What is shoppable UGC? How it works, where it goes and how to measure it

User-generated content is anything a customer makes about your product. That means photos, videos, reviews and social posts. Our guide to UGC in ecommerce covers the basics.

UGC becomes shoppable when each piece is linked to the products in it. The link is a product tag. A tag carries the product's name, price and variants from your catalogue. Tap the post and the tagged products appear, with a way to buy.

Three things separate it from a plain social feed. Products are tagged on the post. The shopper can act on the tag, ideally adding to cart in place. And the order can be traced back to the post. A feed with none of these is a gallery of pictures.

How shoppable UGC works, step by step

Collect. Idukki pulls from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, LinkedIn and Threads. It imports Google, Trustpilot, TripAdvisor and Judge.me reviews. Buyers can also upload photos and videos on your store.

Clear rights. A public post is not permission to sell with it. Ask the creator, and store their answer with a date. Our rights tools guide covers what a good record holds.

Tag products. One post can carry several tags, one for each item in it. AI can suggest tags, and you approve them. On video, a tag can carry a timestamp. The product then shows while it is on screen.

Add to cart. Idukki adds to cart inside the gallery on six platforms. They are Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, PrestaShop and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. On other platforms the product page opens.

Attribute. On Shopify, each order is matched from the store's own order webhook. A browser pixel alone misses orders. The how it works page walks through all seven of our steps.

The formats shoppable UGC takes

You can set the pin style and colour. Pins can also stay hidden until the shopper taps the image. The lookbook builds one page per rights-cleared post and can carry an offer that expires.

Where shoppable UGC appears

• Product pages. Posts tagged with that product, near the buy box. See gallery placement and add-to-cart rate.
• Home and collection pages. A grid or reel across many products.
• Email. A Klaviyo-compatible web feed returns product-tagged posts, filtered by product. A flow can show customer photos next to the product.
• Campaign pages. One public URL tells a story in customer posts. It lists their products, with an optional offer. See campaign pages.
• In store. Scan to Shop prints a QR code for a product or collection. Shoppers scan it, see real customers using it, then buy online. See Scan to Shop.

How to measure shoppable UGC

Most vendor pages on this topic count clicks and stop. Clicks tell you people looked. Orders tell you it sold. Keep two order numbers apart.

Treat proven revenue as a floor. If a report adds influenced orders on top, the total is no longer a measurement. Ask any vendor which column a number came from.

Two rates help as well. Click rate is clicks divided by impressions the widget served. Conversion rate is proven orders divided by engaged visitors. Read more in how to measure UGC ROI.

Where shoppable UGC goes wrong

• Tags that go stale. A tag pointing at a sold-out or deleted product sends shoppers to a dead end. Sync tags with the catalogue.
• No rights record. Selling from a post you never cleared invites a takedown request.
• A heavy widget. Every gallery loads a script. Ours downloads 79 KB of core code before it renders. Ask any vendor for their number.
• Counting clicks as sales. A click report says nothing about orders.

Tools that make UGC shoppable

Many apps do this, and they differ on sources, platforms and billing. We keep the comparisons in two guides. Read the best UGC platforms for Shopify for Shopify stores. Read the buyer's hub for the wider market. We make Idukki, and both guides say so.

To upgrade a gallery you already run, read five ways to make your UGC gallery shoppable.