[6] Shopify Social Proof Apps that Increase Conversions
Social proof is about more than just popups. Value driven from social events can be done in a variety of ways. While popups often convert at a high clip for some merchants, they don’t or won’t for others. So it’s important to understand your industry as well as customer base and how they will interact with the tools you have at your disposal.
Importance of A/B Testing
What is A/B testing? A/B Testing is method comparing two versions of a store. Merchants are able to see exactly what is engaging their customers and what isn’t.
The vast majority of social proof applications do not offer built in A/B testing. This leaves merchants up to their own devices. Some offer directions on how to A/B test using third party services, but that can be an added cost, extra confusion, and more work.
No Store Has a Completely Homogeneous Customer Base
So filter your social proof and urgency tools! If a customer is at a different stage in the sales funnel or from a different place in the world they likely aren’t going to be engaged the same way as others. Some Shopify social proof applications actually offer the ability to filter your traffic allowing merchants to present tools to segmented traffic. No customer is the same, so don’t treat them that way.
Real Data is Your Champion
We live in an era of fake news. Consumers are becoming more and more skeptical when making purchases. Consumers trust brands less and other consumers more. The law of diffusion of innovation suggestions that the early majority won’t touch technology that they haven’t seen been used by someone else – the early adopters. So if every new store owner skips the early adopter step, we will not only see less successful stores but we would also see consumers move away from online shopping.
Present and promote real events that occur in your store. Social proof can have the opposite of the intended effect when the customer knows the data to be untrue. There is also a reason why social proof is valuable for merchants – It lets potential customers know that there are people around them making the same decision as them. If people aren’t actually purchasing those products and the customer finds out, that could result in a loss of sale as well as tarnish your store’s brand. Be proud of every little event that occurs within your store.
Brands Doing Social Proof Right
These brands aren’t necessarily using any of the apps below or even on Shopify. However, they are leveraging social proof in very unique ways.Any Shopify store owner could potentially do the same and utilize one of the apps which developed by app developers to create a similar experience.
Tentree
Tentree has always been at the forefront for gaining popularity as a result of their social validation. They plant trees for every product sold and have a counter of the amount of trees sold. Buy a product and you get to be a part of the movement. They also present their social shares in a very visually appealing but subtle way.
Knockaround
Knockaround has a great sunglasses brand. They have a product page counter and a social proof popup that provides social validation for all of their different designs. This encourages customers to buy more than one design.
NakedWInes
NakedWines is one of the most socially driven stores I’ve seen. It is a wine store and subscription service that uses reviews to find you the perfect wine for you. They also have a members only group called “Angels” that ensure they capture their early adopters and leverage them to support new wine brands as well as boost sales.
Each of these brands utilize social proof in such a way that it is essential to their success as a company. How can you not support a business that has planted over 20 million trees? The feeling of doing good far outweighs the negative feeling of spending money. In NakedWines case you’re able to feel like a wine connoisseur while getting some pretty sweet deals on your favorite vino.
There are over 30 Shopify apps that can create or use some type or aspect of Social Proof. We couldn’t look at them all so we reviewed some of the most used and best options out there.
Fomo
Fomo is one of the most used social proof applications. They have a massive list of integrations and prebuilt themes based on the time of year and other factors. Fomo has easily one of the most comprehensive popup tools and they only really focus on that. They offer the ability to directly add to cart from a Fomo notification. Fomo also has a publisher network that gives merchants a chance to send and receive traffic via their popups, essentially creating offsite social proof. The team at Fomo believe this will be a disruptor to the advertising industry and ultimately a solution to increasingly less ROI for online advertising. The downside to Fomo is that they don’t offer native A/B testing and they only offer a Popup feature which as we know may not convert for certain stores. They have a beautiful and easy to use user interface that gives you full control over your campaigns. They are the gold standard for social proof popups as they were the first in the space.
