Did you know that 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a site which has user reviews? Or a simple security seal can increase your sales by 42%?
It shouldn’t come as a surprise because trust is by far the most important factor in a person’s purchase decision.
Imagine if I told you that I’m the best internet marketer on the planet. I can help drive sales by bringing new visitors to your website, converting them into subscribers and customers, and boost your overall revenue.
You probably wouldn’t believe me. Or worst, you would think that I’m full of myself.
But what if someone else told you that about me?
Maybe this other person said: “You should really check out Syed’s work. He has a YouTube channel with quarter of a billion views. He runs the largest WordPress resource site, and his lead-generation plugin helped me boost my conversion rate by 420%.”
Now you would probably want to check out my work.
That’s SOCIAL PROOF and it’s powerful because it triggers emotion.
People relate to other people. They relate to their friends. They relate to celebrities and experts. Most importantly they relate to things that helps them feel confident about their decision.
When a user lands on your website, they don’t know whether your product/service is good or bad. However, you can earn their trust by adding various different types of social proof.
Before you do that though, remember your customers are smarter than you think. Any attempts of trying to trick them can make you look like an idiot and lead to loss of sales.
Let’s take a look at nine clever ways to leverage social proof with examples that you can add on your site to boost sales and conversions.
1. Customer Testimonials
Testimonials are by far the easiest social proof you can add on your site.
We all think that our product/service is great, but people may not believe you unless they hear it from other people too.
That’s why you should reach out to your happiest customers and ask them for a short testimonial that you can post on your website.
The best way to do this is search through your customer support tickets or recent praises on Twitter. Next, ask those folks if you could make their responses a testimonial for your site.
If you have a brand new product or service, then you should invite influencers, journalists, and/or your typical user, and give them a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
Because testimonials can be easily faked, you should include a name, company, job title, and headshot to further boost the credibility of the testimonial.
You can take it one step further and actually embed the actual tweet on your site:
There are tons of scripts that allow you to get away with Twitter’s branding while still giving you the Tweet-style testimonial.
You can also ask your customers to give you video testimonials. Ever watched a car company’s commercial? They make entire commercials out of user’s testimonial.
If you can afford a professional crew and invite customers to record testimonials, then go for it. But most startups can’t afford to do that.
In that case, you should send them a selfie stick or a webcam that they can use to record their video testimonial. Sure it might cost you a few dollars, but you have an actual video testimonial that people can relate to because it’s not professional quality.
According to Reevo, customer reviews produce an average of 18% uplift in sales.
And, a Harvard Business School study showed that a one star increase in rating leads to 5 to 9% increase in revenue.
2. Media and Mentions
One of the best ways to boost your credibility is by borrowing someone else’s credibility.
Yup that’s exactly why you’ll see a lot of websites showing “Featured In” or “Mentioned In” with logos of top media outlets because they’re well-known brands.
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