Social Proof is a concept that states that when people are not sure how to react to a particular scenario they look to copy the actions of people around them. This term was coined by Robert Cialdini. Using Social Proof for Shopify Stores is basically a strategy used to influence shoppers to make the decision to purchase the product based on the activities of other people. Stores rely on reviews, social media approval and proof of actual people buying and using it to do so.

In this article we will try to cover strategies that DTC Stores can use to build Social Proof,

Social Proof Nudges about recent sales

You can find several apps that help build Social Proof for Shopify Stores, these apps would add small notifications about recent purchases on the Store. What it does is that customers feel that people around them are buying this product too. It builds an assurance and increases chances for customers to mimic the behavior and complete the purchase.

A variation of this would be to show how many shoppers are living now on the website and looking at these products. In addition to Social Proof that there are others like you who are interested in the product, it also adds a sense of urgency to complete the checkout before they are out of stock. 

Display the Social Media Presence of your Brand.

You can showcase your latest Instagram Post, Stories/Highlights on your website as a proof of your Brand’s Social Presence. Stories and Highlights in particular allows you to show videos of your product in use, reshares of your customer or influencers reviews. Nothing works better in building a Social Proof than to see actual people using your product and liking it. 

Apps like Instafeed Instagram Feed/Story can help you embed both Instagram Post as well as Stories/Highlights.

Acquire and showcase real Reviews on and off your website.

Use Review Collection apps like Ryviu, Loox, Judge.me to collect real reviews from your existing user and showcase them on your Shopify Store. Though often customers are skeptical about these reviews because they could be easily edited by stores, these apps are still useful for collecting reviews. Here’s an article that covers in detail whether DTC stores need Shopify Reviews App. 

An alternative to showcasing reviews on your website is to showcase them on third party websites. Often people would google about your DTC brands and come across third party sites like eShopBrands.io, TrustPilot with your reviews would be more trustworthy than seeing reviews only on your website.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Vishwesh Shetty: Vishwesh is a Shopify App Expert with multiple apps on Shopify AppStore used by 15k merchants. He has been working on Shopify Ecosystem for the last 5 years.