Any Shopify merchant knows that a potential customer won’t necessarily make a purchase simply because they’re browsing a given shop. Once you’ve attracted shoppers to your page, you still need to give them a good reason to buy your items.
Social proof helps you do so. Social proof is a tried-and-tested principle that essentially means you’re more likely to make a sale when shoppers know other customers have already bought and enjoyed your products. For instance, if a new restaurant opened in your neighborhood, you might not know whether it’s worth your money to try it. However, if your friends recommend it, you walk by and see many people eating there, and you read positive reviews of the restaurant on Yelp, you’re more likely to stop by yourself.
The same principle applies on Shopify. Luckily, numerous apps can help you build social proof. The following are some of the more noteworthy.
1. Nudgify
The easiest way to build Social Proof on Shopify is to use an app that handles it for you. Here comes Nudgify, a leading Social Proof app that goes beyond simple Sales Pop or FOMO notifications.
Nudgify is fully integrated to Shopify, meaning that you install it in 1 click and manage all your Nudges (notifications) from your Shopify account. This powerful integration allows Nudgify to easily turn any action into a social proof notification: recent sales, low stock items added to basket, live visitor count, selling fast nudge, low stock nudge, free delivery nudge, order soon nudge, cart counter nudge, discount nudge.
Side note: Nudgify has been created by experts in Consumer Behaviour, so they know their stuff and to guide you through the Nudges they tagged each of them with a Neuromarketing principle such as Scarcity, Urgency or Pain of paying.
Nudgify has a free plan till 1000 notifications. Paid plans start from $9/month for Plus, $29/month - Pro, $89/month - Business.
2. ProveSource
Social proof on Shopify involves making more sales by demonstrating to potential customers that numerous others have already bought your products and that your store is busy. This indicates to someone browsing your shop that it is trustworthy and your products are of high-quality.
ProveSource helps you achieve this goal by automatically connecting to your store and pulling data from it. When a visitor is browsing your shop, it uses this data to display pop-up notifications about who has bought a product recently, live visitors count, how many people have visited a page and more. It also allows each of the notifications to be customized and for customized timings to be set.
As with many Shopify apps, ProveSource offers a variety of pricing options. Most plans include relatively similar features. The difference is in how many visitors per month the app sends alerts to. The basic free plan alerts 1,000 visitors a month. The Starter plan ($21/month) alerts 10,000, the Growth plan ($54/month) alerts 50,000, and the Monster plan ($109/month) alerts 200,000.
3. Fomo Social Proof
Fomo is an acronym for Fear of Missing Out. Quite simply, when other people are enjoying some type of experience (such as the type your products might deliver), many of us want to have that experience as well. It’s worth noting that statistics indicate approximately 60% of consumers make purchases due to Fomo.
As the name implies, the Fomo app helps Shopify merchants leverage this psychological effect to boost sales. It does so in a number of ways. For example, the app shows live traffic data, letting shoppers know how many other people are currently browsing your shop. When shoppers click on a product, Fomo can provide information about how many people bought it in the last few hours. Its Window Shopping feature also lets shoppers add items to their cart directly from notifications.
Fomo starts with a 14-day free trial. If the app impresses you, you can continue with a variety of plans once the trial is over. A Pro plan ($19/month) sends up to 30,000 monthly notifications, a Business plan ($49/month) sends up to 240,000, an Advanced plan ($99/month) sends up to 1,200,000, and an Enterprise plan ($199/month) uses a volume billing model of $5 per 100,000 notifications after 1.2 million.
4. Growave
Growave is an all-in-one marketing platform for Shopify online stores that come with apps like photo reviews, wishlists, loyalty programs, UGC, Instagram, and more!
When it comes to social proof, Growave can help you collect reviews on autopilot and increase the conversion rates by showcasing verified shoppers’ feedback on any page of your site. Shoppers are able to leave reviews on product pages, review sidebar, and via the series of review request emails.
To increase the power of reviews and motivate shoppers, they are able to add photos and get rewarded for that. Don’t forget about the shoppable Instagram galleries where you can pull @account and #hashtag photos and showcase them on any page of your store in different layouts. But the main advantage is that you can tag photos and make them shoppable, so shoppers can proceed to checkout in 2 clicks right from the gallery on your website.
Growave has a forever free plan available. If you need more advanced features, you can always choose from their wide variety of plans: A starter plan at $29.99 with a 14-day free trial, A growth plan at $69.99 with a 14-day free trial, an Enterprise plan at $ 299.99 with a 30-day free trial. All prices are fixed without any additional or unexpected charges.
5. Bizzy Social Proof
Bizzy provides you with the opportunity to retarget your customers by displaying recent sales notifications of a product that they were just browsing. You can send these notifications in your customer’s language since the app supports multiple languages.
You might also choose Bizzy for its analytics features. It integrates with Google Analytics to let you monitor how successful your notifications have been. This helps you better determine whether you need to modify your strategy to improve results.
Bizzy’s pricing model offers a 14-day free trial. After that, the app costs $6.99/month.
6. Fera
Testimonials play an important role in social proof. For instance, nearly 95% of consumers report reading online reviews when determining whether to make a purchase. Adding clear and positive testimonials to your Shopify store will help you cultivate the kind of social proof that lets potential customers know your products are worth their money.
