How to Leverage Reviews in Shopify Growth Strategies
Do you know how to effectively use reviews and user-generated content (UGC) when running an online store with Shopify?
In this article, we go beyond simply installing a review app to share ideas and strategies for taking your UGC utilization to the next level. This content is for Shopify merchants looking to unlock the full potential of reviews and UGC to boost sales and brand awareness.
Get the tips you need to drive further growth through UGC!
We also have resources on leveraging reviews on Shopify — feel free to check them out. => Review Acquisition Implementation and Operations for Shopify Merchants
Prioritized Review Collection
Deciding which products to prioritize for review collection has a direct impact on CVR (Conversion Rate) improvement.
Getting the first review on a product with zero reviews delivers a far greater CVR improvement than adding a 51st review to a product that already has 50. Likewise, reviews for in-stock products contribute more to revenue than reviews for out-of-stock items.
You may want to attach coupon incentives only to products you want to prioritize for reviews, but review apps like Judge.me do not allow you to attach coupons to specific products only.
However, by integrating Judge.me with Klaviyo, you can send review request emails from Klaviyo and segment them based on the purchased product. This allows you to include a coupon as an incentive only when requesting reviews for the products you want to prioritize.
When a review is submitted, the tag "Wrote Judge.me web review" is applied to the customer, which also allows you to send a coupon from Klaviyo to customers with that tag.
Review Analysis
Analyzing reviews can provide valuable insights for marketing and product development. Aggregating reviews by product, purchase frequency/LTV (Lifetime Value), and rating score makes analysis much easier.
You can aggregate by product and rating by exporting your review data. This helps you understand what customers say about each product, what high-rating customers appreciate, and what low-rating customers are dissatisfied with.
Additionally, aggregating reviews by each customer's purchase frequency or LTV allows you to understand what keeps your most loyal, repeat customers coming back.
When you have a large volume of reviews, using a text mining tool like User Local before diving into individual reviews can give you a useful overview and make analysis more efficient.
Chat
Analyzing chat interactions can be just as valuable as review analysis for informing marketing and product development decisions.
Aggregating chat data by purchased product, LTV, or purchase frequency helps you identify which parts of product pages are confusing, and how the concerns of new customers differ from those of repeat customers. These insights translate into actionable improvements for advertising, CRM, and UI.
Use chat interaction insights to regularly create and refine your product pages, landing pages, ad creatives, and automated email/LINE content — gradually strengthening your path to purchase.
Posting Reviews on Social Media
Encouraging customers to post product reviews on social media — not just on your store — is also highly effective. As social media review posts increase, they contribute to greater product and brand awareness.
Without any prompting, few customers will post reviews on social media. You can run a hashtag campaign with incentives to encourage posts. Simply using Klaviyo to prompt buyers to share reviews on social media is enough to get started. Engaging with those posts through comments can also help activate your social media accounts.
On Instagram, high-engagement posts can be repurposed as Partnership Ads or regular ad creatives. Partnership Ads are a format where posts from Instagram accounts run by creators you have approved are turned into ads and distributed.
Google Maps Reviews
If you also operate a physical store, collecting Google Maps reviews is important. Having a robust collection of reviews can also increase your visibility on Google Maps.
To encourage Google Maps reviews, in addition to asking customers in person at your physical store, sending a LINE message or email to purchasers is also effective. If you use Shopify POS at your physical store, you can send post-purchase emails via Klaviyo just as you would for online purchases.
Executing UGC Operations Thoroughly with StoreHero
StoreHero supports Shopify merchants facing challenges with growing sales by helping them execute growth strategies thoroughly.
For UGC operations as well, we leverage the StoreHero growth platform to provide fine-grained, hands-on support that would be difficult to achieve through manual operations alone — such as collecting reviews for priority products based on per-product and per-SKU performance and inventory data, streamlining gifting operations, and executing a high volume of initiatives to drive continuous growth.
We are currently offering free store diagnostics. If you have challenges with UGC utilization or growth strategies in general, please feel free to reach out. =>Learn more about our free store diagnosis
Summary
We hope this article has helped you discover effective ways to leverage reviews and UGC in your Shopify store operations. When used effectively, reviews and UGC can deliver a wide range of benefits — from CVR improvement and brand awareness to product development.
At StoreHero, we support not only review utilization as introduced here, but also the automation and optimization of growth strategies across the entire sales process — including customer acquisition through advertising and social media, CRM, Shopify store improvements, and inventory management — helping you build a system for continuous, sustainable growth from the ground up.
If you're interested in tackling Shopify growth together with StoreHero, please reach out.