What is a UGC gallery? What goes in one, the layouts and where to put it

UGC stands for user-generated content. A UGC gallery is the part of your website that displays it. It is usually an embedded widget. A tool collects and filters the content behind it.

Its job is evidence. Studio photos show the product at its best. Customer photos show it on real people, in real rooms, in real light. Shoppers use them to check fit, size and colour before they buy.

What goes in a UGC gallery

• Customer photos and videos. Uploaded by buyers on your store, often after an order.
• Reviews with media. A star rating and a written review, with the photo or video attached.
• Social posts. Posts that tag you, use your hashtag or come from your own accounts.

Brand content can sit beside it, but label the difference. A gallery that mixes ads with customer posts loses the trust it was built for.

Where the content comes from

Idukki pulls social posts from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, LinkedIn and Threads. It imports reviews from Google Reviews, Trustpilot, TripAdvisor and Judge.me. On your store it collects through an upload widget, a review request form and custom reviews.

Each source behaves differently. A hashtag feed fills fast and needs filtering. Reviews come with ratings and dates. Buyer uploads can carry your terms on the upload form.

How a UGC gallery gets built

Moderation is the step most stores skip. A hashtag feed will pick up off-topic and off-brand posts. In Idukki, a post also needs cleared rights before it reaches a storefront.

Pin your strongest post to the first row, where it loads first.

UGC gallery layouts

In Idukki these layouts share one renderer and one moderation queue. You can change the layout without rebuilding the content. Tag products on the posts and the gallery becomes shoppable. Our shoppable UGC explainer covers that step.

Where to put a UGC gallery

On a product page, show posts tagged with that product. Place them near the price and add-to-cart button. A shopper deciding on size wants proof at that moment. See what moving it does in gallery placement and add-to-cart rate.

On the home page and collection pages, a gallery shows the range across products. A dedicated UGC page works for inspiration browsing.

Showing customer posts on a screen in a shop or at an event? That is a social media wall.

Rights: ask before you publish

A public post is not a licence for your store. Ask the creator, keep their answer and note when it ends. In Idukki, each post shows its rights state in the content queue. The default licence runs two years. Revoking a record removes the post from every widget at once.

For the tools that keep these records, read the best UGC rights management tools.

What a gallery costs your page speed

Every gallery loads a script before it can draw a tile. Idukki's core download is 79 KB gzipped, measured in October 2026. Ask any vendor for its own number, measured the same way.

Two habits keep layout shift down. Reserve the gallery's space with the right aspect ratio before images arrive. Then lazy-load images and video as the gallery scrolls into view. Test the product page in PageSpeed Insights with the gallery on and off.

What separates a good gallery from a wall of photos

• Relevance. On a product page, every post shows that product. A random brand feed answers nothing.
• Variety. Different bodies, rooms and uses. Ten near-identical flat lays tell the shopper little.
• Context. A star rating or a line from the review beside the photo.
• Accessibility. Alt text on images and captions on video. See alt text and captions on UGC.
• A next step. A product tag, so a shopper can act on what they see.

UGC gallery or review widget?

A review widget leads with stars and text. A gallery leads with photos and video. Many stores run both. Our piece on UGC galleries vs review widgets sets out when you need each.

Choosing a UGC gallery app

Ten questions to ask before you install are in how to choose a UGC gallery app. For a gallery you already run, see five ways to make your UGC gallery shoppable. We make Idukki, which builds the galleries described here.