Drive More Sales with User Generated Instagram Content | #248 Nick Lisauskas

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the e commerce coffee break podcast. Today, we want to talk about Instagram and how you can facilitate user generated content to drive more sales to your business. With me on the show today, therefore I have Nick Lisauskas, he's the owner of showcasegalleries.io and this is a tool that helps you to exactly achieve that, make more sales with your user generated content.

So let's dive right into it and welcome Nick to the show. Hi Nick, how are you today? I'm great. Thank you for having me. Nick, why is Instagram such a massive tool for merchants to drive sales to generate user generated

content? It's an amazing tool for merchants because they can see how your customers are using your products in real life.

We have a lot of customers that might be clothing merchants, but also consumer products it's helpful for the customer to see how other customers are using their products. And I think that's the biggest power of being able to display user generated content on your site and kind of the goal that we aim to achieve with the showcase Shopify app.

Now, obviously using user generated content is a massive trust building factor on every business, on every Shopify store. But you need to do it the right way. And some people just put in more or less a static content to show that they're on Instagram but then there's not much happening on there, but that can be done in a much better way.

Tell me a little bit about what you do.

That's the nice thing about showcases. There's a lot of different options and customization that you can put in place. Some customers are happy to install the showcase app and then try to basically just keep their gallery that they display on their website directly in sync with what's on their Instagram.

And that's great. That can be helpful if everything that you're posting on your Instagram channel aligns with the vibe that you're going for on your actual Shopify store. But the nice thing about showcase is that there's a lot of additional functionality because a lot of times merchants will want to tailor their feed to be more specific towards their goals on their Shopify store.

So we offer the ability to toggle on and off. Which posts on your Instagram feed are actually being displayed on the site. You can create multiple galleries so that one gallery might be better suited for a homepage, whereas one might be better suited for a product or a collection page. You can customize the look and feel of your showcase gallery.

And so everything that we aim to do in the app is to make it so that you can be as tailored as possible to showing your customers exactly how they can use your product. And ideally, you can be very specific on product pages or collection pages with exactly how. That user generated content is displayed.

So I think one of the most important features that we offer on showcase is the ability to, tag the products that you're selling in Shopify on your Instagram photos, on your showcase gallery photos. And then for example, what you could do is let's say that you have your top selling t shirt.

And you have a product page for that T shirt and you have dozens of photos on Instagram of your customers wearing that T shirt or post that you have put up as a company of people using wearing that T shirt, you can set up your showcase gallery on that product page to filter to only those photos.

And that gives. your customers are really tailored experience to see exactly how people have worn that T shirt in the past and makes them that much more likely to convert as a customer There's a lot of different functionality in the app, but we believe that the ability to be super tailored with how you create and curate your gallery for different use cases on your site.

There's one of the main benefits of showcase.

I really like the idea that you can filter for specific products because most merchants they just have some Instagram random pictures on their website with user generated content and the products are like all over the place. what's the best way to implement that into a product detail page?

would you put that?

So typically what we'll see customers do is put it on the bottom half of a product detail page. They'll have the main product page up top, your pricing information, sizing information, and the standard product page design where you can buy the product right then and there.

But then what we're able to do by being displaying on the second half of the page is to be able to provide just That additional level of detail and marketing essentially it can trigger a light bulb in the potential customers had that.

Oh, like, maybe the product page and description, our main product image and description didn't quite do it for me. But if I see something that I can resonate with on this store's Instagram gallery or other customers that have, even tagged that store in their Instagram. And wearing that product or using that product, then I might be that much more likely to realize that there is a use case for me, to use that

that's where we see a lot of success is that being just like an additional level of validation, for the product on the product page.

I like the fact that users usually, if they're happy with the product, which we assume they like to share it with their friends in their Instagram account.

If you asking for reviews and testimonials, it's just a little bit more of a hurdle because then they know it will be only on your product page and so on and so forth. How do you combine these two things? I can, I think you can have a bit of a value add or a synergy effect there by having reviews, testimonials, and a showcase gallery.

Do you have clients who use this kind of concept?

Yeah, definitely. I think that's exactly how a lot of clients organize their product pages or even their homepages, but probably more specifically their product pages where it's, like I said, the main product information up top. And then as you scroll down, you'll see somebody using some sort of review generator or not generator, but reviews aggregator.

Content right next to their showcase gallery. So you have the visual feedback as well as the verbal feedback from past customers. And I think that's something that's important about the way that showcase operates. You can add your own Instagram gallery to your showcase gallery.

But the nice thing is if you have a Instagram business account, so it would be connected through Facebook. But if you have an Instagram business account, what you can also do is add images to your showcase gallery that your company was tagged in on Instagram. So now you're not only just bringing in. The , Instagram feed that you've curated, but you're actually gathering that information that other users on the platform have been so satisfied with the product that they've actually went through the trouble of tagging your company on their posts.

