Transcript
Speaker: You're listening to The Brands That Book Show, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs who want practical tips and strategies to build engaging brands and craft high converting websites. We're your hosts, Davey and Krista, co -founders of a brand and website design agency specializing in visual brand design and show it websites. You're listening to The Brands That Book Show.
Speaker: Alright, so in today's episode, I am diving into five ways to incorporate social proof into your website. Over the years, we've found that social proof is one of the most key elements to add to your website, to increase sales, encourage inquiries, and just make more money in your business.
Speaker: Because in order to make that sale, you first have to establish trust. People only want to do business with businesses that they trust. And one of the best ways to establish us trust is to show that other people trust you, and we do that through social proof. By including social proof throughout your website in a variety of different formats, you break down the barriers between your potential client or customer and you.
Speaker: So think about it this way. I bet the last time that you are on Amazon, you went before buying a brand new product that you've never tried before. One of the first thing you did was scroll down and look at the reviews. We all want to know that a product is going to do what it says it's going to do. And one of the best ways to figure that out is to look and see what other people are saying about that product. I often search by four star reviews and the number of reviews on Amazon. And sometimes I won't even buy a product unless it has a certain number of reviews and stars.
Speaker: And so you can bet that if people are doing that for really cheap products like paper towels or everyday things on Amazon, they are certainly doing it with businesses that they don't know and especially products that cost significantly more than 17 .99 paper towels. So let's walk through five different ways to establish trust on your web website. One quick way to add social proof to your website is to show off logos of any big brands that have featured your work or that you have worked with. This helps people know that a recognizable name, a recognizable entity, trusts you enough to either feature or publish your work or publish your blog post or share about you in some way or actually pay money to you.
Speaker: A great example of this is a website that we recently did for speech coach Mike Pacchione. He has worked with brands like Nike and Chick -fil -A and we have these logos friend and center as well because it's a pretty big deal that he's worked with all of these other businesses and so that makes the end user as well as other companies more likely to hire him. Before seeing anything else on his website you know that he is credible and trustworthy because these other businesses have already worked with him.
Speaker: Another great way to establish trust on your business and show off social proof is to share any websites or publications that have featured your work or writing. So if you've never had your work published, this is a great time to submit your work to be published because by having your work published, you're establishing authority through these other businesses.
Speaker: It takes some time to submit your work to be featured and it might take a little bit for your work to actually be picked up by a publication. But once you have been picked up, it's really easy to add the links or even the logos to those publications on your website. And again, that is going to establish trust.
Speaker: Imagine that you're a couple looking for a wedding vendor and you see that a particular photographer has had their work featured in Martha Stewart weddings in Vogue and Brides magazine and Al and you see another photographer who doesn't have any of that on their website. You're probably going to lean a little bit more in favor of that photographer whose work has been featured in all those places because you know that these big publications trust them enough and vouch for the quality of their work enough to feature them in print or online. The third way to add social proof to your website is through testimonials. When you think of social proof, testimonials are probably the first thing that come to mind. And so when I say testimonial, I need a short snippet of text from a PATH client or maybe even a peer within your industry that speaks to the merits of working with you.
Speaker: And if you're just getting started and you don't have any testimonials yet, you might consider doing a few free or low -cost projects like within a certain scope of time and your talent um in exchange for testimonials just because having those testimonials on your website can really go a long way towards building trust.
Speaker: And if you have testimonials, I would make sure that you're putting them throughout their website and not just housing them on their own page called testimonials. um Because it's not likely that people are going to go and navigate to that page that just has testimonials. They're kind of going to think in their head, oh, that's biased. They're just going to have the best ones there.
Speaker: But if they can't help but reading those testimonials as they're scrolling through your homepage and your different services pages and even your about page, it's going to be hard for them to deny the amazing reality that is working with you. The fourth way to incorporate social proof on your website is through an affiliate program. So this isn't going to work for all types of businesses, but if you do have the type of business that lends itself towards having people who refer to you in exchange for a credit or a discount or in our case we give people a percentage of the products that they sell it can really go a long way towards establishing trust. This type of social proof is a win -win for everyone because not only are people linking to you and promoting you
Speaker: they also get a commission in exchange for sharing about you. So people are more inclined to say really positive things because they're hoping for a sale as well. So if you have really happy past clients, this could be something that you might incorporate in your business.
Speaker: And then the fifth way to incorporate social proof is one of my favorite ways, and that is through social proof popups. So we do this in two different ways on our website. So on pages like our webinar signup page, we use a app called Proof. It's useproof .com. I'm not an affiliate for them. I just really like the product. And it connects to our webinar software and the Rizapir integration. And whenever somebody signs up for our webinar, it adds a little pop up. So it's easy for people to go on that page and see that a whole lot of other people have signed up for this webinar and that it's not just like
Speaker: a weird, random thing that they stumble across that other people are interested in it, other people are signing up, and that other people will be at that live class as well. So I think that goes a long way towards increasing our conversions. We also use that same proof app on the sales page for our course, and I think it did a lot to drive sales for that course when we opened it up earlier this year.
Speaker: We also use a WooCommerce social proof plugin on our website because we have a WooCommerce shop, and whenever somebody makes a purchase on our site, it adds a little pop up. I know that I love seeing those little pop ups when I'm on like clothing sites, for example, because it gives me an idea of what other people are interested in, which is especially helpful if I come onto a site and there are a lot of products and I'm not really sure where to go, and I just kinda wanna know, what are other people interested in? like What are the good things that I should check out here?
Speaker: And so I think that those social proof pop -ups do a lot to drive sales on certain types of websites. All right, so to wrap up, social proof is a powerful driving factor in conversions and sales, especially in an online world where you're not face to face with a customer. And as you design your website, make sure that you are including social proof everywhere that you can, and but without it being too overwhelming.
Speaker: because the sooner you establish credibility and authority and trust on your website, the sooner you're going to make the sale.
Speaker: thanks for tuning in to the brands of bookshel if you enjoyed this episode please consider subscribing leaving a review on apple podcast and sharing this episode with others for show notes and other resources head on over to daveingrisa dot
