7 ways to add social proof and build trust on your website

Have you ever bought anything because someone you trust recommended it? Or have you chosen a certain restaurant from multiple options because of the high ratings and positive comments?

We all have.

In marketing, e-commerce, and even in brick-and-mortar shops, we call it social proof.

You could define social proof as something where others influence your decision-making. It might be the concrete actions others are taking right now, or you remember someone describing their pleasant product experience previously.

Social proof belongs on small business websites, too.

Social proof can take many forms, and in this article, I’m introducing you to 7 different types to consider for your next website.

Some marketers might say adding customer logos to your website is old-fashioned.

I’d say it really depends on the company size and stage – the more you grow, the less critical the logos are.

But regardless of the size and stage, there are definitely some factors to consider:

1. 1.
   Don’t show a list of the world’s largest organizations if you are targeting the SME market. While the big corporate logos help build trust in your business, they also immediately signal that your solution will likely be expensive and perhaps complex to use.
2. 2.
   Make sure each logo has a supporting marketing and sales story to tell. You might be surprised how many people ask in a meeting or via support channels about the use case with a specific company on your website.
3. 3.
   You might need the client’s approval to showcase their logo.
4. 4.
   Adding SME logos can be counterproductive. If page visitors don’t recognize any of the logos, they might exit your website feeling confused instead of convinced.

After I added Metallica’s logo and case study to my previous startup website, our U.S. customers never questioned if they could trust our service. A single logo can take your marketing to new heights! 🙌🏻

Video testimonials are a fantastic way of convincing clients that your product or service is the right choice.

When done right, the video content is tightly aligned with your value proposition and the videos answer to the most common questions. In the perfect world, you’d want your video testimonials to handle objections and lack of conviction – anything that makes the typical website visitor and your ideal customer hesitate.

Blaze, a marketing tool for creators and entrepreneurs, has done an excellent job at bringing social proof just below the hero element. The videos reinforce the copy text ‘AI tools for the team of one’, the carrying theme on the website.

If company logos felt like old school to you, so must feel the quote testimonials.

At first glance, customer quotes might not look as powerful as videos, but one significant difference might make you change your mind: only a particular portion of people ever click to play – let alone watch the full video!

Meanwhile, text quotes, especially when thoughtfully designed, will be seen by every visitor. As a rule of thumb, you wouldn’t want to leave anything critical out of the website texts and visuals.

Gamma, an AI-powered presentation creator, takes an innovative approach to this, showing quotes and social proof just next to the key capabilities.

User-generated content marketing is highly efficient for e-commerce – you must have seen influencers promoting clothes, restaurants, travel destinations, and more in YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

UGC can be part of your marketing strategy, too.

On your website, you can, for example, embed a ‘Wall of Love’ containing tweets, Instagram images, YouTube videos, and other mentions of your company. Authentic content from your customers helps website visitors make their decisions faster.

Creatie, an AI-powered design tool, has added a tweet wall to its homepage.

Another form of social proof is to show how many customers have already signed up for or bought from you and how active they’ve been.

There are three typical ways of doing this:

1. 1.
   Showing actual user activity numbers: For example, if your product is a social media marketing platform, you might show the number of customers and how many social media posts they’ve published.
2. 2.
   Highlighting avatars of some of the recent sign ups: You’ll often see this in the hero element, right below the main call-to-action button.
3. 3.
   Displaying real-time notifications based on your visitor data: For example, you might show a popup saying that a user in your location just signed up. Using real-time notifications can help build a sense of urgency.

ContentPie, an AI-powered content writing tool, shows avatars of some of the latest sign ups and the number of entrepreneurs actively using its service.

Most of us look at Google Reviews before booking a table in a restaurant. For small businesses, Google Reviews is often the best place to start collecting reviews, while software companies also launch on ProductHunt and sign up for review sites like Capterra, G2, and Trustpilot.

Getting high-quality reviews is often hard work, and you’ll need to pull tricks when sourcing a decent number of reviews at the beginning. You’ll most likely need to gather the first reviews manually and even create the content on behalf of the customers – just asking them to approve.

However, to scale your customer reviews program, you should use an email or live chat tool to request a review at the right time. For example, ask the customer straight after the first purchase or when they leave positive feedback through your live chat.

Xnapper, a tool for fast and easy screenshotting, has added a ProductHunt launch success badge to its website.

Not too long ago, I was doing competitor research for a SaaS and stumbled upon Alteryx’s customer interviews.

That was love at first sight.

Alteryx is a rather complex data management solution, and instead of talking to their active users, they have chosen decision-makers as their target group. By all means, you can disagree with their marketing strategy, but the customer interview videos are stellar. They go deep into the problems decision-makers are tinkering with and show real-life examples of the created value.

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