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How to Incorporate Social Proof on Every Page of Your Website http://ift.tt/2evc65E Every online marketer knows that the Internet is an insanely skeptical place. It’s with good reason. Let’s be honest. Our space is littered with faux gurus and hyped up promises. You’ve seen them: “Make $500 000 with your first online course launch.” “Give me 15 minutes, and I’ll give you a profit generating machine!” Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, but you get the drift. Your prospects don’t know you well, and they don’t trust you yet. Social proof can change that. Think about the last time you bought a product without looking at the reviews first or without a recommendation from someone you know. Never happened, right? That should give you an idea of how integral social proof is to easing the minds of your customers. There is one question I get asked a lot. People want to know where on their websites they should display proof elements. The answer? Everywhere. Social proof should be splattered across your website. The key is to have the right kind of proof on the right pages. In this post, I’ll describe different types of social proof you can use and where on your website you can display them for maximum effect. Sound good? Let’s start. What is social proof?Do you know what the herd mentality is? It describes the way people are influenced by their peers to behave in a certain manner. That’s the basis of social proof. You see a bunch of people doing the same thing. You assume it’s the right thing to do. You do it too. Now, it’s way more comforting to believe we are all independent thinkers and we take actions on our own volition. Not true. Of course, the pack mentality doesn’t apply to every area of life. In business, however, you can bet it’s always at play. And that’s good news. It means you have the methods to ease your prospects’ anxieties and push them to make that final purchase decision. Best of all, social proof makes your customers feel confident about their decisions. Here’s the thing though. Not all proof elements are created equal. Some are more persuasive and impactful than others. Even the placement of that proof can have an impact. I’ll give you the most compelling types and ways you can incorporate them so you have proof elements on every single page. 1. Case studiesThis is by far one of the most powerful types of social proof. Why? It tells a complete story (if done well). And as you know, a success story is the best kind of story in this case. With case studies, you get a holistic view of your customer’s journey. You get to learn:
Does your case study need all these elements? Yes. It’s way more effective than simply having a customer say
There is a place for that kind of proof, and I’ll talk about that later. Where should you display case studies? They’re so powerful they can stand on their own. I always recommend having a separate page to feature your success stories. Like this: Here’s another example: Ramit Sethi executes this kind of social proof perfectly in his GrowthLab: While you can have these on a separate page, you should also include product- or service-specific case studies on your sales pages. You can do it in a number of ways:
These are just a few ideas. 2. Customer testimonialsThese are much easier to put together than case studies. Simply ask people with whom you’ve worked (and have had success) to write you a testimonial. Like this: Unlike with case studies, I don’t recommend you hoard all your testimonials on one page. Why? A testimonial doesn’t tell a whole story. That means it won’t have much impact standing on its own. It needs to be backed by something else. Here are some ideas for placement:
I recently stumbled upon a site that places testimonials in a sidebar. This way, they appear on every website page. It’s genius! 3. Strength in numbersYou’ve likely seen this one used a lot. It works. The most common use of this type of social proof is to have social sharing buttons on your blog posts. It tells people this is a quality blog post that should be read. It has the same effect as comments. Check out this post by Brian Dean: It has 871 comments! Now, that’s social proof. Here’s the thing though. Be aware of negative social proof. If you have zero comments and zero social shares on a post, you may want to keep it to yourself. Most social sharing tools allow you to shut off displaying the share count if it doesn’t clear a certain threshold. Some other ways you can show strength in numbers:
Displaying subscriber count is powerful proof. Considering how important list-building is in business, if you have the right numbers, make use of them.
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