Use social proof to stimulate your business

Social Proof, also known as social influence, alludes to the likelihood of us following the actions of others while making important decisions or settling for one. This selection process generally involves weighing the actions to make the most apt decision. Social Proof can prove to be an asset to increase credibility, for prospects, and bring better acceptance of the products and services in the market.

The well-established fact that ‘people get influenced by the actions of others’has found quite a beneficial and profitable role throughout human history. This has led to the assimilation of user proof in the user experience of numerous websites as well as online and offline applications, in the real world.

Another point to be noted is that the implementation of user proof will always be ubiquitous – omnipresent. The best example of this is the review system on eCommerce websites where products with higher ratings or reviews tend to sell better than the ones with lower or no ratings.

Social Proof Notifications are a simple and authentic way for drawing the attention of website users while building urgency to take various actions on the site. With these notifications, one can increase the trust, sales, and traffic for their online businesses.

Here is what we did to test the effectiveness of Social Notifications.

We created an A/B Test to test our assumptions, where 50 percent of the audience were shown proof notifications

Hypothesis for the A/B Test

Showing visitors notifications about other people downloading/subscribing/checking-out solutions & downloadables, increases engagement.
Seeing other visitors taking action creates fear of missing out and generates curiosity.

Description of the A/B Test

We created user proofs in the form of notifications for the users. The notifications were sent when someone:

Shared a blog
Registered for newsletter
Downloaded a case study
Downloaded a whitepaper
Checked out a solution
Commented on a blog

This message was sent across:

Riddhi from Gujarat, India checked out our solution on Heatmaps.

Time Duration

15 Days

Goals Set

Since Tatvic falls under the Lead Generation category of website, our goals were:

Primary Objective: Pageviews
Secondary Objectives: Session Duration and Bounces

Target Audience %

50-50 Division

RESULT

The A/B test Variant in which the users got notifications took a massive lead. The reports suggested that the session duration had doubled, page views went up by 34% and the bounce rate reduced by 9%

The results are as follows:

Key Takeaways

Social proof is a powerful tool to help you usher your prospects to make decisions online, regardless of the platform.

It’s important to note that, utmost care needs to be taken as to how it is implemented and test the best way to implement in order to benefit the most out of it. A/B testing can help you add social proof to your online business – accelerating conversions and aiding efficiency.

Have questions? Feel free to drop in comments or get in touch with our executives to have a complete view of the process.

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Riddhi Mehta

Riddhi is an experienced User Experience Designer with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. Skilled in Prototyping, Concept Development, Design Thinking, User Experience Design, and Web Design, she has a bachelors in Product Design and a Masters in Communication Design.