Snootiful: Use UGC to Build Trust and Boost Sales in a Niche Market

The story

A pressing problem

As is the case with many businesses, I started Snootiful Hound to scratch my own itch, so to speak. My rescue dog, Blondie, used to always escape any harness we put her in, which would have been impressive if it weren’t so dangerous.

We tried several harnesses until it came to a head one day when she got loose on a main road and spent 5 minutes weaving in and out of traffic. That’s when I knew I had to come up with a proper fix, urgently.

After doing some research, I found out this is actually a common problem with Sighthound breeds of dog like Blondie, due to their unique body shape which simply isn’t suited to traditional dog harnesses. So I set out to tackle the problem and created an escape-proof harness designed just for sighthounds and lurchers, taking all of their unique needs into account.

This is complimented with a range of other products designed just for sighthounds too.

A neglected demographic 

Our business is about serving a neglected section of the dog market to make sure they have comfortable and safe products that actually meet their unique needs. Because my business is inspired by my own dog, every product is made to a very high standard as I would never sell something that I wouldn’t use myself - it’s what I call the Blondie test!

We also work closely with several sighthound rescues and donate at least 10% of all profits to help other rescue dogs waiting for their forever home.

Challenges & Goals

Trust issues

Our main challenge was building trust. As a new business making some pretty bold claims, it was hard to convince people to take a chance with us. The last thing you want to do is to buy a product to keep your dog safe that is in fact unreliable - that’s a recipe for disaster!

Fortunately, the feedback has been nothing short of incredible, and Judge.me helps us to collect this and display it for prospective customers to reassure them that our products do exactly what we claim.

Discovering Judge.me

Judge.me makes it incredibly easy to collect reviews and integrates seamlessly with Shopify for a quick setup. It also allows you to start with a very advanced free plan right out of the box and includes features that other apps want to charge for. I did eventually upgrade our plan (which has been a really good investment), but it was nice to be able to start out with no commitment or financial outlay.

Solutions & Results

The power of UGC

My favorite thing about Judge.me is the ability for customers to submit photos with their reviews. They say a picture speaks a thousand words, and in my experience, this is absolutely true. We occasionally use tracking software to see how customers are interacting with our website, and the most visited part of our product page is our customer photos!

‍

Google Shopping and Product Groups

Another game changer has been the Google shopping integration. Our main source of traffic and sales is Google shopping, but due to the niche nature of our market, there’s only a limited number of searches each month, so it is vital for us to maintain a high click-through rate to capture as much of this traffic as possible. Since upgrading to the awesome plan, we have added our reviews to our shopping ads which has resulted in a higher CTR, more traffic, and more sales. This has made a massive difference for our business.

Another really useful feature is the ability to create product groups. I have 4 identical dog collars in different styles which were getting reviews slowly as the sales were split between the 4 products. Thankfully, Judge.me allows you to combine products into groups so I can display the reviews for all 4 collars on each individual product. This provides more social proof and helps people to feel confident with their purchases.

A boost in conversions

The biggest result we’ve seen since using Judge.me is a spike in conversion rates. Before using Judge.me, we had a poor conversion rate of just 1.79%, but since using it, our conversion rate has rocketed. For the last 30 days, we’ve had a very impressive conversion rate of 3.85%! Social proof really makes a big difference.

Since upgrading, we’re also collecting reviews so fast. We’ve almost doubled the number of reviews on our main product in a little over a month! This is sure to feed back into our conversion rate and help to drive our business forward!

Unmatched customer support

The cherry on top of the cake is the support that you receive from Judge Me. There is a live chat option and there seems to always be someone available on hand to help. They actually understand what you are asking and always have a quick solution and are really prepared to go out of their way to help, even when I was using the free plan! I wish all customer service was this good!

Closing

An app that’s easy to use – and delivers

The most impressive thing about Judge.me is the ease of use - it is so incredibly simple to set up, and yet such a powerful app.

I don’t feel like I can ask for much more, but if I had to pick one thing, when customers leave a review directly from the email (another nice feature), it would be great if they could also add a photo without having to click onto the website. I don’t know if this is possible, but the reviews with photos really help so it would be great to make this easier for the customer.