That’s what makes Fera a useful app. Along with counting sales and showing them off, it allows you to easily display customer testimonials and reviews in a variety of ways, letting your shoppers know what customers have to say about a given product. These can be displayed directly on your product pages or on a pop-up. One of Fera’s best features is the ability to A/B test, allowing you to completely optimize your campaign for conversions.
Pricing starts with a 30-day free trial. From there, you can choose a Small Startup plan ($9/month) with basic features, or the more advanced Small plan ($29/month) or Medium plan ($99/month).
7. Sale Kit
Social proof helps any merchant make more sales. However, it’s particularly valuable when your shop is new. Attracting customers to a shop few have ever heard of before can be challenging. Social proof makes overcoming these early hurdles much easier.
The Sale Kit app is designed specifically for Shopify merchants with new shops. It offers a range of features to build social proof. These include pop-ups about recent sales, visitor counts (to show how many people visited your shop within a certain time period), and a sold count (showing how many of a particular item you’ve already sold). It is also fully customizable.
Sale Kit also offers a variety of pricing plans based primarily on how many impressions per month you want to pay for. The Free plan offers up to 1,200 impressions each month, the Starter plan ($4.99/month) offers 5,000, the Basic plan ($12.99/month) offers 12,000, and the Growth plan ($39.99/month) offers 100,000.
8. ReferralCandy
Most consumers trust their friends and family when they recommend products. Although the social proof that comes from positive testimonials is useful, referrals from someone a customer already knows can be even stronger. In fact, a recent survey indicates that recommendations from friends and family are more influential than marketing campaigns, testimonials, or any other means of promoting a service or product.
That’s a good reason to set up a referral program. Rewarding your customers for recommending your products to their social contacts can help you build social proof and make more sales. ReferralCandy makes this process easy by allowing you to customize your referral program and track how successful it is. The app also gives you total control over the types of rewards you offer to customers who make successful referrals.
You can start out with a 30-day free trial. If you want to continue using the app after the trial ends, it costs $49/month.
9. Editorify
Again, displaying reviews of your products can help you sell more of them. However, adding all your reviews to your Shopify page may seem challenging if you also sell your items on other platforms, such as Etsy or Alibaba. A positive review on your Etsy page won’t add to your social proof on Shopify if Shopify customers don’t see it.
Fortunately, Editorify exists. This app lets Shopify merchants import reviews from the following platforms: Aliexpress, Alibaba, Etsy, Dhgate, Taobao, 1688, Wish, Banggood, Gearbest, Walmart, Overstock, Sears, Chinabrands, Lightinthebox, Gearbest, Costco, and Sammydress. It also lets you decide which reviews to include based on customer ratings. For instance, you could choose to only import Etsy product reviews with five stars. You can also write reviews manually and import photos for maximum impact.
The Free plan allows you to import up to 25 reviews (up to three reviews per product) from Aliexpress. The Premium plan ($9.95/month) lets you import a limited number of reviews from a range of platforms, and the Gold plan ($14.95/month) lets you upload unlimited reviews from multiple platforms.
10. Social Testimonial Slider
Social Testimonial Slider is another app that allows Shopify merchants to import reviews from elsewhere. The key difference is in how they are displayed and where you can import the reviews from.
With Social Testimonial Slider you can import reviews from Facebook, Yelp, and Google Places. This may be particularly helpful if your Shopify store also has a brick-and-mortar counterpart. The app also allows you to customize the appearance of reviews on your shop, which ensures consistent branding. You can also display the reviews in a testimonial slider.
You can start using Social Testimonial Slider with a 7-day free trial. After that, a Free plan offers limited display options, whilst a Pro plan ($2.99/month) offers more template and slider options.
11. Judge.me
Judge.me is yet another app designed to help Shopify merchants add social proof and improve reviews in their shops. However, it offers a range of dynamic features that make it stand out on its own.
With Judge.me, you can more easily convince customers to review your products by simplifying the process for them. For instance, if a shopper recently purchased an item, the app can automatically send them an email asking for a review. The customer has the option to review the product directly in the email. Removing steps from the process makes customers more likely to leave testimonials. Additionally, Judge.me allows you to collect photos and videos for more visually-striking reviews, which are a great form of social proof made from user-generated content. You can also display ratings in a customizable widget on your product pages.
That said, photo and video options are not available with the basic Forever Free plan. You’ll have to upgrade to the Awesome plan ($15/month) to take advantage of those features. The Awesome plan also offers additional features such as a spam filter, coupons, and custom forms.
12. PressKitHero
Creating a press kit can help build social proof for your store. With a press kit, you can give bloggers, journalists, and other influencers access to your brand’s photos, videos, logos, awards and any other marketing material to promote your store. This makes it easier for them to write about and recommend your products to their followers.
You may also want to use PressKitHero if you have no coding or access to a designer, as these skills aren’t needed to use the app. All you need to do is enter all of the relevant information and the app will generate a responsive and professional looking press kit. It’s easy.
The PressKitHero offers multiple plans, including one that is free. You can upgrade to the Plus plan for $9.99/month and to the Pro plan for $24.99/month. The plans vary depending on your specific needs.
Conclusion: Boost Social Proof with These Powerful Apps
All these apps offer unique social proof benefits. That said, each one has numerous positive reviews from happy Shopify merchants. At least one of them will help you achieve your social proof goals.
