News

Walgreens picks Bazaarvoice for social commerce strategy

October 19, 2010

Bazaarvoice, a provider of hosted social commerce applications that drive sales, recently announced that Walgreens has selected its social commerce platform with Ratings & Reviews and BrandVoice to enhance the chain's online customer experience.

Bazaarvoice's BrandVoice solution gives Walgreens the ability to receive reviews from a network of manufacturers, the company says, and Walgreens will also utilize Bazaarvoice's SearchVoice Inline, which makes reviews readily available on leading search engines, maximizing SEO results and ensuring that customers can find the right product and better engage purchase-ready consumers at every step of the shopping process.

Walgreens joins more than 950 other brands using Bazaarvoice's social commerce suite to deliver measurable business results, the company says. Brands utilizing Bazaarvoice benefit from full-service content moderation, advanced analytics, the company's services team and an extensive library of best practices for every aspect of commerce – ranging from building review volume through aligning the organization around the customer voice. Customers benefit by tapping the opinions of others to make the best possible purchase decision, and gain instant feedback to continually improve their products and services based on the voice of the customer.

With Bazaarvoice SearchVoice Inline (SVI), the Walgreens Web platform is able to continually and automatically place the content of the first four reviews directly into the pages' code — making product pages more "findable" by search engines and bringing customers right into the purchase path. The combination of inline reviews and the SearchVoice reviews microsite maximizes search results for search engines, often earning multiple slots in natural search results (SEO).

Walgreens is also utilizing Bazaarvoice's network of manufacturers to increase the number of reviews and opinions available to shoppers on Walgreens.com. Introduced in November 2008, Bazaarvoice's BrandVoice allows manufacturers to automatically syndicate customer-generated content about their products with the third-party sites that sell their merchandise. By joining the network as one of the retail sites that accepts reviews, Walgreens is able to increase the number of product ratings and reviews available at the point of sale and offer its shoppers trusted information that the company says is proven to increase conversion rates, lower return rates and improve brand loyalty.