How to use social proof to increase sales

Imagine you’re shopping online, deciding between two nearly identical products. One has glowing reviews, heartfelt testimonials, and enthusiastic mentions on various social media platforms — it has social proof. The other has none of that. 

Which one are you more likely to buy? 

The key factor propelling sales here is social proof. And as much as it sounds like a buzzword, it’s actually a legitimate way for businesses to make more sales by increasing brand trust. And it’s centered around the experiences and endorsements of others and how these can influence potential customers. 

Here, we’ll cover why social proof is important, explore the different types, and share plenty of examples to learn from. Then, we’ll show you some practical ways to boost social proof on your website. 

So, why does social proof make such an impact? The answer lies in human psychology and our innate desire to follow the crowd. Here’s a quick look at some of the reasons why this is the case:

Social proof builds trust

When shopping online, customers can’t physically inspect products. Instead, they rely on the experiences of others. Nearly 70% of online shoppers read reviews before making a purchase, and 50% of consumers trust user reviews as much as personal recommendations, according to BrightLocal. 

And this makes sense. When people see positive feedback from real customers, it builds trust and reassures them that they’re making the right choice.

Social proof increases conversions

Social proof doesn’t just build trust, however. It also drives conversions. Displaying customer reviews can boost ecommerce conversion rates by up to 67%.

Likewise, a test conducted by VWO showed that the inclusion of testimonials can increase conversions by 34%.

Social proof enhances credibility

Whether it’s an endorsement from an industry expert or a certification from a trusted organization, social proof enhances your credibility within your niche. 

Expert endorsements signal to potential customers that your product or service is top-notch. In fact, a bad review can tear down a company’s credibility altogether. 94% of those in a recent survey noted that a bad review stopped them from following through with a purchase. 

Social proof increases FOMO (fear of missing out)

Nothing drives action like the fear of missing out, or FOMO. Highlighting limited stock or showcasing the popularity of your product can create urgency. 

For instance, using social proof notifications like “5 people bought this in the last hour” can boost sales by tapping into that innate sense of FOMO​.

Social proof improves SEO and visibility

Fresh, user-generated content in the form of reviews and testimonials not only keeps your site updated but also improves your search engine rankings. More reviews mean more content for search engines to index, which can drive more organic traffic to your site​.

Making full use of social proof involves understanding its various forms and how to implement them effectively. With this in mind, we’ve compiled the key types of social proof, along with examples of how they can be used and how to build a healthy stable of social proof content.

1. Customer testimonials

Customer testimonials should be a familiar type of social proof to most people. They’re personal accounts from satisfied customers and preferably highlight their positive experiences with your product or service. These bite-sized statements build trust and can significantly influence potential buyers.

But how can you gather these testimonials? Often, it’s as simple as asking. But you can use a couple of methods to get them. 

First, reach out to customers post-purchase and ask for their honest feedback. This could be an automated post-purchase email that asks for a testimonial. Or, if you run a service-based business, you could email them directly and ask if they’d mind writing a testimonial for you. 

Another approach you can take is to send out a survey to your previous customers. These surveys can prompt detailed responses from your customers about their experiences with your product or service. 

You could also incentivize people to leave testimonials. This incentive would vary based on the type of ecommerce business you run, but common offerings include discounts, coupons, or freebies.

Once you’ve gathered testimonials, you have some options on where to display them. But your site’s homepage, product pages, and landing pages are usually your best bet. You’ll want to place general company testimonials on the homepage and specific product reviews or testimonials on their respective pages, of course. 

And you have some options about how they can be displayed. Unlike reviews, testimonials are usually more in-depth, so dedicating space to them is a must. You can include photos and names alongside the customers’ statements. This adds a real sense of authenticity. 

Don’t be afraid to use multiple formats as well. Incorporating written testimonials, video testimonials, and star ratings can put your prospects’ worries about doing business with an unfamiliar company to rest. 

Salesforce uses testimonials effectively on its sales pages and homepage. It includes a quote, the customer’s photo, and title, plus a link to a more in-depth case study (which we’ll talk about later). 

2. Online reviews and ratings

As we’ve already established, positive reviews build trust, while negative reviews can deter potential buyers. 

To get customers to leave reviews more frequently, you can take a number of different approaches. As with testimonials, you can use automated emails to request reviews post-purchase. 

You can also make it easy for customers to leave reviews. An extension like WooCommerce Product Reviews Pro lets you add Amazon-style reviews to your product pages. 

If your website is built on WooCommerce, you can use the Google Merchant Center Customer Reviews Integration extension to prompt customers to complete a Google Merchant Center survey about their shopping experience with you.

