Best social proof plugins for your WordPress website — 4 powerful plugins
It’s a Saturday night, and you’re walking down the street for a fantastic weekend dinner. There are eight restaurants in a line where six have people eating, and two are completely empty. Where do you prefer to go? The ones that have people in it or the completely empty ones?
You and most people would choose the ones that have people in it without even thinking much. Is it just a coincidence that people would like to try the ones that have customers in them? No! It is because of the psychological phenomena known as social proof.
What is social proof?
Simply put, social proof is a proven concept that individuals follow the masses’ actions. Its human psychology to follow a particular behaviour if masses are following it.
Let’s talk about the above example again. You would prefer the restaurant having customers because you assume that they would have excellent food to serve or the empty ones aren’t as good. Now that’s social proof!
Social proof is not a new concept. There are many studies conducted like the Solomon Asch conformity experiment that proved this human behaviour.
What is the importance of social proof in digital marketing?
The restaurant example I’ve given shows how much social proof can be effective if applied to the online setting. When you are shopping in the store physically, you have an option to compare the product directly and choose the better one. You can feel the quality of the products or see the fits and cuts.
However, when it comes to shopping online, you have two options either to trust the seller or to rely on the opinion of the masses. Say you want to buy a shirt online. Like most people, you would also consider the reviews and other persons’ experience before checking out. It’s not only you, but around 92% of the online customers look at the reviews of a product before buying one.
There is a study that states that 50% of the people watch the reviews of a product they intend to buy from their smartphones even when shopping in stores.
Source: https://www.bigcommerce.com/what-influences-a-purchase-decision-infographic/
In fact, customers trust product reviews 12 times more than the sales copy provided by the sellers.
How can social proof be used in marketing?
There are many ways social proof can be used in your marketing plans. Some tactics are stated below.
Positive reviews
What mattress would you prefer to buy from Amazon, the one with 4.9 ratings or the one with 2? Reviews are the most widely familiar form of social proof; therefore, they affect customers’ buying decisions the most.
Around 88% of people trust the reviews on the selling website as much as recommendations. In fact, people do not only count on the first review, but they check 2–3 review websites before deciding to purchase.
Source: https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/
So it’s up to you how to use the positive reviews in your website’s favour. If you got a good rating on some review websites, use it in your marketing and add it to your website. The takeaway lesson here is to try to get as many positive reviews as possible, and when you get enough, don’t be shy to flaunt them.
Testimonials
Just saying your product or service is excellent, won’t impress the customer more than a testimonial from a person who tried your product or service and has a positive experience. The reason why testimonials are so effective is that they add value to your product.
Endorsements from celebrities and influencers
Customers trust public opinions more than the words from the brands; similarly, words of appreciation from an influential person have a more significant effect than the public’s view.
Influencer marketing is proving to be very profitable as businesses are making almost $6.50 of revenue for each $1 spent on influencer marketing.
Social media following
People follow the crowd; it’s human nature. When they see a group of people doing something, they are likely to join the bandwagon. This is how your social media accounts support your business. People are likely to join when they see a large number is already a member. This will increase your business exposure and hence the conversions.
Recognitions and awards
People tend to buy products from the ones they trust. Just saying that your brand is trustworthy is certainly not enough; you need a shred of evidence to support your statement. That is why recognition and awards are an impeccable form of social proof. The more recognisable the recognition source is, the more value it will add to your business.
What is a social proof WordPress plugin?
WordPress is unarguably the most popular CMS, and many of the e-commerce websites are made using it. Every e-commerce site requires social proof. These social proof WordPress plugins help increase your website conversions by displaying the recent sale notifications to your customers.
Let’s have a look at the best social proof WordPress plugin.
Top 4 powerful Social Proof plugins
WiserNotify
People usually get influenced by what other people have to say about your business. WiserNotify performs this task for you. It displays potential customers what other people are doing on your site. It picks up live visitor activities from your website and shows them to the visitors.
