“When you say it, it’s marketing. When your customer says it, it’s social proof.” – Andy Crestodina
People are pack animals. We are more likely to do something when presented with evidence that others have done it, more than we are willing to admit. This behavior applies in particular when we are unsure of what to do.
Participants in a study by Baron, Vandello and Brunsman (1996) were asked to identify a criminal suspect from a line-up. They saw the pictures very quickly, so it was difficult to be confident about their judgments. The task was performed in a group that consisted of one actual subject and two confederates of the experimenter. These two each chose the wrong person from the line-up. The subjects knowingly gave an incorrect answer so as not to disagree with the others when they were told the results were of little importance for pilot data, but were less likely to conform when they were told that the police and court would use their response.
A study found that a one-star increase in Yelp ratings led to a 5-9% growth in sales (Luca, 2011).
92% of people trust recommendations from their peers, and 70% of the consumers trust a recommendation from someone they don’t even know (Nielsen, 2012).
Displaying quotes from happy customers is one of the most used and most persuasive forms of social proof online. Be sure to add a high-quality photo to boost the perceived credibility (Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner & Lindsay, 2012).
Showing the raw number of social shares is a simple form of implementing social proof. People are more likely to read an article that has been shared by thousands. It gives more credibility and encourages even more shares. But, be careful. A low share count can create a negative social proof and is worse than no share count at all. People might think that the content you’re providing isn’t good enough. In an experiment by VWO, the removal of social sharing buttons led to an 11.9% conversion increase.
Instead of displaying every counter separately, you can show the total number of shares across the different social networks to expose the user to an even higher number.
Show the people how many fans, subscribers, or followers you have. You can use the official Twitter follow button, the Facebook page plugin, or the provided plugin of the community of your choice. Most larger platforms also provide a public API for developers, from which, alternatively, the subscriber count can be fetched.
