“Yotpo is a fundamental part of our recommended tech stack.”
Laura Doonin, Commercial Director
Together, we help eCommerce businesses leverage social proof to improve their credibility, increase conversions and boost sales.
Today’s customers are more informed than ever, which is why social proof is key to building customer trust, so they ultimately buy.
Long gone are the days when online eCommerce businesses could rely solely on traditional advertising to achieve maximum profitability.
Online shoppers need reassurance that the products they’re looking to purchase will meet their standards offline as well. To ensure that your potential customers feel confident in their buying decision, showcase social proof on your website and throughout your marketing efforts.
In this eBook, we’ll discuss what social proof is, how you can start collecting social proof from your customers, and the strategies you can use to scale and automate that user-generated content.
Simply put, social proof is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when people assume others’ actions reflect the correct behavior in a given situation.
It goes hand-in-hand with the Principle of Consensus, which states that people who are unsure of how to act in certain situations will look to others to determine the appropriate response.
Because shoppers are so heavily influenced by the actions and recommendations of others, social proof is key to boosting eCommerce conversion rates. It’s seen in many forms for eCommerce businesses, ranging from influencer endorsements to media badges.
One of the most effective types of social proof for boosting eCommerce conversion is user social proof, commonly known as user-generated content (UGC). User-generated content is any content created by your customers — this can be reviews, ratings, photos, customer questions and more. User-generated content is the social proof your shoppers need to make a purchasing decision.
User-generated content, UGC, is any content created by your customers — this can be ratings and reviews, photos, customer questions and more.
UGC is critical to boosting conversions on your eCommerce website.
A survey of online shoppers showed that 77.3% of buyers said reviews impacted their purchasing decision.
When potential customers see positive reviews and photos from past customers, they become more confident in their purchasing decision. In a recent survey, 70% of people said they trust consumer opinions posted online, either somewhat or completely, beating out every other form of advertising in the survey.
In other words
Customer contributed content builds trust and reassures potential customers who may be on the fence about making a purchase – which means more sales for your business.
Investigative
81% of online shoppers conduct online research before ever making a purchase, and 61% of them read product reviews and browse past buyer photos to gather information about the product they want to buy.
Encourage customers to choose your store over a competitor by helping them learn about your products through user-generated content, like reviews and photos.
Social
With influencer marketing and user-generated content on the rise, looking to the opinions of others has become a key step in the buyer’s journey.
50% of customers stated that online reviews from someone they don’t know in real life influenced their buying decisions.
Skeptical
On average, 68.81% of shoppers abandon their shopping cart, and fear is a major cause of shopping cart abandonment. If your potential customers don’t trust your eCommerce brand, they won’t follow through with their purchasing decision.
Product reviews and past buyers’ photos build trust with customers by proving that your products have been enjoyed by others.
Bottom line
Customer confidence in a brand makes the difference between them buying from you – or your competition.
Social proof is strongest when consumers have high levels of uncertainty.
In other words, it is most effective when consumers are at the top of the funnel.
If we based all of our decisions on others’ input, we would constantly be stuck trying to choose which way to turn. On a daily basis, we absorb thousands of conflicting point of views over any given subject.
Luckily, our brain is one step ahead of us. It selectively chooses which advice to take into account and when.
This is why customers are much more likely to take past buyers’ online shopping experiences into account than a store owner’s pitch, when deciding whether to purchase an item or not.
If you want your customers to follow a specific call to action (like reviewing your product or answering a question from another customer), it makes sense to show them that other customers are taking that action. By doing so, you can use the power of social proof to encourage even more social proof.
To achieve this, bring your website to life by showcasing real-time customer interactions, like a pop-up notification when someone leaves a new review of a product.
Let’s face it – you can’t simply put a product up for sale online and expect all of your customers to leave glowing reviews and share photos of your products.
You need to actively encourage your customers to turn into UGC-creators if you want to build an impressive arsenal of user-generated content that boosts your conversion rates.
Offer your customers an incentive – like a discount on their next purchase — in exchange for submitting UGC.
Research shows that adding incentive keywords (like “coupon”, “sale” and “discount”) to the subject lines of post-purchase email increases UGC-collection by 18.5% on average.
Depending on your industry, you may experience even higher conversion rates when you offer incentives. In the food and tobacco industry, for example, adding incentives can boost conversion rates by 106%:
To boost the amount of user-generated content on your site, be sure you’re taking advantage of every opportunity to ask for a review or for a customer photo. A great time to request customer feedback is after a shopper has interacted with your customer service team.
Another way to get more user-generated content from your customers is to make sure they can easily create and submit UGC from their mobile phones.
The easier it is for your customers to create a review or submit a photo, the more likely they’ll be to do so. And since 56% of customer reviews come from mobile phones, failing to optimize your review requests for mobile means there’s a big chance you’ll miss out on lots of reviews.
When seeking to build consumer trust, remember to incorporate both short term and long term strategies.
You want people to buy today, but ultimately, you want them coming back and buying again and again and again.
Building and nurturing trust at every point of consumer interaction will catapult your sales and help you build a sustainable eCommerce business
We looked at 10,000 reviews, 9,926 to be exact, in order to better understand how social proof manifests itself in star ratings and review words.
As you can see, most social proof is positive. From the words used to describe the products to the star ratings, it’s always worthwhile to showcase social proof on your site!
Social proof, especially in the form of user-generated content, is key to increasing eCommerce conversion rates.
Not only does collecting and curating customer contributed content allow you to increase eCommerce sales – it allows you to improve your store’s reach and get more eyes on the products you’re selling.
Social proof builds trust with potential customers and makes up for the fact that they can’t pick up and examine your products before they buy.
If you want to build a more profitable eCommerce business, take advantage of social proof in the form of user-generated content on your website, on your social media channels, and in your ads.
Yotpo helps brands collect and leverage reviews and photos throughout the buyer journey to increase trust, social proof, and sales.
