumers said they would be more likely to purchase a product if they could view photos and videos posted by customers who had received the product.

Joe Rohrlich , CTO of Bazaarvoice, commented: “The more authentic the reviews of a product appear to be, the more confident they feel in making a purchasing decision.”

Visual content is preferred and has higher conversion rates

Facebook is one of the most popular social media marketing channels for businesses and is also the social platform where consumers are most likely to shop. However, among young people aged 18-34 , Instagram is the most popular social media platform, with 31% of young people considering it as their main source of inspiration and 27% of young people considering Instagram the most likely channel for purchases.

Young consumers also show a particularly strong preference for visual UGC content on social media. Among young people aged 18-34, 73% prefer visual UGC , while the average proportion of consumers in other age groups is 64%.

Of all visual UGC content, shoppable images and videos have the greatest influence on consumers’ purchasing choices ( 19%), followed by video ads (14%) and brand endorsement posts (13%), indicating that rich and easy-to-shop visual content has a higher conversion rate.

But the freshness of visual content is also important. Many consumers said that they would rather see brand visual UGC content on social media than on shopping websites. 47% of consumers hope to see new UGC content on social media at least 2-3 times a week; and 10% of consumers have higher expectations than "weekly updates" and hope to see multiple "daily updates".

The quality of the comments is very important, pictures, videos and text are indispensable

When planning to purchase high-value products, consumers tend to refer to visual UGC content to verify the quality of the product and whether the product is authentic. For 36% of sellers, technology and electronics products have the greatest demand for visual UGC content.

Rohrlich said that visual content posted by users who have already purchased the product can give consumers the confidence to press the "buy" button and reduce the "abandonment rate" of shopping carts. "This is the best way to showcase products in the Internet world, allowing consumers to experience the use of the product more realistically."

However, whether the visual UGC content is credible also depends on the quality of the review. As many as 45% of consumers believe that the quality of the content is very important; the second most important factor is whether the review content is newly released, accounting for 32%; the number of comments is also relatively important, accounting for 23%.

However, consumers' judgment on the quality of visual UGC content varies from person to person. For 21% of consumers, high-quality product reviews must contain pictures, videos and text information at the same time. This is more important than the grammar and spelling of the text review ( 16%) or clearly indicating the time when the review was published (11%).

Visual UGC content

Real user reviews