What Does “Social Proof” Really Mean?
Social proof is a term used to describe the influence created by certain criteria to affect the minds of potential customers and persuade them that you are demanded.
Social proof does not bring the customers to you, but it affects them psychologically and leads them to buy.
To be more explicit, the idea, “if one has the best, why don’t I have either?” comes up.
For more information about the definition of social proof, you can check Social Proof Definition; Turn Marketing Psychology into Your Favor.
12 Best Social Proof Tools
Now, here is the showtime! There are 12 best social proof tools that might help you in different senses with a different scale of features and pricing.
Let’s dive deeper into them!
1. Provely
The first social proof software tool is probably the easiest one. Provely shows itself highly effectively when you visit its landing page.
Also, it guarantees that you explicitly boost your conversion by over 250%.
Pros:
- Very easy to use
- Has options to show live and past data
- Force your imagination to attract
- Can find the location the users subscribe
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Cons:
- No A/B Testing
- Because customization is too easy, it offers certain and restricted options
- Location coding has problems
- Designing is not their passion
- Slowing down the page from time to time
Pricing: It has monthly and yearly plans. We recommend yearly ones.
- Basic: $17 monthly/ $97 yearly
- Pro: $27 monthly/ $147 yearly
- Ultimate: $37 monthly/ $197 yearly
2. FOMO
FOMO is one of the most popular social proof marketing tools. This name probably originated from 'fomo'. That is ‘fear of missing out’.
This term is associated with providing traffic.
Because once you provide enough of your traffic and conversion rates, you will have a kind of fear of missing them out, so you will inevitably need social proof.
Pros:
- 14-day free trial
- Not so difficult to use
- Offers real-time notification and FOMO Inline
- Geo-location
- Has 29 language options
- No need to deal with codes
- Offers themes
- Collaboration with Google Analytics
- Live support with chat and phone
- API access (with many integrations)
- Customizing everything to your liking
- A/B Testing
Cons:
- Not easy to use as Provely
- Needs credit card details for a free trial
- Needs much effort to customize
- PayPal is only available on annual plans
- Admin interface should be developed
- Customization is hard without actually paying at first.
- Pop-ups and their frequency may be disturbing for the visitors sometimes
Pricing: There are four monthly plans for you. And SURPRISE! If you choose annual payment, then you will get 30% off automatically.
- Starter: $19 (25.000 notifications)
- Essential: $39 (50.000 notifications)
- Plus: $79 (250.00 notifications)
- Advanced: $199 (3.000.000 notifications)
3. Socialproof.so
Its first aim is to form a trust and persuade you that they are the best, like any other social proof tool.
However, Socialproof.so impresses with its logo and gives the review, effective quotes, and information about the importance of the idea of social proof.
Plus, it has many qualities to share. So let’s have a look:
Pros:
- Has businesses more over than 40.000 for now
- Starts with a simple copy & paste activity
- No coding needed
- Gives lives visitors
- Offers money-back guarantee if you don’t like the service
- Has 20+ languages
- Visitors’ activities (with Stream)
- Showing large numbers of visitors to your website (with Combo)
- Showing positive reactions you get (with Reviews)
- Assuring your customer with solid facts (with Informational)
- Including social media accounts will also boost (with Social Counter)
- Apt to integrations
Cons:
- Notification designs cannot be tested.
- Difficult to adapt without tutorials
- Lack of smartphone optimization
- Customization can be upgraded
- Problematic in counting the visitors
- Reaching your employees' information
Pricing: Starting is free; no credit card is required. Here are the monthly plans.
- Free: $0 for 1.000 visitors
- Starter: $21 for 10.000 visitors
- Growth: $54 for 50.000 visitors
- Monster: $109 for 200.000 visitors
- Gorilla: $219 for 500.000 visitors
- Enterprise: You can contact Provesource to go into detail.
4. LetConvert
As another assertive tool, LetConvert directly promises for you to convert your rates. In other terms, get ready to skyrocket because both the name and the logo are apparently hopeful in their profession.
Pros:
- Online customer support
- Recent Activity Alerts/ User Journey: Following visitors’ activities
- Power Trails: Keeping abreast of your conversions
- Live Visitor Count: Who comes when
- Customer Cards: Security holder
- Mobile Optimized: Alerts and notifications on your phone now
- Custom Curation: Listing present users
- Advanced Triggers: Deciding the time when alerts are on
- Complete Customization: Every detail like fonts, colors, and animations will belong to you
Cons:
- Slow development
- Not much known compared to others
- The problem of having a response from the customer service
- No road map
- No response to solve technical issues
Pricing: 14-day free trial is available. Monthly and annual plans should be looked at as well.
