How It Works

The big picture

Socialphotos helps you turn real customer content into social proof that increases trust and drives sales on your Shopify store.

At a high level, Socialphotos works in four simple stages:

  1. Sources – where your content comes from
  2. UGC – content inside Socialphotos
  3. Galleries – where UGC is displayed on your store
  4. Sales – tagging products to turn UGC into shoppable content

Once you understand this flow, everything else in Socialphotos builds on it.

1. Sources: where UGC comes from

Socialphotos starts by collecting content from different sources. These sources all feed into the app in the same way.

  • Instagram – posts, reels, tagged content, and hashtags that Instagram allows third-party apps to access
  • Customer uploads – photos or videos submitted directly by customers through an upload button on your site
  • Your uploads – content you upload yourself, such as past customer photos or brand-approved visuals

Regardless of the source, once content enters Socialphotos it becomes UGC that you can use across your store.

2. UGC: content inside Socialphotos

All content collected from your sources lives inside Socialphotos as UGC (user-generated content).

From here, you decide how that content is used:

  • Add it to one or more galleries
  • Tag it to products
  • Reuse the same UGC across multiple pages

The same piece of UGC can appear in multiple places on your store without being duplicated or re-uploaded.

3. Galleries: where UGC appears

Galleries control where UGC is displayed on your Shopify store.

  • UGC Product Gallery – embedded on product pages to show real customer content for that product
  • UGC Page Gallery – embedded on any page, such as your homepage, landing pages, or blog posts
  • Instagram Feed Gallery – automated galleries based on Instagram feeds or hashtags

Want to see real examples?

A gallery must be embedded on a Shopify page for its content to appear. If a gallery is not embedded, its UGC will not be visible on your site.

4. Sales: turning UGC into shoppable content

Tagging a product to UGC is the key action that connects content to sales.

When you tag a product to a piece of UGC, two things happen:

  1. If the UGC Product Gallery is embedded, that UGC appears on the tagged product’s product page
  2. Anywhere that UGC appears in a gallery, it becomes shoppable by showing the tagged product

“Shoppable” is not a separate gallery. It is a behavior that happens whenever UGC has products tagged to it.

This allows customers to discover products through real-world usage and purchase directly from the content.

See shoppable behavior in action: View live product example – click any photo to shop the look.

What to do next

Now that you understand how Socialphotos works, the next step is setting it up on your store.

  • Follow the Getting Started guide to embed your first galleries
  • Explore Features to see what’s possible
  • Customize your galleries to match your store design