Client onboarding in 48 hours: feeds, rights-first, one widget

Collect before any pixel goes live:

• Shopify staff access (or theme collaborator)
• Instagram / TikTok business connections
• List of 10 hero SKUs and their variant rules
• Named approver for rights (client-side, not agency intern)

Out of scope for hour one: paid ads, email redesign, replatforming reviews. Those are week three-plus.

Send the client our one-pager mindset: no UGC strategy without a rights log. If they push back on paperwork, shrink widget surface (single collection) until the log exists.

Hour 4–16: feeds first, not creative first

Install and connect in this order:

1. 1Social sources — Hashtags, handles, tagged content; cap initial ingest to 90 days to avoid moderation debt.
2. 2Review-with-photo feeds if licensed—pull into moderation, not auto-publish.
3. 3Manual uploads for creator contracts already signed.

Document credentials in the agency vault; mirror connection steps from Idukki docs. For a budget-conscious stack list including Idukki, see free Shopify stack: eleven installs.

Do not enable auto-publish. Every agency horror story starts with “we thought the app would filter NSFW.”

Hour 16–28: rights pass on a shortlist

Goal: 12–20 approved posts mapped to hero SKUs, not 200 “maybe” tiles.

Use client-provided DM templates; store screenshots in the shared drive the legal approver can search. Help center articles on permissions align with FTC/UK expectations—link them in the client Notion.

Hour 28–40: one widget, one placement

Pick a single high-traffic surface:

• Homepage “Community” row below hero, or
• Collection page for the client’s highest-margin line

Configure lazy loading and fixed aspect ratio to protect CWV—same principles as lightweight UGC under 79KB targets. Mobile preview is mandatory; most B2C traffic is still phone-first.

Label the module honestly (“From our community”) and avoid star-language unless the review app owns it—see multi-source reviews and Google markup.

Hour 40–48: QA, analytics baseline, handoff deck

QA checklist

• Each visible tile opens correct PDP variant
• Out-of-stock SKUs hide or fallback per client rule
• No unapproved faces in jurisdictions with stricter rules
• Theme dark mode / RTL spot check if applicable

Analytics baseline

• Document sessions, baseline CR for affected templates (Shopify analytics or client BI)
• Gallery click events firing (verify in tag assistant)

Handoff deck (5 slides max)

1. 1What shipped
2. 2Rights backlog count and owner
3. 3Week-two plan (PDP expansion or email block)
4. 4Risks (missing TikTok connection, etc.)
5. 5Reporting cadence tied to retainer KPIs

Case study framing for QBRs—without inventing numbers—lives on Idukki resources.

What not to promise in 48 hours

• Full PDP coverage on 2,000 SKUs
• Creator net-new production (that is a separate SOW)
• Incrementality proof (needs holdouts; see UGC holdout tests)
• Bazaarvoice migration (30-day plan is different: Bazaarvoice to Idukki Q1)

Week two expansion menu

Present three priced options:

1. 1PDP pilot — Top 20 SKUs, mirrored rights fields
2. 2Email block — Static export of approved tiles for Klaviyo
3. 3Capture sprint — Easter or spring event; tie to 21-day proof sprint

Internal agency roles

Rotate moderators weekly so one person does not become a bottleneck.

Commercial packaging (what to put in the SOW)

Fixed fee for 48-hour launch should include:

• Up to two social sources and one manual upload bucket
• Twelve to twenty approved posts at go-live
• One widget, one template customization pass
• Baseline analytics screenshot and event verification

Exclude: PDP-wide rollout, paid whitelisting setup, review app migrations, and creator sourcing. Those are change orders with their own timelines—especially Q1 replatform parallel runs when BV or Okendo is in flux.

Client communication cadence

Link social proof roadmap one-pager as the week-two planning artifact so the sprint connects to board-level narrative.

Failure recovery

If hour 36 hits zero approvals, switch to creator uploads already under contract or pause go-live 24 hours. Shipping an empty widget damages trust more than missing Monday—reference live shopping with UGC you already have only if the client has usable archive footage with rights on file.

Bottom line

Agencies that onboard in 48 hours win trust because something shoppable is live while competitors still workshop messaging. Feeds first, rights before publish, one widget with honest labels—that is the retainer foundation everything else stacks on.