- Essential: $4.99/ $5.99 per week billed monthly/ annually
- Growth: $9.99/ $11.99 per week billed monthly/ annually
- Business: $19.99/ $24.99 per week billed monthly/ annually
5. Notifia
Though Notifia is sometimes considered a tool that helps you provide social proof, it links and creates integrations. The three aspects to highlight are engage, convert, and retain.
Pros:
- 7-day free trial
- 2-minute setup
- Can adapt everything with the website’s URL or customize
- Engage: Adding interactive messages, pop-ups, and widgets to your websites
- Convert: Causing visitors to customers
- Retain: Maintaining your customers and subscribers automatically
- Personalizing the messages
- Seriously Fast in website
- Multilingual: Supports 181 languages in your customers’ browsers
Cons:
- Not a proper social proof tool, but a tool to help
- Reaching customer support is problematic
- Integration problems
- Inactive team members to respond via social media
Pricing: It offers both simple monthly pricing and a lifetime deal.
- Growth: $9
- Unlimited: $49
- Lifetime: $149- paid one time
6. TrustPulse
TrustPulse is a relatively new tool that can help you boost your conversion rates, so although it does not have enough reviews to affect, it promises good deeds to improve in the near future.
Pros:
- Easiness
- Analytics notifications help you improve
- Action messages to alert
- Popular visitor activity to decide
- Customization is available
- Money-back guarantee in 14 days
- Coding is not needed
Cons:
- Customer service
- Lack of features, design, and support
- Supporting product only in English
- Changing the plans without permission
Pricing: As far as we see, there is no free trial but only a money-back guarantee. Also, pricing plans per month are as follows:
- Basic: $9
- Plus: $17
- Pro : $34
- Growth: $50
7. Nudgify
Nudgify may be the most international social proof tool among all because it reaches 138 countries and is loved by the most.
Both its contact with its customers and its affordable plans are favored by its users. The answer is simple.
Pros:
- 31 languages available
- 7-day free trial
- Customer service
- Performing what is needed
- Opportunity of customizing the nudges
- Sending urgent reminders to its customers to act immediately for chances
- Integration with popular apps already
Cons:
- Lack of certain integrations
- Nudges are not natural enough
- Geographical social proofs are inadequate
- Capturing sales need other support like Zapier to transmit information
- Visitors’ information cannot be reached easily
Pricing: 7-day free trial and no credit card needed. Even Nudgify’s plans make business owners change their choice of social proof tool. You can get two months free if you choose annual billing.
- Lite : $0.99/ $0.99
- Plus: $9/ $11
- Genius : $29/ $36
- Agency: $89/ $111
8. Proof Pulse
This tool is the first product of Pulse, yet it is also known as Proof and UseProof, Proof Pulse.
It presents a better customer experience, and you can easily collect leads since it effectively elevates the brand image.
Pros:
- Initiative signup process
- Responsive customer service
- Simple integration
- Helpful guide
- Satisfying free trial options
- Elegant design
- A/B testing opportunity
- Customizable software
Cons:
- Only English is supported.
- Training videos can be longer.
- Limited dashboard can be a little problematic to get used to the tool.
- Some customers experienced account cancellation problems.
Pricing: Proof Pulse has simple pricing. It has a 14-day free trial, and the pricing is highly organized whether it is monthly or yearly. For the monthly plan:
- Basic Monthly is $29 per month in the monthly plan for 1.000 unique visitors.
- Pro Monthly is $79 per month in the monthly plan for 10K unique visitors.
- Business Monthly is $129 per month in the monthly plan for 50K unique visitors.
- Premium Monthly is for $199 per month in the monthly plan for 100K unique visitors.
- Platinum Monthly is $299 per month in the monthly plan for 300K unique visitors.
- Finally, Enterprise has custom pricing for more than 350K unique visitors.
9. Boast
Boast may seem a regular social proof tool at first, but what makes it different is that it helps you provide customer video testimonials.
That is, the customers will see the other customers in the videos speaking and telling their positive experiences, which is a great way to show your credibility.
Pros:
- Simplicity
- Easy integration options
- Advanced training opportunities
- Simple back-end
- Reachable customer service
- Fair pricing
- Wide range of widgets
- Useful forms to collect feedback
Cons:
- It can take time to download videos on a mobile device.
- There is a limited language option.
- More customization is needed for some customers’ experiences.
Pricing: There is a 14-day free trial and two months free for the annual Boast plans.
- Basic costs $50 per month annually for 600 responses per year.
- Team costs $100 per month annually for 1800 responses per year.
- Premium costs $208 per month annually for 6000 responses per year.
10. Evidence
By giving real-time statistics and providing a swift setup opportunity, Evidence is one of the best social proof tools.
Also, it is essential to emphasize that the website evidently tells how social proof works.
