In this blog post I’m going to take you through the types of social proof you can show on a WordPress site. This list is not exhaustive, but will serve as a good indicator of the types of social proof you should include on your site.

What Is Social Proof

I turn to my favourite virtual assistant, Chat GPT and asked the question “What Is Social Proof”…

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where individuals look to the actions and behaviours of others to guide their own decisions and actions, especially in situations where they may be uncertain or unfamiliar. It is a form of social influence that is based on the premise that people tend to follow the crowd or mimic the choices of others, believing that such behaviour is indicative of the correct course of action.

In the context of business and marketing, social proof is often utilized to build trust and credibility. It serves as evidence that others have had positive experiences with a product, service, or brand, influencing potential customers to make similar choices. Common forms of social proof include customer testimonials, reviews, ratings, endorsements from influencers, and visible statistics such as the number of users, clients served, or products sold.

Social proof is a powerful tool because it taps into the innate human tendency to seek validation and confirmation from others. By showcasing positive experiences and feedback, businesses can leverage social proof to enhance their reputation, increase trust, and ultimately influence consumer behaviour in their favour.

In the case of a WordPress site, it means adding content to your site that can help potentials customers or clients buy from you.

Why You MUST Have Social Proof On Your Site

If you are working online and never get to meet your customers or clients face to face, often times all they have to judge you is your website.

Anyone can build a website, why are you trustworthy enough to work with, that’s why we add social proof to the mix.

You may move from a website lead to a face to face call (I always try to do this with new clients), but that initial hurdle of trusts needs to be jumped over to start the conversation.

Here are my favourite types of social proof.

Testimonials

The first type of social proof I tell everyone to add to their site are testimonials.

Ask the people who have bought your products or services if they are happy to give a testimonial, add these to your site using a plugin or the testimonials widget on your theme and prominently display them. I’ve got 80 testimonials on my site at the time of publishing this post. Don’t be shy, make asking for a testimonial part of your process when working with a client.

As a bonus check out this post about automating the collection of testimonials.

Case Studies

Writing content for your site that is a case study is a brilliant way to add social proof that you can do “your thing”.

Writing about your process to show how you accomplished X then sending that to your list or showing it prominently on your site shows potential and returning customer you know exactly how to do sometime and that you have a process to do it.

Start documenting those interesting projects you have worked on and show them off on your website..

Number Counters

One of my favourites and often overlooked type of social proof is a glitzy number counter that counts up to an impressive number showing your numbers.

Check out my about page, the social proof I have on my numbers counter is how many clients I have worked with over the years and the number of projects I have completed, I’ve grabbed this from my accounting software.

Your Lead Magnet

The lead magnet you create is also a great way to show social proof you know your stuff.

Getting someone to download your eBook for free or view your training that you give away in return for contact details is a great way to show you can do your thing at very little risk to a potential customer or client.

My own lead magnet my AI WordPress Developer for example gives people free code BUT it shows I can code up an integration between chat GPT and WordPress cementing my skills as a developer and providing social proof I can code.

WooCommerce: Product Reviews

Let’s move onto some e-commerce specific types of social proof and my favourite plugin WooCommerce, other eComm plugins have similar options so check their documentation.

Activating the product reviews section of WooCommerce is great social proof. I like to make the settings “only allow reviews from confirmed purchasers” active so only people who have legitemalte bought the product can leave a review.

Consider automating the collection of review with a plugin such as shop magic which can send out emails with “bribes” of a coupon of a review ^{AI generated content}.

WooCommerce: Number Of Products Sold

Another way to add social proof to your WooCommerce store is to show the number of products that have been sold on your single product pages.

There are plugins to do this, but I’ve just asked my AI WordPress Developer to knock up a code snippet that will do this for you.

```php
//prefix the functions with nm_
function nm_get_total_sales() {
global $product;
$total_sales = get_post_meta( $product->get_id(), 'total_sales', true );
echo '<p class="product-total-sales">Total Sales: ' . $total_sales . '</p>';
}

add_action( 'woocommerce_single_product_summary', 'nm_get_total_sales', 30 );
```

Here, we are using get_post_meta() function to retrieve the total sales of a product. 'total_sales' is a WooCommerce's product meta key that holds the number of total sales for each product.

The number (30) in the add_action function represents the priority. The lower the number the earlier it inserts. The priority for add-to-cart button in WooCommerce is 30. So using 30 will put our function right after the button.

Next, we add some custom CSS to your theme's style.css file to style the 'Total Sales' text:

```css
.product-total-sales {
font-size: 18px;
font-weight: bold;
color: #333;
margin-top: 10px;
}

WooCommerce: X Just Bought

You’ve probably seen these popups as your browse the internet, Custom X has just bought Y from Location Z

This is social proof that people are buying the products advertised on the store you are currently visting.

Check out this plugin as an exmple: Live Sales Notification / Fake Sales Notification, please, please don’t show fake sales notifications, that’s anti-social proof and makes you a scammer!

Wrap Up – Types Of Social Proof You Can Show On A WordPress Site

So I’ve shown you seven type of social proof you can add to your WordPress site, there are others of course, but these are the types I like to add.

Let me know in the comments if I have missed any of your favourites.

If you need help implementing social proof on your WordPress site get in touch.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash