We’ve released a new feature that lets you inspire and collect expert recommendations directly in your ExpertVoice lessons. Previously, the ability to gather digital recommendations required a hosted store on our platform, but the new in-content recommendation widget lets you gather recommendations from your expert audience — no matter what type of shopping experience you provide.
In early tests of the widget, we’ve found that experts leave recommendations twice as often during the learning experience as they do on our product description pages in our hosted stores.
We’re also interested in how we can leverage this new tool to create the most valuable recommendations for your brand. When we pair a recommendation activity with learning content, we can be more strategic in thinking about who we want to collect recommendations from, which products we want to learn about and what types of insights would be most valuable to you as a brand or to your consumers.
Do you want feedback from specific types of experts on how your latest product performed to inform the next generation of the product’s design? Would you like to know how experts view certain attributes of your product for certain use cases? Are you looking for just 5 well-crafted reviews of each of your core products for display on your own e-commerce site, where you can put expert recommendations to work, driving consumer sales? We can help with that.
Added bonus: Sharing a recommendation gives experts an opportunity to actively apply what they know about your product, which supports retention of your learning content.
Here are a few steps and guidelines for taking advantage of the in-content recommendation widget:
- Product Catalog: If you already have a hosted store on ExpertVoice, we’ll be able to use that data to gather recommendations about your products. If you have a redirect store, we can pull your catalog data from Shopify, or we will ask you to complete a simple store spreadsheet.
- Collection: We can place the in-content recommendation widget in either a custom lesson or a templated lesson. As a best practice, we recommend starting with at least one custom lesson to build brand affinity and establish core product knowledge. From there, add a templated lesson once a month or once a quarter to collect recommendations on your highest priority products.
- Accelerate: Think about the timing of your learn campaigns and marketing promotions on ExpertVoice. If time is of the essence, you can increase engagement with a brand-dedicated email, push notification or PSP.
- Review / curate / respond: Recommendations gathered in content will be viewable in the Advocacy Platform in the Products App. In 2020, ExpertVoice will release another new feature, allowing you to curate and display your verified, credentialed recommendations on your own ecommerce site. The two products will be integrated to allow you to feature recommendations from the Curate App (stay tuned.) Experts love to hear from you. If you see questions or stand-out recommendations, be sure to comment directly on their recommendations. This is an easy way to show that you appreciate their insights.
Think about all the ways your brand could benefit from high-quality expert recommendations. Who do you most want to hear from? Which products do you want to learn about? And what would you like to know? Where would you like to share these verified, credentialed product reviews? Share your goals with your ExpertVoice account executive as you’re planning your ExpertVoice learn campaigns. Your ExpertVoice Studios team will craft a custom solution that’s tailored to your objectives.