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Intuitive user interface
- Fast to implement widgets
- Customizable enough to work
- Nice customer service
- Multiple integrations
- Chat box available on the website
- Mobile-optimized
- Language options available
Cons:
- Integrations are required to multiply.
- More designs should be added.
- Product updates could be shared when all is done.
- Integrations can be difficult to implement.
Pricing: Evidence offers a 14-day free trial, and you can cancel anytime when you don’t like it.
- Starter is $40 for 5K visits.
- Jump is $80 for 25K visits.
- Grow is $150 for $75K visits.
- Scale is $250 for $200K visits.
11. Repuso
It monitors reviews, collects feedback, brings mentions to you, and many more. Repuso is direct and effective.
Pros:
- Simplifies all the processes
- Highly praised customer support
- Easy integration
- A lot of platforms to integrate
- Immediate notifications
- Email and SMS reviews requests
- Snippet adding feature
- Reasonable pricing when compared to the others
Cons:
- UI can be regarded as difficult for some.
- Advanced features should be added in the future.
- It could be more thorough in feedback as the customers share.
Pricing: With a 10-day free trial, Repuso does not require a credit card to start.
- Basic is $9 per month when billed annually.
- Enhanced is $19 per month when billed annually.
- Agency is $23 per month when billed annually.
12. Yotpo
Yotpo is a tool that is improved by considering customer reviews, and it has outstanding features like the other social proof tools on the list.
Pros:
- Ease of use
- Clean user interface
- Responsive customer service
- Many language options
- Useful integrations to use for improvement and custom
- Straightforward dashboard
- Rich snippets
- Shopify collaboration
Cons:
- Too many features might confuse minds.
- The cost of SMSBump can be increased because of additions to the campaigns.
- Generally, the reviews focus on the costliness of the tool.
- Slow loading may occur sometimes.
Pricing: Since Yotpo presents many services, there are different pricings with free plans, like
- SMSBump,
- Reviews,
- Loyalty & Referrals,
- Subscriptions,
- Visual UGC,
- Product Bundles.
The Ways of Providing Social Proof
Because you are here to search for tools, we assume you are ready to take a step in the social proof technique steadily.
While scrutinizing the social proof tools, you might need to know how social proof will help you.
All these effective techniques were performed and turned out to be successful.
Even you come across them in your daily lives, doing leisure time surfing on your phone, and anywhere the web is related.
The study of Reevoo, a company is saying, “People trust people” and believing that social proof is not only a technique but also a lifestyle suggests that UGC (user-generated content) more than half of the people want to connect with the promotion containing UGC.
This rate is directly caused by people relying on “real life experience” instead of ads, including written scenarios.
So, now let’s see some of social proof techniques:
Reviews
The words of others matter in marketing.
If a user makes a positive impression about the product, the potential customers think that they will have similar experiences.
Or otherwise, a negative experience of one will affect another. So that’s how the perception of social proof in reviews shapes.
A lot of reviews mean a lot of users, so people become interested in the product, and the reviews' situations generally determine the tendency to use it
Product Ratings
When the number of choices increases, checking product ratings is another option to apply.
Therefore, the determinative factors are the products' stars, likes, and dislikes.
This will be influential if you show your high ratings to your customers.
Testimonials
Everyone likes pro tips. In this case, testimonials are helpers.
Your target buyers will be more relieved when the experts in your marketing field comment on your product in a good way because most buyers do not want to take a risk while shopping.
Including testimonials will surely be able to make you look more professional and preferable.
They will think that you work with the ones who know the best and tend to choose you over others.
Certifications
Being certified by the authorities will also be effective in your adventure while using social proof.
Because the more you are approved, the more you will gain importance.
Also, displaying certifications is another way of showing your professionalism since certificates represent your competency in business.
Including Celebrity Figures
Most people are curious about what celebrity figures suggest and do in their lives.
“What do they choose? How do they live? What do they find appealing most?..”
Therefore, being famous works and influences and collaborating with a celebrity can raise your familiarity.
In addition, having a brand ambassador for your business will upgrade you in giving importance to your brand and considering growing your business.
Social Media Effect
Social media has such an astonishing effect that most people direct their shopping styles accordingly.
Giving ads, adding social media platforms on websites, and recommending the product on social media create an influence on people’s minds.
Also, with the evolving marketing techniques, that’s how influencer marketing becomes more effective in the social proof area as well.
As a tip, you will raise your popularity if you work with influencers who got verified on social media platforms.
Notifications
Notifications are the ones that help the customers see what is happening with your product.
Seeing that you are cared for, used, and preferred can change things and make others realize the importance of the increasing demand.
The pages primarily spare places for notifications and are highly catchy for visitors.
Informational Notification Boxes
To let visitors know as much as you can, be provided with informational notification boxes because it is more important to show yourself rather than hide it.
