Boost Purchases! 14 Ways to Use Social Proof on Shopify

Have you ever heard the term "social proof"?

Social proof refers to the phenomenon where people tend to trust and follow the actions of others — especially when many people or authoritative figures endorse something.

Like building an email list, social proof tactics often take time to implement, but they steadily contribute to increased sales.

In this article, we introduce 14 social proof strategies using Shopify and Shopify Apps.

Which tactic would you like to try first? We'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

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Types of Social Proof

In commerce businesses, social proof is primarily used in the following forms:

• Customers: Reviews and comments from people who have purchased your products.
• Experts: Opinions from authoritative specialists in the field.
• Celebrities: Endorsements from celebrities or influencers.
• Friends & Acquaintances: Recommendations from family, friends, and close contacts.
• The Crowd: Data showing that a large number of people use the product.
• Certification Bodies: Evaluation results from third-party organizations.

Social Proof in Action

Here are examples of how to use social proof in your Shopify store.

Homepage

Let's start with examples of social proof that can be used on your homepage.

Media Coverage

One of the most commonly used forms of social proof on homepages is media coverage. Glossier, the well-known D2C cosmetics brand, also displays its media coverage near the bottom of their homepage.

Customer Testimonials

Customer testimonials are another popular form of social proof used on homepages. Casper, a recently IPO'd D2C unicorn, also displays Instagram posts as customer testimonials on their homepage.

With the paid version of the Shopify App Instafeed, you can embed hashtag-filtered Instagram posts directly into your Shopify store.

Friends & Acquaintances' Support

By adding a Facebook widget, you can show visitors that their friends and acquaintances have liked your brand. Seeing that someone they know has liked your brand helps reduce the psychological distance between them and your store.

The image below is a Facebook widget from Warby Parker — seeing friends and acquaintances displayed there actually made me feel a personal connection to the brand!

Certification Bodies

Displaying third-party product quality inspection results on your homepage is also effective as social proof. Additionally, showing your privacy policy and cookie handling practices is important for building trust.

Shopify has some interesting apps for trust badges, such as Ultimate Trust Badges. While the app itself is not a certification body, it lets you place credit card company and payment service badges wherever you like to boost credibility.

Product Page

Here we introduce effective social proof strategies and Shopify Apps for product detail pages. Since product detail pages have a strong impact on conversion rates, social proof tends to be particularly effective here.

Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are the most representative social proof tactic for product pages. Yotpo is a popular review app.

What's great about Yotpo is that it's not just for displaying reviews — it also has robust features for collecting them, such as sending review request emails.

Stamped.io is another Shopify App that enables customer reviews, with features for collecting reviews via email and thank-you pages. It can also display verified buyers, further strengthening the social proof effect.

Expert Reviews

Reviews from experts and knowledgeable individuals carry even more weight, so if you can conduct an interview with an expert, make sure to prominently feature it on the product page.

Photo Reviews

Reviews with photos are more effective as social proof than text-only reviews.

Loox is an app that collects and displays rich, photo-based customer reviews. It's a paid app, but it also includes various features for gathering reviews.

Viewer Count and Stock Level Display

When a product a customer is interested in has low stock and real-time viewers are shown, it can provide the final nudge to complete a purchase.

The Shopify App Fera displays real-time stock levels and the number of people currently viewing the product.

Incidentally, Fera is a Shopify App that can implement various other social proof features as well. It's a paid app, but highly recommended if you want to execute multiple social proof strategies in one place.

Frequently Bought Together

Showing products that other customers frequently buy together also leverages social proof to encourage add-on purchases.

Using the Shopify App Frequently Bought Together, you can recommend products that are commonly purchased alongside the current item.

Recommendation accuracy can be a challenge until enough data is accumulated, but Frequently Bought Together allows you to set recommendations manually at first, then gradually automate them over time.

Rankings and Best-Seller Labels

Highlighting popular products is another social proof tactic.

Clearly labeling your top-selling item as the #1 best-seller, or showing how many people have purchased it, can encourage more conversions.

Social Engagement Count

Social share buttons are sometimes added to product pages, but displaying them with share counts lets you show that a product is popular.

For example, the Shopify App Social Sharing Buttons displays share buttons on product pages and includes a design option to show the share count. Try enabling this once your share numbers have grown to a respectable level.

To accumulate social engagement, it's a good idea to ask customers on the post-purchase thank-you page or in the order confirmation email.

Collection Page

Here are social proof strategies you can implement on collection pages.

Popular Products

Popular products are social proof in themselves — the fact that they're popular is the proof. Creating curated collections of popular products organized by theme can contribute significantly to sales.

Site Search Bar

Social proof strategies can also be applied within the site search bar.

Suggested Brands and Products

When a customer types in a keyword, suggesting popular brands and products is both an improvement to search usability and a social proof tactic for highlighting what's trending.

Some customers may be tempted by a popular brand related to their search query that they weren't originally looking for.

Smart Search & Instant Search is a feature-rich site search Shopify app with autocomplete/suggest functionality.

Thank You Page (Order Confirmation Page)

There are also social proof strategies you can implement on the thank-you page.

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

Showing a "Customers who bought this also bought" recommendation on the thank-you page is an effective form of social proof.

Thank You Page Customizer is an app that lets you customize the thank-you page, including the ability to add product recommendations.

A/B Testing Social Proof

As with other growth hacking strategies, social proof tactics will vary in effectiveness depending on your store. Some will work well; others may not.

Unlike the engagement-boosting tactics covered in our previous article, many social proof strategies aim to increase short-term CVR (Conversion Rate — the percentage of visitors who complete a purchase), making them well-suited for A/B testing.

Google Optimize makes it easy to run A/B tests.

In Google Optimize's "Create Experience," select A/B test as the test type,

and create your test variants. Select the area you want to test (the target section for your social proof strategy), then create variants with and without the social proof element by editing the HTML or JavaScript.

After collecting data for a while, you'll receive results showing whether the social proof variant performed better, along with statistical significance.

Executing UGC Operations Thoroughly with StoreHero

StoreHero supports merchants on Shopify who are looking to increase sales by helping them execute growth strategies thoroughly.

For UGC (User-Generated Content) operations, we leverage the StoreHero growth platform to help you prioritize review collection based on each product's and SKU's performance and inventory data, streamline gifting operations, and achieve continuous growth through the kind of detailed, large-scale execution that manual operations simply can't match.

We are currently offering free store diagnostics. If you have challenges with UGC utilization or growth strategies in general, please get in touch. Learn more about our free store diagnostic here

Summary

We introduced 14 social proof strategies you can use on Shopify, along with Shopify Apps to go with each.

Which tactic would you like to try first? Feel free to leave a comment below. We'd also love to hear how things go once you've tried them out.

Social proof is a strategy that boosts conversion rates, but it also indirectly benefits social media marketing, SEO/SEM, and digital marketing as a whole.

We encourage you to start building your social proof strategy from the very moment you launch your Shopify store — even small, consistent efforts add up.

This article focused on how to utilize social proof. In a future post, we'll cover strategies for actively acquiring social proof as well.