27 UGC stats every direct-to-consumer marketer needs to know

Why UGC is important for Direct-to-Consumer brands

1. Out of those who share UGC, 84% of consumers share User-Generated Content to support brands or initiatives they care about. 68% of customers share to influence, inform or inspire others around their favorite products

2. Millennials contribute to 70% of the UGC found online

3. 90% percent of consumers finds User-Generated Content helpful

4. Among 93% of consumers, UGC was found helpful when making a purchasing decision.

5. Among millenials, only 1% find brand advertising trustworthy enough to even click the link. 

6. Millennials believe that UGC is 35% more memorable than other media  

7. 78% of millennials state they would rather see photos from other customers over the brand’s own professional photos.

8. The top reasons brands use UGC are for authentic content (87%), to engage their audience (72%), and because it is easy and/or inexpensive to source

Inspire customers with UGC

9. When looking for inspiration, 48% of consumers say that User-Generated Content is a great way to discover new products

10. 85% of consumers find visual UGC more inspiring than brands own photos and videos

11. In one of their User-Generated content campaigns, Burberry saw a 50% increase in year-over-year e-commerce sales.

12. Coca-Cola’s impressive Share a Coke campaign attributed to 550,000 UGC posts on Instagram

13. In a ComScore study, customer engagement is 28% higher with User-Generated Content than with content that is professionally created.

14. Brands that use UGC on their website have found a 20% increase in returning visitors.

15. Marketers have, according to Hubspot, found a 90% increase in time customers spend on websites that featured UGC. 

Build trust with UGC

16. According to a survey made by Shopify, only 20% of consumers trust information that comes from brands. At the same time, 54% of the respondents answered that they trust online reviews from other shoppers.

17. 71% of consumer agrees that consumer reviews make them more comfortable that they are buying the right products

18. According to research from digital think tank L2, 55% of consumers trust UGC over other forms of marketing

Increase conversion with UGC on product pages

19. According to Social media week, only 47% of brands utilize UGC on their website, while 80% use it in Social media posts

20. Product pages with User- Generated content have been found to increase conversion by 29% 

21. According to L2 only 9% of 250 researched companies displayed UGC on product pages, despite that doing so increased conversion rates.

22. In the same research, L2 showed that only 8 out of 250 brands featured UGC from Instagram onto an off-site gallery

23. Three months earlier L2 found out that, by displaying User-Generated Content on product pages, conversion rates jump 2.4 times for Jewellery, 1.7 times for footwear, and 1.6 times for beauty and consumer electronics

Remember this when choosing UGC platform

Make sure to use a UGC platform, such as Cevoid, that ensures correct rights management so you don't have to worry about copyright issues. Also, provide customers with ways to share UGC both on social media and directly on your website without the need for a social media account.

24. Copyright is a huge concern for marketers. 57% of marketing not working with User-Generated Content says that fear of copyright issues is the biggest holdback.

25. More than half of consumers want brands to tell them what type of content to share

26. The most popular way of collecting UGC is to ask customers to share their User-Generated Content photos on social media with a branded hashtag.

27. At the same time, Three-quarters of people (75%) say they are unlikely to post content with a branded hashtag from a company. Hence, you should provide the possibility to share UGC both on and outside social media.