Once you receive reviews, engaging them is helpful, too. Thanking reviewers for positive feedback shows you maintain an active interest in your business. And addressing concerns in negative reviews can help prevent any negative opinions that could form if you left those 1- or 2-star reviews unattended.

Reviews are used effectively on the Nalgene website, with a prominent star rating and detailed reviews listed below the product description. 

3. Case studies

Case studies provide an in-depth look at how your product or service solves specific problems for your customers. They’re one of the most common types of social proof because they work wonders. It shares a lot of similarities to testimonials and reviews but it also needs to showcase tangible results.

Case studies usually follow a specific structure. There are different approaches, of course, but most typically do three key things: 

• Clearly state the customer’s problem
• Explain how your product or service provided a solution.
• Highlight measurable outcomes and benefits.

HubSpot offers a perfect example of this on its case studies page. There, you can scroll through the case studies for different companies HubSpot has worked with. Then, once you click on a company, you can view a detailed case study with data, as-told-to reporting, and video testimonials. Here’s a great example using case study they prepared for the home moving company, Handled: 

4. User-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content includes photos, videos, and reviews created by your customers. It can also be created by influencers you hire. It’s perceived as more authentic and trustworthy than brand-created content.

To get your customers to create UGC, you can take a few different approaches. Coming up with and using a branded hashtag is one way to build more brand awareness for your company. Then, you could create a social media campaign or challenge to encourage customers to share their experiences with your product in a photo or video. 

For instance, you could run a campaign where you tell people about the hashtag. Then ask people to share a photo of themselves with your product using the hashtag. Some companies even have the hashtag printed onto their physical products. 

Once people start sharing their experiences, you can repost this content to your social media channels. You could even create a dedicated section for UGC on your website to keep all these compelling stories of social proof in one place.

The clothing shop, Modcloth offers a great example of UGC in action. They have a dedicated section on their homepage with an Instagram feed that displays everything under the #MyModCloth hashtag. 

You can add an Instagram feed to your WordPress site using a plugin like Jetpack, which includes an Instagram posts block you can insert into posts or pages with minimal effort. 

As we already mentioned, you could also hire people to create UGC for you. It’s not as authentic in approach, but many companies make use of the power of influencers to get the word out about their products or services. There are even websites where you can look through influencers and select ones to create UGC-style videos for you — to your specifications. Billo is one such example.

5. Influencer marketing

Related to UGC, you can use influencer marketing and find people whose audience aligns with your target audience and reach out to them directly to see if they’d like to promote your product. Look for authenticity and engagement over follower count.

One way you could do this is by searching through social media posts for those with a decently-sized following who’ve talked about your products publicly already. You’ll want to ensure influencers genuinely like and use your products. So if you find someone whose audience aligns with yours and they haven’t tried your product yet, you’ll need to send it to them to try. 

You should also provide influencers with clear guidelines for what you want to see in their content but allow creative freedom, too. No influencer-created video made for your company should feel forced or as though it’s just coming directly from a digital marketing agency. That could have the opposite of the intended effect, so keep things feeling as authentic as possible. 

If you’re working with a larger company, a celebrity endorsement can work, too. Just look at what Nespresso did by teaming up with actor George Clooney. In doing so, Nespresso helped to boost its brand’s reputation and give the impression that its products are more luxurious and credible. 

6. Expert endorsements and certifications

Endorsements from industry experts and certifications from trusted organizations lend credibility to your brand as well. 

If you can nab an expert in your field to provide an endorsement, that can go much further than a random influencer-backed testimonial. That is, if someone is known within your industry, and they say your product or service is great, that’s like a seal of approval. 

And in some cases, an actual seal of approval can be helpful, too. Displaying any certifications your company or products have received provides further legitimacy.

The Nature Made website makes good use of an industry endorsement by displaying a “#1 pharmacist-recommended vitamin and supplement brand”, banner at the top of the page. 

They also display a USP verified badge on the homepage, which indicates the supplement ingredients have been tested for authenticity and potency. This appears alongside the pharmacist-recommended statement and a note of when the business was established. 

What Nature Made has done here serves as a good example of what you can do as well. Featuring endorsements and badges on your homepage and product pages in a prominent spot attracts attention immediately.

If context is required for the endorsement or badge to make sense, provide information about the experts or organizations endorsing your products so potential customers get the full effect. 

7. Social media mentions and shares

Social proof often extends off of your website itself. We already mentioned the use of a branded hashtag to extend brand reach and improve your reputation. But you can also use social listening tools to track mentions of your brand across social media platforms.

Tools like Sprout Social and Talkwalker allow you to “listen in” on conversations happening about your brand on social media. This way you can engage directly with prospects and existing customers without them needing to contact you. 

