5 Companies Getting Social Proof Right

People base their decisions on the wisdom of the crowd and their peers. Online 61% of customers read reviews before making a purchase decision. Think about how you choose a restaurant, you go into the one that's busy, not empty, as you think the food must be better. Social proof drives sales in the same way. Social proof is important.

Social proof is today a tried and tested tactic used by large online retailers to boost sales but arguably, for smaller retailers that lack big marketing budget, social proof has even greater significance.  Showing what others on the site are doing in real-time instills confidence that you are not alone in buying the same or similar products. What is more, it need not be restricted to the website, as it can also be included within cart and browse abandonment messages and well as other email communication out to customers.

7dayshop is an online retailer that has recently introduced social proof and Sam du Feu from the IT and Marketing team comments: “We chose to include social proof on our homepage feeds to give new visitors and existing customers even greater confidence in the products that they are buying, have seen and heard about on third party sites, or are simply browsing.” He adds: “Reviews can help make a decision, but confidence is key to online shopping.”

Here are five other companies which have all used social proof effectively on their websites…

Expedia

Expedia uses social proof on their website to drive urgency and also inform and reassure browsers. Done through guest star ratings, percentage of guests who recommend, how many people are viewing the hotel and how recently it has been booked and how many people are looking at the location. This is paired with tripadvisor ratings and reviews to add more reputability to their social proof.

Firebox

As well as using product reviews, Firebox uses social media ratings on their products to show their popularity. They also make it easy to share a product with someone you know with easy sharing functions! We can capture this data from your website and put it into automated recommendation or abandonment emails to engage customers. 

Amazon

Amazon offer more social proof than a person could possibly ask for! From star ratings, to customer images to recommendations based on what other people who bought or viewed this product's behaviour. They also take it a step further by offering most recent reviews and most useful reviews to cover all bases with shoppers.

Basecamp

Basecamp lets people know how popular they are week by week, with millions of people signed up that is social proofing enough, but the more up‐to‐date data offers a reassurance that their technology and system is still ahead of that of their competitors.

Booking.com

Booking.com are another travel site that offer real‐time data showing how many people are viewing a hotel and it's reviews and ratings. They also add a "guests love it because" section for people who don't want to read through loads of reviews, a breakdown of scores so people browsing can research the things that matter to them.