Trial – 7 Days
Price – $29.99 – $199.99/month
Fera
Fera is a social proof and urgency app that ensures higher conversion rates for eCommerce merchants. They are relatively new, but they’re constantly adding new features. Fera offers arguably the best backend for merchants, allowing them to see a variety of different data points. There are a host of tools that merchants can use to get more sales – Social Proof Feeds, Social Proof Popups, Product Detail Counters, Product List Counters, Checkout Timers, Promo Bars, and Get It By Timers. Each one of these tools have the power to boost conversions, but Fera understands that not all stores are the same. They offer display conditions and A/B testing to create completely optimized campaigns. Some of the display conditions that can be used to filter your traffic are: Session time, Geographic Region (great for GDPR conscious stores), Current day of year, time of day, products, and they seem to keep adding more. Fera’s pricing has a freemium option for any store that makes less than $1,000 per month. They also offer completely free integration, customization, and optimization support. Fera is basically a conversion rate optimization retainer in a box.
Trial – 30 Days
Price – Free – $299.99/month
SpurIT
SpurIT’s Social Proof app allows users to simply add social proof and urgency data points to their product pages. This will add a certain level of urgency / social validation to any product. They also offer users the ability to give fake or real data. There is a lot of controversy over this subject. I always believe its most important to present real data, even if you don’t have much – be proud of all of your customers. There are limited tools to use, no display filtering, and no A/B testing. I also found their user interface to be a little distracting. They have a chatbot at the bottom right of the screen that has an “SEO” title not related to social proof and urgency. That said, it’s definitely one of the easiest Shopify apps to install and get up and running.
Trial – 30 days
Price – $8.95/month
Sales Rocket
Sales Rocket touts an all in one urgency and social proof Shopify app. They offer a scarcity urgency tool as well as a social proof popups. Merchants are able to customize how their popup looks. One fantastic feature is their inventory scarcity progress bar. A lot of studies suggest that progress bars convert at a pretty high rate. This was also one of the better apps in terms of presenting well to a mobile user. Progress bars are hard to do in mobile without taking up too much of the display. These guys seem to avoid any of those issues. Much like some of the other applications, Sales Rocket will provide design customizations free of cost to any of their customers. Sales Rocket doesn’t offer much outside of that, but they clearly do scarcity fairly well.
Trial – 5 Days
Price – $6.95/month
Scarcify
Scarcify offers an in depth toolbox of features that can help boost conversions through urgency and social proof. They have promo bars, inventory countdown timers, currency converters, and social proof popups. Scarcify allows for some customizations, which I would recommend as their default templates don’t have the most eye-catching designs. I’m also not sure how currency converters really relate to social proof and urgency. My guess is that potential customers feel as though they are being support locally. They don’t have display conditioning as well as A/B testing, but do offer a good variety of tools to utilize.
Trial – 14 days
Price – $9.99/month
Envy
Envy offers a social proof popup for most recent sales. It is a white labeled solution, so the popups don’t have any branding on them. In addition, they have a variety of templates that merchants can utilize. Envy has a recommendation feature where the application suggests products you may be interested in via the popup. They also allow merchants to be able to display at certain times – the starting phase to display conditions at filtering. Apart from a simple popup feature, Envy leaves a lot on the table. However, their price is fairly palatable at just $1.90/month and they don’t have one negative review on the app store. Give them a shot if your budget is next to nothing.
Trial – 21 Days
Price – $1.90/month
Which Shopify Social Proof App is Right for you?
There are so many apps out there that can provide some form of social proof value. None of them are the same and offer other value outside of just being a popup. That said, it will come down to your price point, the tools that work for your customers, your appetite for optimization, and your need for automation. We largely ranked these based on the features offered in order to improve conversion rates by utilizing social proof. Social proof doesn’t work for every customer, you should be able to prove what is working and what isn’t.
There isn’t a doubt in my mind social proof applications will need to add more than just those tools in order to succeed. In Fera’s case they are trying to improve conversion rate optimization by offering A/B testing and dynamic display conditions. For Fomo they are attempting to solve the issue of online advertising by cross-sending traffic to merchants within their network.
I will say, Fera is definitely leading the charge in terms of social proof tools and the optimization backend. My assumption is they are going to move into an in depth conversion rate optimization platform that will give merchants a single pane of glass to increase and optimize sales conversion.