This also makes it a lot more straightforward to respond to customers when an issue arises and get them in your customer service pipeline faster. 

Beyond the listening part, you should also create content for your social channels, with an eye on shareability. Creating fun or funny content on social platforms has a greater likelihood of going viral and — as long as it suits your brand — can drive more customers in your direction. 

Take the fast food chain, Wendy’s, as an example. Their social presence is designed to be quippy and slightly unhinged — the ideal recipe for going viral. 

8. Data and statistics

Numbers don’t lie. Highlighting impressive statistics can boost your brand’s credibility as well. For example, showcasing the number of happy customers, total products sold, or average star ratings can reassure potential buyers of your product’s quality. And it can spell the difference between someone sitting on the fence to someone convinced to make a purchasing decision. 

Beyond just displaying numbers, infographics are a fantastic way to present data in an engaging and digestible format. Use them to display key statistics about your product or service, like “Over 10,000 satisfied customers” or “Rated 4.8 stars by 500+ users.”

For instance, a SaaS company could use a small infographic on their landing page to illustrate that 95% of users reported increased productivity and 87% see a return on investment within six months. 

You can create something similar on your website using the Product Sold Counter for WooCommerce extension. With it, you can display the number of sales individual products have received, directly on the product page. This can boost consumer confidence at a glance. 

9. Client logos 

Another way to add social proof is to include the company logos from those you’ve worked with to your homepage. These logos could be positioned alongside testimonials or could serve as social proof on their own. 

Generally speaking, displaying client logos and detailed case studies from well-known organizations leverages their authority and trust to enhance the product’s credibility. It provides potential customers with concrete examples of how others have benefited from the service.

The AD Dal Pozzo website displays their partner brands directly on their homepage, making it immediately clear to their target audience the type of shopping experience that can be expected.  

10. FOMO and urgency drivers

Creating a sense of urgency or scarcity can drive immediate action. Phrases like “Limited time offer”, “Only a few left in stock”, or “Join thousands of satisfied customers” can prompt potential buyers to act quickly. You can add this sense of urgency into your copy as well as into strategic places on your website. 

Limited stock notifications are a great way to incorporate things. If a customer sees a message like, “Only 3 items left”, they’re much more likely to make that purchase now rather than save it for later. You could also offer time-limited discounts to encourage people to make quick purchases. Or even use pop-ups to show real-time purchases or sign-ups, like “John from New York just bought this!”

You can add these sorts of popups using the Social Proof for WooCommerce extension. It can be configured to display when someone makes a purchase, leaves a review, or adds an item to their cart. 

11. An online community

Building a loyal customer community can create a strong sense of social proof. When customers feel part of a community, they’re more likely to share their experiences and advocate for your brand.

One way you can do this is through some light gamification. Reward repeat customers with points, discounts, or exclusive access to bonus content or freebies. 

You could also establish a forum or social media group where customers can share tips, experiences, and feedback. This encourages existing customers to remain engaged with your product and their interactions there can serve as evidence that what you offer is worth purchasing. 

If you build a community on social media, your customers’ public posts could even be seen by those outside of your community. This serves as a sort of evangelism for your brand. All of this can be rather hands-off for you but you can choose to take a more proactive approach as well by hosting Q&A sessions, live streams, or even community challenges.

These are just a few examples of how you can use social proof in your marketing as a part of your overall marketing strategy. 

Integrating social proof into your WooCommerce website can dramatically increase trust, boost your conversion rate, and enhance the overall shopping experience. We’ve already covered several examples of how to use social proof across a website. But let’s talk a bit more now about effective placement, design, and optimization. 

Key placements for maximum impact on your potential customers

There are a few places you can use social proof that can help drive conversions most effectively. Let’s review a few of those locations now and talk about some ways to implement them. 

Homepage

Your homepage is what people see first, so making a positive first impression matters. And it’s the ideal location to inject social proof into multiple areas of your site’s design and content. 

You can feature customer testimonials and real-time social proof notifications prominently to build trust right from the start.

A rotating carousel of testimonials near the top of your homepage can provide social proof immediately and let potential customers know you deliver on what’s promised. This ensures visitors immediately see positive feedback and kind words from satisfied customers. 

If you have the Jetpack plugin, you can use the Slideshow block to create a rotating gallery of testimonials. 

You can also display notifications about recent signups, purchases, or reviews on your homepage. These notifications create a dynamic and engaging experience, demonstrating that your store is active and trusted by others. The Push Notifications for WooCommerce extension simplifies this process.

