Rebel sees a 78% increase in conversion with Bazaarvoice

In 1985, Rebel opened its first store in Bankstown, New South Wales, and for the past 35+ years, the company has been growing. Today, Rebel is the leading retailer of sporting and leisure equipment, apparel, and footwear in Australia with 160 brick-and-mortar stores across the country, and a robust online presence.

Rebel started its partnership with Bazaarvoice in 2011. Rebel kicked off its new user-generated content (UGC) strategy by populating its site with customer reviews, but the company knew it could go one step further and really leverage UGC for better business decisions.

“The data that we have seen from reviews has allowed us to present to some of the key leaders in our business and tell them where we want to focus our energy and resources,” said Ben Anderson, Head of e-commerce, Rebel.

Over the past year, Rebel has been focusing more on reviews and taking advantage of everything its partnership with Bazaarvoice offers.

“In an omni-channel environment, the voice of the customer plays a significant role in shaping brand perception and influencing customers’ willingness to shop, as customer feedback and reviews can have a powerful impact on their buying decisions.” said Anderson

Relying on in-store experts to leave reviews

Rebel’s growth strategy includes leveraging relationships with key brand partners to syndicate reviews through Bazaarvoice.
When a big-name brand like Nike launches a new shoe and gets reviews across the web, those reviews will automatically populate on Rebel’s product pages when the shoe launches at the retailer.

“Syndication is giving us reviews a lot quicker. Within a week of a product launching on our site, we suddenly see a big difference and shift in reviews that we have on those products, which has been really significant,” said Anderson

Another aspect of Rebel’s new and improved UGC strategy involves using expert staff members to write honest reviews so online shoppers get the same experience as in-person customers. The company started doing this during the COVID-19 pandemic when more and more consumers shifted to online shopping behaviors.

“We now have an expert program where we invest in our store-based colleagues and team members to ensure they’re giving their very best service and advice to customers quite equally,” said Anderson

Rebel encourages team members to leave reviews on product pages and write in a more natural and engaging way than the standard brand copy. Rebel and Bazaarvoice showcase these reviews higher up on product pages and add a special symbol to them to signify they were left by Rebel experts.

The company also leans on its employees to create impactful UGC for products that have yet to launch. Rebel sends samples to experts in its company network and encourages them to leave reviews so the product has a lot of UGC as soon as it’s live on the site.

78% increase in conversion rates for products with UGC

Rebel has seen a 78% increase in conversion on products that have reviews over products that don’t. Over the next year, the company will focus on boosting the number of reviews for products with no UGC.

“A portion of our products on our site do not have reviews, and that’s going to be one of our biggest focuses now. The business has realized the importance of this data and the importance of customers generating this type of content, which has allowed us to invest in resources to really focus on that over the next couple of years,” said Anderson

Because using team member reviews on product pages has been so successful for Rebel, the company hopes to use this strategy for the brand’s own products in the future.

“What we see as a whole with reviews is that customers utilize reviews more for products under our own brand than some of the bigger names we sell,” said Anderson. “That’s going to be where we’re going to really leverage our team members’ expertise to ensure that customers continue to have trust in our own brands.”

The company has already been piloting this strategy with its own branded massage gun. Rebel’s massage gun sells for around $150, while some of the bigger name massage guns on its site sell for about $900. However, reviews from customers have proved to shoppers that, while the Rebel brand is much more affordable, the quality is just as good as other brands.

“This enables customers to know that they can spend a little bit less but still trust that the product is great quality and not going to break,” said Anderson

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