Therefore, having little crowd-pulling informational notification boxes on your page will make things easier for your customers.
That's how they will know you faster and more straightforwardly.
Storytelling/ Case Studies
By sharing similar or identical stories about the experiences, people are inspired by the service you present.
Especially when a customer shares their experience with a video testimonial, including the hardships and the need for the product, they become in the same boat.
And if the user mentions the functionality and the potential of meeting demands in their story, it will be more impressive.
Integrations and Collaborations
Forming a relationship with another brand can make your brand more common.
Since integrations are one of the most important aspects of a product, it can be beneficial to use them for social proof.
Creating a bridge with another well-known brand will increase your rate of being preferred over others since you can build your credit once more.
Customer Relations
Giving importance to your customer means everything because their comments help the product improve.
You should have a chatbox to communicate efficiently and know their needs to elevate your customer relationship.
As another positive issue, showing care to your customers will reflect in their reviews of them.
Wisdom of Crowd
As in the reviews, sharing the thoughts on any platform will help.
Also, if people share their personal experiences in community groups or areas of discussion, it will have a considerable impact.
Though the visitors don’t know these people, they will automatically regard them as their allies since all have been to the same rodeo.
Wisdom of Friends
Believing in a stranger is easy, and trusting a friend is easier.
When someone close to us offers sound advice, we are more ready to take it without question.
So, when a friend makes a recommendation, it is more possible to accept it as it is.
Statistics and Metrics
Statistics and metrics are the keys to establishing your brand image reputation on more solid ground.
People believe in rates, so you need to organize them accordingly by affecting them.
Surveys and customer feedback can help you share accurate stats about your status.
The Best Tool of All
This is now the end of the article, but you should be asking yourself, “Among these recommendations, which is the best to choose?” This totally depends on your expectations and targets for your business.
Therefore, we will be recommending that you choose
- Provely if you prefer practicality,
- FOMO if you prefer to trust, popularity, and traffic,
- ProveSource if you prefer a cost-effective way,
- LetConvert if you prefer a tool kit,
- Notifia if you prefer integrations and multilingualism,
- TrustPulse if you prefer promising qualities,
- Nudgify if you prefer a budget-friendly and reachable tool.
- Proof Pulse if you prefer to present a better customer experience.
- Boast if you prefer video testimonials.
- Evidence if you prefer a 4-minute setup.
- Repuso if you prefer immediate notifications.
- Yotpo if you prefer a relationship with Shopify.
Considering all the qualities within the tools and choosing one of them for the sake of your website will be the best for now.
Wrapping Up
In summary, social proof works in business effectively. However, you may get help from the social proof tools to make it work better.
They can boost your sales and improve your business by turning visitors into buyers.
Since they see you are needed and liked by many, there will be a growing curiosity that you can satisfy with the tools above.
And you can satisfy your curiosity with the answers below.
FAQs
Here are the questions asked to know and learn more about social proof and its effect!
What is the Relation between Social Proof and Psychology?
As a psychological technique, social proof presents evidence concerned with society. This can be considered as a primary human instinct that an object proved to be appropriate for many; most people decide that it can be preferable, and they are automatically apt to buy. Though it is not so easy to change people’s minds, you can change people’s perspectives.
Who Should Use Social Proof?
It might be the founders, owners, or managers of a company. What is important here is that social proof is used to increase interaction. For this, you need to check;
- observe your statistics,
- how many clicks you have,
- how much time your customers spend on your page,
- what they do during surfing,
- whether your page and techniques to hold customers are effective enough or not.
Why is Social Proof Important?
Because it is evident that people think the more people prefer a product, the better the product is. It shows your trustworthiness and credibility. Additionally, social proof leads your way to the customers. If you affect them positively, they will stick to you. Seeing other people with them in the same field will make them feel more comfortable.
How Does Social Proof Work?
As a common instinct, people copy each other since they want to keep things guaranteed. When they see that people have tried before them, their experiences mean a lot. Besides, the principle of social proof says so: “The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct.” says Robert Beno Cialdini, the author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
What is Positive Social Proof?
Positive social proof is an effective way of having more customers. There are ways to provide as in the examples by enhancing them with different techniques like CTAs and presenting new evidence. Or, you can give examples from storytelling, so people will feel closer to the brand by thinking it is a life-changing experience to prefer.
What is Negative Social Proof?
Positive social proof influences business affirmatively, but negative social proof does it adversely. Especially, you need to get inspiration from your own customers without denigrating the ones who don’t prefer your brand. It is better to focus on and make the visitors focus on the pros you have gone through.
Read More about Social Proof
There are other blog posts related to social proof and its examples. You can look at them and have ideas on applying social proof in your business.