And so that's really strong validation for the product. And so that's where we see a lot of curated product galleries where people are. Gathering images where their customers have tagged them and then curating them into a product gallery. And that's really powerful, feedback kind of side by side with some sort of reviews aggregator as well.

Okay. That's a nice feature, but also it cares a little bit of a risk that somebody who's unhappy might take you. Do you have any monitoring approval process in the background that you can manage

this? Anything that you would pull from like a hashtag search or a tagged post that you've been that a customer has tagged you in is not automatically added to your gallery So basically you can see everything that you've been tagged in and then you can curate by selecting which posts are added to your gallery now You actually can set on an option so that everything is automatically added to your gallery if you want to but I think For that exact reason, most merchants will want to be more curated with the post that they select from tagged media or hashtag media.

That's a great question, but definitely, a functionality that we want our customers to be able to have. Yeah. It makes

perfect sense. Are there any other tips that you can share with our listeners and how they can optimize, showcase for their pages for their store?

One thing that I've seen work for a lot of merchants is being really diligent about your product tagging.

The number one feature that. Showcase offers is the ability to actually go through the product checkout flow directly in our app. So what that means is that in your curated showcase gallery, you can tag products that you sell on your Shopify store on the images. And then when that gallery is displayed on your Shopify website.

Customers can see a little button on each image that says shop the look or you can customize whatever language you want it to say. But what happens is when a customer clicks into that image, they then see which products are tagged on that image. And if they like the product enough just by seeing that user generated content, they can go ahead and select to add that item to their cart, select the size or the quantity that they want.

And they can actually get directed straight to the checkout. Page from a showcase gallery. So sometimes in competitor apps, you'll see the ability to maybe be redirected to the product page. Let's say that your showcase gallery is installed on your home page. Sometimes you'll see, companies where you could be redirected to the product page, but that just adds one layer of friction that showcase is able to remove because you can go straight to the checkout flow.

Directly from your gallery. And so I think that that's one of the most powerful features that showcase offers, and it's where we see the most success from our merchants for sure.

Yeah. That definitely remove some friction and just shortens the conversion funnel. Where can you implement it?

We were talking about Shopify stores. Can you implement it also in other platforms, WordPress or other external websites? How does that work?

Yes. So right now we're just a Shopify app can only be implemented on Shopify stores. That said, I think the tech is very transferable. I don't think it's something that will address this year, but I think at some point in 2024, we'll be making our technology and platform available on other platforms as well, because it actually has implications even beyond just e commerce.

I think that that's something that we'll definitely be looking to address in the coming year.

While we're on that topic, you mentioned before you have acquired this app a while ago, and you're busy adding new features. What's on your list? What will come out soon?

One of the main things that is huge in the Shopify app space right now is becoming built for Shopify certified.

when the app was originally developed, it was developed outside of the Shopify admin framework. Just because that was how things were done at that time. But we're working really hard right now to get the app embedded directly in the Shopify admin portal, which makes things a lot easier for merchants to manage everything.

That's our big push right now is to get that certification as soon as possible. Couple of other Features that we're working on. We're just wrapping up a really big feature improvement in terms of performance optimization. So making sure that all images are rendered in next generation formats, delivered in Proper sizes, depending on the device that your customer is seeing the gallery on.

So if it's on mobile, making sure that we're serving smaller images than if they loaded on a huge desktop. And so those are some technical improvements that we've been working through. Some product features that we have coming down the pipeline. One of the big ones that we're probably also not going to address in 2023, but will be big for 2024 is to, add the ability to incorporate tick tock into your feed.

So the goal would be to have. Either an entirely separate TikTok gallery, or you could theoretically create a gallery that kind of intertwines both your Instagram content and your TikTok content. That's a big one on the horizon as well. So definitely a lot to work through, and there's always more things that we can do to improve the app, but I think those are some of the ones that we're most excited about right now.

Yeah, TikTok would have been my next question. So you answered it already. having TikTok in there is definitely a good move. Now, what kind of requirements do you need to have in regards to the Instagram account? Does it need to be a business account or professional account or whatever it is called?

Or what do you need to do on the side of Instagram itself? It does not.

You can connect with either what's considered a basic Instagram account or business Instagram account. If you have a business Instagram account that does provide you a little bit more functionality so You can add images to your showcase gallery from hashtag searches if you have a business account Or that's where the mentioned or tagged media comes into play So like if a customer has tagged your store You can only access that information if you are connected with a business instagram account but there's still a lot of functionality that's available.

If you only account, only connect with a basic Instagram account, you can still have your Instagram feed fully curated. You can still tag products. But really it's that hashtag search and the tag media search. That is kind of the differentiator. If you do have a business Instagram account connected.

Now you have a huge amount of clients already using your app. Is there any specific, industries, verticals, or niches that are really doing well on

this? I would say heavily skewed towards clothing stores, or retailers. I think that's where we see Most of that's the space that we see most of our customers operating in.

