How to Build Social Proof for Your Business Website (10+ Converting Strategies)
Do you know how to build social proof or what tactics to use for enhancing social proof to achieve a higher conversion rate?
Undoubtedly, social proof has a significant impact on sales, profit, or conversion rates. Are you wondering why social proof is this important for business? Let’s give a real-life example.
Suppose, you want to buy a sunglass and you have found out that two online stores have your desired sunglass. Now, how can you find out which one is better? Of course, through reviews and ratings. You will obviously buy from that store that has good customer reviews.
Therefore, every online business owner should focus on using social proof & reviews in marketing. Here, in this blog, we will also talk about how to build social proof along with other important facts.
Social proof means influencing visitors’ actions by presenting real-time statistics, reviews, ratings, market size, etc on a site. It is a source of authenticity and credibility for your business that convinces your visitors to make a quick purchasing decision.
The importance of social proof doesn’t stop here! It has other benefits that take your business to the most profitable level. Have a look at the underlying benefits of being a social proof site:
- Social proof increases your site’s conversion rate by helping your customers make quick decisions.
- It helps you to accomplish business goals out and out through bring-off marketing campaigns.
- A socially proofed site also manipulates visitors by creating a scenario of product scarcity. They will quickly grab the product as people always tend to buy stuff that is popular and less available in the market.
- For new customers, it boosts confidence in buying from you because of available online reviews, ratings, and shares.
- It helps to create a brand in the market that will be hard to build if you don’t make your site socially proofed.
Now, since you are aware of the importance of social proof sites, let’s discover what are the types of social proof with examples that you can involve in your site to bring good results.
There are, basically, six different variants of social proof. While some claim it to be more than that, the majority agrees with these six types. Here are the different forms of social proof with examples that let you get more precise knowledge regarding this:
- Users: This social proof comes from your customers who are using your products or services and provides feedback such as reviews and ratings.
- Friends: It is generated from the friends of your users or visitors. For example, “X” is a friend of your visitor “Y” and “X” recommends “Y” to purchase products from you.
- Celebrity: It refers to feedback or reviews coming from the celebrity. An example of it can be, a famous blogger “A” who shared a review on MetForm.
- Experts: It means the people with expertise in your industry providing reviews on your product. For example, WPTuts is providing reviews on the WooCommerce builder, ShopEngine.
- Crowds: Reviews from a large number of users. WordPress powers over 43% of websites in the world.
- Certifications: This means getting recognition or certification from an illustrious organization. For example, certified by Fairtrade International.
So, these are the types of social proof that you can adopt to your business website to gain success. Now, are you wondering how to build a socially proofed site for getting magnificent success? Then have a look at the converting ways to uplift the social proof of your site.
There are numerous strategies to increase social proof. But all of them don’t add the same value to your site. Some bring better results and some bring less. As a consequence, it increases confusion about what to adopt first. Therefore, 10+ effective ways are listed here to create a socially-proofed site:
Conversion Stats:
Do you know what convinces your visitors to buy from you? The assurance from the other users that they are using your product and getting benefitted from it. Now, you might think why is assurance so important to take any buying decision? Tell us one thing, when was the last time you brought a product without checking any users or reviews of the users?
Can you recall that? Of course, you can’t. Because it is human nature to check a product before spending money on it. Therefore, your website’s landing page should contain conversion stats such as 4+ million people are using currently, sales notification that shows real-time stats, etc. This will accelerate the buying decision of your target audience.
⭐⭐ What to use for sales notification & how to add it?
ShopEngine, the ultimate WooCommerce builder lets you add a sales notification in less than a few seconds. All you need to do is enable the module and your sales notification will be added.
Customers’ testimonials:
The importance of customers’ testimonials in your business can’t be described in words. Because customers always prefer to check testimonials before buying a product.
Almost 87% of customers check reviews to make sure that are purchasing a good product and 93.7% of shoppers trust a brand after seeing positive reviews. Source – FinancesOnline
These prove how important reviews and feedback are for your target audience. Ignoring it means making your sales drop to almost zero. That’s why you should add reviews to make a social proof site.