Real-time notification preview
This plugin has a pixel code install, which provides you access to live visitors’ feeds and then gives you a real-time preview of notifications coming from Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
Easy to use
WiserNotify is simple to use. It displays your visitors with the latest offers, along with video pop-ups and timers and a creative Social Proof Fomo (fear of missing out) on a deal to boost up your website’s conversions.
60 notification templates
With 60 notification templates, you can easily customise according to your brand image. It can help you control the image shown, shape background colour, add animations and a lot more. They have templates like visitor count, signups within a SaaS signup flow, and newsletter sign ups. Furthermore, sales counts, download counts and much more. If you feel highly creative and don’t want to use the templates or widgets, you can make your own custom notifications, but do yourself the favour and check out their widgets as well, they have widgets for almost everything.
Add call to actions
Lastly, it can also add a call to actions to point the visitor exactly where you want them to go. You can even choose when and how your notifications should be displayed so that you can target your potential audience with real-time data.
WiserNotify offers four packages, free, startup, standard, and premium. Furthermore they have an agency plan if you need that much.
Verdict
Using WiserNotify, you can increase your visitor’s engagement. It helps establish the visitor’s trust in your website. With prompt and timely notifications and a catchy template, WiserNotify is surely worth a try.
TrustPulse
Online selling and buying all depend upon the trust of the buyer’s side. They physically cannot see and feel your product and depends mostly on the reviews and ratings. Therefore, it won’t be surprising that almost 98% of the visitors leave the site without making a purchase. Obviously, that’s discouraging to know that many people do not buy anything visiting your website.
TrustPulse has come up with the best solution for this. Along with showing the real-time traffic to the visitors to build up the trust, TrustPulse uses a powerful FOMO (fear of missing out) tactic to drive conversions.
Let’s dig deeper into the features offered by TrustPulse.
On-fire notifications
This feature allows your website visitors to see the real-time actions your other visitors do. This makes your website more trustworthy. Also, it gives major FOMO to the visitors too. This feature provides an impression like ‘Oh, this piece is selling like hotcakes, grab it before it goes out of stock.’.
Smart targeting
TrustPulse uses the smart target feature to display the notification to your potential customers just when they need to see it. TrustPulse basically allows you to control the timing and targeting rules which effectively boost your conversion rate.
Real-time events tracking
TrustPulse notifies all the real-time actions happening on your website like purchases, registrations, form submission, etc., you can even display these notifications to your visitors to gain their trust.
Analytics
Tracking your progress is essential to know and target your goals. TrustPulse notifies which pages or posts of your website is generating the highest conversions and tracks your progress.
Compatibility
When it comes to compatibility with CMS systems, no one matches TrustPulse. Not only with WordPress, but TrustPulse also integrates with Drupal, Squarespace, Magento, etc.
Pricing
TrustPulse offers four packages.
Verdict
TrustPulse can be easily termed as the market leader in the social proof game. The most innovative WordPress plugin is trusted by many and for all the right reasons. The efficient social proof strategies of TrustPulse will prove beneficial in increasing the conversion rate.
ProveSource
ProveSource exactly does what its name tells. ProveSource is one of the most impeccable WordPress social proof plugins with the most robust features that can help your website generate decent sales and conversion rates.
ProveSource connects automatically to the WordPress website and displays sales pop notifications, turning your website into a more dynamic place and hence will attract more visitors’ attention.
Certain striking features of ProveSource are discussed below.
Use images in pop-up notifications
Pictures catch more attention than words; therefore, ProveSource adds the customer’s picture too in the recent sale display, creating more sense of trust among the potential customers.
Page visits
ProveSource also displays how many customers are on the same page or posts at the same time. It also displays the stock amount of the product and how many visitors have looked at the product creating a sense of popularity around the product.
Easy installation
This WordPress plugin takes seconds to install and works great. All you need to do is activate the plugin, add it on the dashboard, follow the setup wizard, and voilà, your plugin is set up for success using WordPress social proof.
