A busy shop, restaurant, hotel or theatre, reassures customers that they’re looking at a trusted quality brand, that delivers on its promises. Instinctively we’re more likely to want to shop there. There’s less risk that we’ll be making a bad choice if other shoppers have already demonstrated their loyalty. Their behaviour has sent a clear message, that allows us to enter into that retail engagement with a degree of trust in the brand. What’s important it that, via this unspoken communication, we’ve formed an opinion that the brand is an authority, or a retail influencer, before we even enter the store. This is important, but also unsurprising. Studies have repeatedly shown that it’s human nature to want to copy what others do. So, a busy store gives us a degree of security, and we’re likely to want to check it out ourselves. This is known as social proof. An empty store, in contrast, is negative social proof. Translate this to online shopping, and knowing how other shoppers have behaved makes us feel secure in our own decisions. If we know that people like us have added to basket, bought an item, or given it 5 stars, we are more likely to trust that the product or service we’ve bought is right for us, and, less likely to change our mind. Research from the US shows that reviews are a key part of the path to purchase: Taggstar is a social proof messaging software for the largest eCommerce stores. It works by making your online shop look busy and popular. To coin a phrase, to encourage other shoppers to follow the crowd. Why Use Social Proof in eCommerce Marketing? We’ve worked with some of our customers to aggregate trend data across all of their international sites, so that they’re able to show product volumes and popular items according to all their global customers. This establishes a new local site, and helps kick off sales from day one. Read how Missguided did it here. If you aren’t showing social proof on your website, think back to that empty shop analogy. Your customers are likely to be following the crowd to the shop that looks busy instead. To add Taggstar to your website, get in touch today.
Social Proof: The Psychology Behind The Science (And 4 Reasons You Should Use it in eCommerce Marketing)
Empty shop. Busy shop. Which do you think is more popular? Read about what makes social proof influence sales, and how eCommerce sites can use it to improve their conversion rate.
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