Published by: Lisa Glutting

What is social proof?

We've talked about social proof a million times before, but just to remind you about what exactly it is again I'll give you a quick rundown, so you can see how you can leverage social proof to sell more. Social proof is when you rely on the behavior of people around you to choose purchase, services, and do other things in your life. What this means is that we trust the opinions and recommendations of our peers and often we like to follow what they do. This is easy and realized in the real world, but often it's missing or hard to recreate in the online eCommerce world.

How to use social proof to sell more online?

We're going to discuss a few ways of how to use social proof to sell more online. We're going to go through reviews, counters, and notifications that will help add some social proof and trust to your eCommerce website. Previously we've gone through 7 apps that are great to use for social proof, so check out this article to see what the best option for your business is.

Reviews

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Having and showing customer reviews is an easy way to add social proof to your site and build trust and credibility with your visitors. What better way is there to show new customers how great your products are than by having existing customers express how awesome they are? Reviews can be hard to get, but often it's because people simply aren't asking for them or incentivizing properly for them. Often times eCommerce owners underestimate how easy it is to leverage your users by asking them for reviews. You can simply send emails after purchases that thank the user and offer them a 5 to 15 percent discount off their next purchase if they take 5 minutes to leave a review. This doesn't always work, but even if only 1 out of 10 people leaves a review, that will still help to build reviews overtime. The worst-case scenario is that they don't leave a review and ignore your email, but the best case is you get a glowing review for the next visitor to see and a potential second purchase with the discount code!

 

Counters

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Counters are extremely important because in a brick-and-mortar store you can see when a shirt or item is almost all gone because there are few left on the rack. Online you don't often know how many of something is left or how many have been purchased. Counters are a tool that will show a visitor how many of an item is left in stock (when the stock is low), or how many people are currently viewing the item. These work on both the product pages and catalog pages on your site. They add social proof by showing the popularity of certain items. Knowing what's hot and exciting on a website (and showing that there is current activity on the site besides just you as a visitor) creates social proof that can help to boost your sales!

Notifications

How To Use Social Proof Online Store Testimonials

Recent sales notifications will show visitors to your site what the other shoppers are doing online. You can use these as a popup in the corners of your screen, or have them as a feed or carousel on your product or catalog pages. Typically these tools will populate when someone has either purchased an item, added it to their cart, subscribed, and so on. You can customize these to fit your needs, to only show up during certain hours or with a certain frequency. Basically this will add social proof by showing visitors what items are popular and selling fast. With clickable popups, the visitor can go directly to the product page and add it straight to their cart which will increase your conversions overall.

Examples of brands that are using social proof to sell more

Here are a few examples of brands using social proof to build trust and make more sales.

1. GymShark: Reviews

  GymShark lets potential customers know what the product is like based on other customer's reviews. This helps to build trust and community.

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Taco Bell has had a few great Twitter exchanges like this one with 'Drake and Josh' actor Drake Bell. It shows that they have a fun and hilarious brand that get organic mentions.

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3. Quai: Customer Photos

  Ouai is a great hair brand that often shows before and after hair photos for different treatments and products to show you what you could be missing out on!

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4. Fera.ai: Customer Testimonials

  Showing off customer testimonials helps us show potential clients that existing clients love our app! Displaying testimonials helps us get users to try us out. That is why we feature testimonials on our homepage!

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Fera.ai Testimonial Carousel

5. Lucidchart: Case studies

  Lucidchart has case studies with major brands that people recognize. These will help push their products by showing other brands they were able to help. They also make some hilarious and really popular YouTube videos.

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6. Mia Belle Girls: Currently viewing counter

  Mia Belle Girls highlights social proof by showing how many people are currently viewing their products.

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7. Knockaround: Social Proof Popups

  These popups show how popular their items are and induce FOMO.

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Knockaround Popups

8. Peloton: As Seen in Logo Banners/Mentions in Media

  Getting other big brands to promote you or leave comments can be extremely helpful in creating trust and social proof around your brand. Peloton is a great example of this by having Good Housekeeping, Forbes, and Best Health promote them.

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9. LootVault: Trust badges and certifications

  A brand like LootVault shares all of the trusted payment types they can accept

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10. Daniel Wellington: Customer Photo Wall

  Daniel Wellington watches are often promoted by users sharing their photos wearing the watch. These are usually really aesthetically pleasing and make it easy to share without it seeming like a blatant add.

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11. Pela: As Seen In Logos

  Pela highlights its amazing cases by letting browsers know where their products have previously been featured.

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12. Wren and Ivory: Member reward programs

Wren and Ivory created a rewards program to keep their customers coming back and to show new shoppers that they're loyal to their customers.

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13. Indie and Harper: Influencer Marketing

  A lot of brands may start an ambassador program or call for shares on Instagram like Indie and Harper. These programs can help you share your products far and wide across the internet by using influencers.

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14. Toothpaste everywhere: Expert testimonials

  If you work in a market that values the input of other experts it may be great to highlight this. Show that your brand is backed by experts and build trust among shoppers. We make fun of toothpaste examples where 9 out of 10 doctors recommend it, but oftentimes this kind of tactic works.

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What to do now?

We've given you a few tips, techniques, ideas, and examples to get started with social proof on your online eCommerce store. Use Fera 30 days for free to add any of these types of social proof to your store.

Let us know below which worked the best for you and your business! If you need a few more ideas about where to include social proof on your site you can check out this blog post!
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