PBteen Makes Blog Images Shoppable, Boosts Click-Through Rates 110%

As consumers browse their favorite web sites, social networks and blogs, they often come across items they would like to purchase. But chances are these shoppers can’t identify the brand and related e-Commerce site quickly enough. Therefore, retailers often miss the opportunity to integrate their e-Commerce presence into the overall online buying journey.

In order to promote brand awareness, drive more traffic back to the e-Commerce site and boost sales, Pottery Barn Teen (PBteen) decided to capitalize on the “buy anywhere” concept. PBteen turned to visual commerce platform Curalate to implement the Reveal platform on its company blog, The Stylehouse. With Reveal in tow, PBTeen has made photos on its blog “shoppable” for consumers.

The retailer’s first shoppable blog post appeared on Sept. 9, 2015, driving click through rates 110% higher than the average of the brand’s other blog posts. This post featured 10 individual photos of bedroom sets from Instagram followers highlighting specific PBteen products.

“Before, we were only able to hyperlink the copy in our blog,” said Allyson Buscemi, Social Media Manager for PBteen. “Now our fans can roll their mouse over an image, reveal the products that are within the image, and then click on them to directly shop leading back to our e-Commerce site.”

Product hyperlinks were previously placed below each blog image, and displayed the name of the product without any additional context. This process was inefficient and time consuming for digital marketers looking to optimize the site, and made for a confusing consumer browsing experience. With Curalate Reveal, PBteen can tag multiple products within the blog imagery, enabling consumers to take action on the products they’re viewing by simply pointing and clicking them in the picture.

The PBteen team initially turned to Curalate in December 2014 to use its Like2Buy Instagram solution, and have since implemented the company’s Image Analytics, Scheduling and Conversations features to gather a better understanding of ROI per photo and consumer chatter. The initial success found through the Instagram post was paramount to PBteen’s integration of Reveal.

“Having the ability to link traffic and revenue on Instagram allows us to maximize ROI,” Buscemi said in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “The PBteen social channels and blog are huge for our brand awareness. Our demographic is divided into teens and their parents and we have to market to both audiences. The majority of our teen fans are on these social channels and it is important for us to stay as relevant as we can.”

With that in mind, the retailer encourages consumers to share user-generated content (UGC) on social media platforms using the branded hashtag #MyPBteen.

“Having the ability to tie UGC to e-Commerce was a game changer for us,” Buscemi concluded. “Shoppable imagery is so important to the PBteen brand because our Gen Z audience is interacting on our social channels daily and we have to come up with smart ways to keep them engaged on our platform.”