So whether it's footwear brands or swimsuit brands or just traditional clothing brands, we see a lot of those customers, we see definitely some consumer products, customers, people that are selling, some sort of new technology device. We'll use our app for sure. We have one customer that I've been working closely with recently that sells all kinds of different luxury rugs and they use our app for their store.

So, I mean, really showcase can be beneficial across all industries. But I think we just tend to see a lot in the clothing retail space, but definitely benefits for using showcase almost regardless of what your industry is.

How does the technical implementation look like and what's the onboarding process?

Basically the way it works is if you install the showcase app, what will happen is the first step is that you'll be prompted to connect your Instagram account. It's helpful if you're signed into Instagram on your desktop. Before you start the connection process. And then what can happen is you will select to either connect your basic or business Instagram account, depending on what you have in your setup.

And then you'll just have to authorize with Instagram or Facebook. If you go the business Instagram route, just so that we can gather the permissions to basically sync your media. And then what will happen is once you're connected, we'll sync your media and that will prompt you to create your 1st gallery.

And so when you create your 1st gallery, your options are essentially to add all posts from your Instagram feed, or you can curate and select which ones you want to add. To your Instagram or to your showcase feed and then once you're happy with like how the showcase gallery is curated, you can customize the look of it.

So you can do like a collage style. You could do a slider style. You could do a grid on your page. You can customize how many images are in each row and column. You can customize like the gallery title and description and you can customize like the coloring of different buttons in your. Checkout flow if you tag products on your media, once you're fully satisfied with how the gallery looks in showcases portal, then the next step is to install the gallery on the pages that you would like it to be on in your Shopify store.

There's two main ways to do that. What most people do now that have, that use 2. 0 Shopify theme. So like the most modern Shopify theme is they will install our app using an app block, and so you can select which page you want to install it on add. The showcase gallery app as an app block, and then you just have to type in the gallery ID for the gallery that you're installing and then your feed will show up on your site.

Once you save it, it's also possible to install. Your showcase feed with a JavaScript tag, but, we don't recommend 2. 0 theme just because it's a little bit if there does come a time when you don't want to use showcase anymore, or if you want to adjust where it's displaying or how it's displaying, there's just a little bit more technical work that has to be done in that situation, but it is an option as well.

So two main paths for installation

there. Yeah. To our listeners, if you're not on OS 2. 0 on Shopify, you should do now. It's about two years. That's the new structure is out there. So you're really late to the game if you don't have a actual updated theme out there. How does your pricing structure work?

Yeah. So we have three plans. We have, a free starter and pro plan. So the free plan is just that it's free. And you can just connect 1 account and 1 gallery, and it's only available for basic accounts. So you can't access those business account features because you're not able to connect a business account on the free plan on the starter plan.

It's 599 a month and you can connect an unlimited number of accounts. And have up to 3 galleries. But really the main differentiator between the starter plan and the pro plan, which is 39 a month is that on the pro plan, you're able to tag products on your feed and have that ability for customers to shop and check out directly from your gallery.

Definitely a larger price point for the pro plan, but for the vast majority of our customers, we see that pay off very quickly when they even generate just 1 sale from their gallery per month that's the way that we have priced the product and seeing a lot of satisfied customers, especially on that pro plan right now.

very affordable, price for a good added functionality to your store. Before we come to the end of the coffee break today, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?

One other thing that I would comment on is that we have some nice functionality to tie in your Google Analytics account. So we have some events that showcase triggers based on the actions that your customers are taking on your store, which makes it very easy for you to actually measure the efficacy of showcase when it's installed.

On your site, and so that's something that I'm always happy to work with merchants directly on getting that set up so they can really see like the benefit that they're receiving from the app the other thing on that note. That I would like to mention is that we're working on building an internal analytics portal, which will make it very easy for you to see all the

activity that your customers are taking in the app and give you some real time feedback and like how you could possibly optimize the way that you're setting up your galleries, which pages you're putting them on. All that good stuff. So there are a couple of other exciting things that we're working on.

But other than that, I think we covered most of it today. So really appreciate it. Yeah, I think you

have a very interesting application there. definitely, I think it will pay off very, very quickly. And what I like is that you have this kind of synergy effect of user generated content and your testimonials and your product images.

And so basically it gives a very round picture of what the product stands for. Where can people find out more about you guys?

Yeah, so you can search for us on the Shopify app store. The app is called showcase shop Instagram. But also you can go directly to our website, which is showcase galleries.

And then I believe you might be linking my information on the podcast episode as well. So they're always, customers are always more than welcome to reach out to me directly as well. Any of those options are great. Cool. I will put the

links in the show notes as always. Then you just one click away.

Nick, thanks so much for giving us an overview of what you do and what the app can do, and I would recommend that a lot of our listeners would just go there and check it out for themselves. I think it brings something to the table and upgrades a lot of stores out there. Thanks so much for your time today.

All right.

Thank you. Appreciate it.