Pro tip:
Now, only adding reviews won’t work well. You have to add testimonials and feedback in a way that will catch the attention of your visitors. For that purpose, you can use the WP Ultimate Review plugin which is free to use. It allows you to add attractive and engaging feedback to your site.
Also, you can check the Best WordPress testimonial plugins blog to choose a suitable plugin for adding attractive testimonials.
Showing engaging ratings:
Like testimonials, your products should be rated by your customers. Whether it’s a movie or a product, ratings are always checked. It is because a company can’t maintain the quality of all products. That’s why your products should have ratings.
So, add a rating option to your product that let your customers rate after purchasing that product from you. As a result, after seeing these ratings, your customers will buy from you if it is rated well.
Share of your product is also a valuable stat that should be added to your website in no time. It means how much your product is spread among your target audience. Here, in this case, you have to be true to the customers. Just avoid sharing fake data on your site. Otherwise, you’ll risk losing credibility if your potential customers get suspicious of them.
Therefore, always add the real market share and also, keep the data updated. This will help your website visitors to take an action.
Featuring popular products:
It is another strategy to boost the social proof of your site. Popular product means your customers frequently buy these products. This means the quality of these products is great and satisfying. That’s why, if you feature popular products on your site, then definitely your visitors will buy these products before trying out new products. Hence, featuring popular products on your site can boost the social proof in marketing.
Social media stats:
Social media stats are not less important than other stats. Since people are more active on social media nowadays, so it is easy to collect comments, feedback, and share on social channels. These data show how popular your products are in the market and how much happy your users are with your service.
Now, how to build social proof with social media stats? What to use for it? Worry not, many social proof tools allow you to add these stats to your site. For example, With WP Social, you can add social media stats to your site and customize the appearance as you desire.
Payment in installment:
No matter what you do or how much quality you provide with your product, it is tough for a new user to trust your brand. In such a case, making payments in installments can be a life-changing hack to increase trust in your business website.
As people will be able to pay partially (you will have full authority to fix that amount) while placing an order for that product and they can pay the rest money after the product is delivered. As a result, your visitors can easily buy from you as people want to take risks with a small amount.
Sharing achievements and milestones:
All completed milestones and achievements should be included on your landing page. Because adding these will provide extra value to your brand and make your site socially strong. Besides, it enhances the trust of your visitors by adding credibility and reliability to your site.
Scarcity:
Shorter products have always high demand in the market. It’s because people love to buy products that are not common. That’s why product scarcity is the most popular and used strategy that boosts the social proof of your site. You can create a sense of scarcity by adding stock to your products. Curious about which social proof tools allow you to do that? With ShopEngine, you can add stock to your products and update the stock status whenever you want.
Adding testimonials from industry experts:
Review always matters for your visitors. It matters, even more, when it comes from the industry experts. The reason is they have expertise in that industry that let them figure out the quality product. Now to add testimonials of the industry experts, you don’t have to run after a big fish. Except, you can reach out to any small industry expert who has a good fan following on social channels and ask for trying out your product.
Livechat and support:
A quality product with poor and unsatisfactory support will take your business nowhere. Because regardless of how good products you offer, in the end, your customer will remain unhappy because of your horrible support.
Hence, you need to add something that ensures your customers that they will get your assistance whenever they require it. Here, adding the Livechat option can make your site socially proofed and gain the trust of your customers.
Creating a social proof website is not a hard nut to crack. All you need to do is observe the social proof examples around you and add them to your site one after one. Since above, you have gotten a list of converting strategies, building a socially-proofed site won’t be difficult for you.
Don’t try to add all of them to your site at once. Add one at a time in a proper way so that, you can get the best result. If you still have confusion regarding how to build social proof to enhance business possibilities, do let us know in the comment section. Also, share with us, which strategies you have adopted for your site.