Time settings
ProveSource allows you to set your notification time and date. You can even control how frequently you want those notifications to get displayed. Sometimes too many notifications annoy the visitor and can have a negative impact.
Mobile-friendly
Most of the shopping is done using smartphones these days; therefore, it is essential for WordPress social proof plugins to be compatible with smartphones along with PCs and laptops. ProveSource understands the need of the time and shows mobile-friendly sales notifications for the customers visiting your website using their phones.
Multi-linguistic
ProveSource provides 15 different languages English, French, Hindi, Danish, Hebrew, etc., to show notifications in. This feature is beneficial for e-commerce websites who have a target audience all around the globe.
Integrates with various apps
ProveSource seamlessly integrates with various CMS systems like WordPress, Cloudflare, Squarespace, etc.
Pricing
ProveSource offers three packages.
Verdict
The most attractive part of this social proof WordPress plugin is the basic free version so that you can test this plugin’s efficiency. This plugin has a good name in the market and for all the right reasons. You can customise your social proof notifications using the innovative templates this plugin offers.
Beeketing
Beeketing is basically an e-commerce platform rather than just a social proof plugin. Social proof is one of the features that Beeketing offers. The main concern of Beeketing is to create a marketing campaign using automation for your online store.
Display recent sales notifications
When customers see what others are purchasing in the store, it motivates them to make a purchase too.
Beeketing allows your customers to see real-time action like recent sales on your website, and this increases the conversions by creating a sense of FOMO amongst the visitors.
More than just a plugin
Beeketing is basically a marketing automation tool that would help your visitors turn into potential customers. This platform is backed by AI that tracks your visitors instantly. After the visitor lands on your site, this automation app finds ways to convert them into buying customers.
Various built-in features
With more than 10 built-in features like Sales Pop, Better Coupon Box, Mailbox Email Marketing etc. Beeketing efficiently analyses your customer’s behaviour and personal interests. It then sends e-mails, pop ups, social proof notifications and various other means to the visitors. This makes your visitor eventually buy your product.
Pricing
The pricing of Beeketing is drastically different to it’s competitors. At Beeketing you work with apps. An app can be “Sales Pop”, which is one type of notification. They have at the moment 8 apps, whereas 5 of them are free, it’s a great way to get started cheap.
Verdict
Beeketing is a comprehensive collection of marketing tools that helps online stores to boost up their conversion rates. The social proof plugin is also a part of this collection; therefore, if you have a Beeketing registration, you won’t require a separate social proof plugin.
Conclusion
You might be thinking, why isn’t Notificationx on the list? Well, Notificationx is a great tool, however being a great tool doesn’t mean it’s a perfect fit for me. I’ve used Notificationx, and it doesn’t fit with the needs I have, it’s too complex and has too many disturbing features. Furthermore, I don’t find it customisable enough, compares to WiserNotify.
Online selling requires credibility, and this credibility is what social proof plugins provide. Social proof is basically a psychological phenomenon which tells that people follow other people to decide what is right and what is wrong. It’s like accepting the idea that if numerous people like something, it has to be good and vice versa.
This very human psychology is used in online marketing strategies to boost up sales and increase conversion rates. Social proof plugins play with this human psychology of following masses.
If we talk about which social proof WordPress plugin is best, then my first choice has to be TrustPulse because of its innovative features and affordable price. Talking about affordability, Beeketing is free to use, but this is not a fully-featured social proof plugin but part of a bigger software.
WiserNotify and ProveSource are some other names that provide impeccable social proof services to increase your site’s sales and bring credibility to it. WiserNotify is quite new, but they have done a ton of stuff so far, and are developing fast.
If none of these fits you, you can check out WPfomify. It’s another great option, they brand themselves as being the best social proof plugin for WordPress, but in the end it comes down to whether WPfomify fits your needs or not. WPfomify is a great plugin with great options, and a lot of pre-made templates, but check out WPFomify if you feel you need another plugin to compare with. Let me know if I should go in more depth with WPFomify, and create an analysis of their product, features, pricing and comparing WPFomify to its competitors.