Adding a social media feed or UGC content somewhere on your homepage is a good idea, too. We already mentioned that the Jetpack Instagram social posts block is a solid choice for inserting an Instagram feed into your store. There’s nothing more convincing for prospective customers than seeing past shoppers happy with your product. 

Product pages

Product pages are where potential customers make purchasing decisions, so it’s critical to leverage social proof here effectively, too.

On product pages, you can display detailed reviews and star ratings prominently near the product descriptions. You could use the TrustPilot Reviews extension to showcase verified reviews and insert them via widget or block into your store’s design. 

This extension also allows you to send review invitations to your customers to help boost your social proof over time. 

Checkout pages

The Checkout page is where many customers experience hesitation, leading to abandoned carts. But adding social proof here can help reassure them and finalize the sale.

Adding trust badges to your Checkout page is a good way to capture those conversions. You can include security badges such as SSL certificates and industry certifications to reassure customers that their information is secure. 

Displaying these badges near the payment fields can significantly reduce concerns about security.

This is also a good place for one final customer testimonial or review. This could be in the form of an image or a written blurb. The TrustPilot extension we mentioned previously lets you create images from the reviews you’ve received, which could be a great way to offer some last-minute reassurance and alleviate doubts about completing a purchase.

Design tips for showcasing social proof

As you approach adding social proof to your website, you’ll want to keep an eye on the visual appeal of it all. That means maintaining a cohesive design, even though you may be adding these social proof elements to an existing site design. 

Here are a few tips for keeping it all together: 

• Social proof elements should be eye-catching but not overwhelming. They need to be well-integrated into your site’s design for maximum effectiveness.
• Ensure that social proof elements like testimonials and reviews are easy to spot. Use contrasting colors or borders to make them stand out without clashing with the overall design.
• Maintain a consistent style for all social proof elements to create a cohesive look. This includes using the same fonts, colors, and layouts for testimonials, reviews, and notifications.
• Use visuals whenever you can. Visual elements like photos and videos can significantly enhance the impact of social proof. Use high-resolution images for customer photos and product shots. And incorporate video testimonials where possible. They can be more engaging and persuasive than text alone, providing a richer, more personal touch.
• Make sure your social proof elements are seamlessly integrated into your site’s layout and don’t appear like afterthoughts. Using grid layouts to display multiple reviews or testimonials in a clean and organized manner keeps the design tidy and easy to navigate.

While social proof can be a powerful tool to build trust and boost conversions, it’s easy to misuse it. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid so your social proof makes the most impact:

Overdoing it

It’s tempting to plaster your website with every positive review and testimonial you can find, but more isn’t always better. Overloading your site with too much social proof can overwhelm visitors and make your site look cluttered. 

Instead, focus on high-quality, relevant testimonials and strategically place them where they’ll have the most impact, such as on product pages and near call-to-action buttons.

Tip: Curate a selection of the best reviews and rotate them regularly to keep the content fresh.

Using fake or insincere testimonials

Authenticity matters and it’s the crux of social proof. Using fake testimonials or insincere endorsements can quickly erode trust and damage your brand’s reputation. Customers can often spot inauthentic reviews and this could lead to skepticism about all the content on your site. Always use real testimonials from genuine customers and, if possible, include their photos and full names to add credibility.

Neglecting to update or rotate social proof elements

Stale social proof can be just as detrimental as not having any at all. If your testimonials, reviews, or other social proof elements are outdated, it can make your site look neglected and may cause potential customers to question the current relevance and quality of your products or services.

Ignoring negative reviews

While it’s natural to want to hide negative feedback, ignoring or deleting negative reviews can harm your credibility. Addressing negative reviews transparently shows that you value customer feedback and are committed to improving. It also gives you an opportunity to turn a dissatisfied customer into a loyal one by resolving their issues.

Tip: Respond to negative reviews promptly and professionally. Offer solutions or compensation where appropriate, and use the feedback to make necessary improvements to your products or services​.

Overemphasizing quantity over quality

Not all social proof is created equal. A large number of mediocre reviews won’t be as effective as a few detailed, well-written testimonials from satisfied customers. Focus on gathering high-quality reviews (with a high rating) that provide specific details about why customers love your products or services.

Making full use of social proof can boost your WooCommerce store’s credibility and sales. By strategically placing authentic testimonials, reviews, and other forms of social proof throughout your site, you build trust and encourage more conversions. The numbers don’t lie.

If this all sounds good to you, you might be ready to boost your sales with social proof. And there’s no better place to start integrating these strategies than onto a WooCommerce site. You can get started with your own site today. 

About

Brenda

Brenda Barron is a freelance writer and blogger for hire, specializing in technology, WordPress, business, and e-commerce topics. She lives in southern California with her husband, daughter, and two cats.

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