14 Social Proof Software Solutions to Increase Conversion Rates

What Is Social Proof?

Social proof is a psychological concept. It’s based on the idea that people tend to do the same as large groups. They believe that if many people are doing something, it must be the right thing to do.

That’s why people tend to subconsciously just replicate other people’s actions.

This brings us to social proofing and the need for the best social proof software tools. Social proofing is a marketing technique specifically beneficial for online stores.

Examples of Effective Social Proof

• Customer Reviews: Displaying customer reviews on your website shows real experiences from actual users. Highlighting both positive and constructive feedback can make your brand appear more genuine.
• Testimonials: Featuring testimonials from satisfied customers can provide persuasive evidence of your product’s value. Video testimonials can be especially impactful, as they add a personal touch.
• Influencer Endorsements: Collaborating with influencers who align with your brand can amplify your reach and add credibility. Followers trust their recommendations, making them more likely to convert.
• Social Media Mentions: Sharing user-generated content or showcasing social media mentions from happy customers can create a sense of community and trust.
• Trust Badges and Certifications: Displaying badges from reputable organizations or certifications can reassure potential customers of your credibility and reliability.

How Does Social Proof Increase Conversions?

How exactly does the social proof mechanism work in favor of website conversions?

Building Trust and Credibility

One of the main reasons social proof works is that it builds trust and credibility. When potential customers see that others have had positive experiences with your product or service, they’re more likely to believe they will too. Trust is a key factor in the decision-making process, and social proof provides the evidence needed to foster it.

Reducing Perceived Risk

Another way social proof increases conversions is by reducing perceived risk. Making a purchase online can feel risky, especially if the customer is unfamiliar with your brand. Social proof mitigates this by showing that others have successfully used and enjoyed your product or service. This assurance lowers the barrier to conversion.

Enhancing Decision-Making

When faced with a decision, especially one involving a purchase, people often look for shortcuts to make the process easier. Social proof acts as a heuristic, simplifying the decision-making process. If many others have chosen your product and had a positive experience, potential customers are more likely to follow suit.

Creating a Sense of Urgency

Social proof can also create a sense of urgency. Limited-time offers or showcasing the number of people currently viewing a product can prompt faster decision-making. When potential customers see that others are actively engaging with your product, they may fear missing out, leading to quicker conversions.

Negative Social Proof

Yes, social proof can be negative, reducing trust, damaging your reputation, and preventing conversions.

Negative social proof occurs when social proof elements inadvertently convey a discouraging message, leading to reduced trust and lower conversion rates. Instead of promoting confidence, negative social proof can signal to potential customers that a product, service, or behavior is unpopular or ineffective.

Examples of Negative Social Proof

1. Low Engagement Indicators: Displaying low numbers of followers, likes, or reviews can suggest that your product or service is not popular.
2. Outdated Content: Featuring old testimonials or outdated statistics may indicate that your business is not current or active.
3. Negative Reviews: Highlighting negative customer reviews without context or responses can harm your reputation.
4. Scarcity Gone Wrong: Statements like “Only a few people have tried this product” can imply that it’s not trusted or valued by many.

You can prevent negative social proof by acquiring effective social proof tools.

What Kind of Companies Benefit from Social Proof Tools?

In short, all companies that have a website or an online presence will benefit from adding social proof to their marketing mix.

Customers in online stores don’t have access to the same commodities they do in their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Still, more than 90% of online customers want to research products before they buy them.

However, the COVID-19 crisis made social proofing important for all companies that actively do marketing and sales.

Showcasing social proof needs to be designed around modern customer needs. The aim of using social proof is to enable prospective customers to get a general idea about your brand and the specific products they’re looking for.

Establishing social proof encompasses different actions.

Different Ways to Do Social Proofing

• Share positive reviews
• Add Google review widget to website
• Publish customer testimonials on your home page and landing pages
• Collaborate with relevant influencers
• Use user generated content

Growing your social media following and facilitating social shares also counts towards your social proofing strategy success.

Now, since we got this out of our way, let’s see what are the best social proof tools to help you with it.

What Does Social Proof Software Do?

Social proof software is designed to enhance your marketing efforts by automatically displaying social proof elements on your website. This type of software helps build trust and credibility, encouraging potential customers to convert. Let’s dive into the key features and benefits of social proof software.

Key Features of Social Proof Software

Automated Review Collection and Display

Social proof software can collect and display customer reviews seamlessly. It pulls reviews from various sources like Google, Yelp, and Facebook, and presents them on your website in an attractive format. This automation saves you time and ensures a consistent stream of fresh, relevant reviews.

Real-Time Activity Notifications

Displaying real-time notifications of customer activities, such as recent purchases or sign-ups, can create a sense of urgency and trust. These notifications show visitors that others are engaging with your product or service, encouraging them to do the same.

Testimonials and Ratings

The software can showcase customer testimonials and ratings prominently on your site. Video testimonials, star ratings, and detailed written feedback help provide a well-rounded view of customer satisfaction.

Social Media Integration

Integrating social media feeds and mentions into your website allows you to leverage user-generated content. This feature showcases your active and engaged community, further building credibility.

Customizable Widgets

Social proof software often includes customizable widgets that can be tailored to fit your brand’s aesthetic. These widgets can display reviews, testimonials, trust badges, and real-time activity notifications in a way that complements your website’s design.

Analytics and Insights

Many social proof tools provide analytics and insights, helping you understand how social proof impacts your conversions. You can track which elements are most effective and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Benefits of Using Social Proof Software

Builds Trust and Credibility

By showcasing real customer feedback and activity, social proof software helps build trust and credibility with potential customers. This trust is crucial for encouraging conversions.

Increases Conversion Rates

Displaying social proof elements like reviews and real-time notifications can significantly boost conversion rates. Potential customers are more likely to take action when they see that others have had positive experiences.

Saves Time and Effort

Automating the collection and display of social proof saves you time and effort. You don’t have to manually gather and update reviews or testimonials, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.

Enhances User Experience

Social proof software can enhance the overall user experience on your website. Visually appealing widgets and real-time notifications make your site more engaging and dynamic.

Provides Valuable Insights

With analytics and insights, you can see the impact of social proof on your business. This data helps you refine your marketing strategies to maximize effectiveness.

What Kind of Social Proof Software Tools Can Help Me?

We recommend first going over your goals and wishes regarding collecting and using social proof. Ask yourself:

1. Do I have existing reviews on third-party sites? Where?
2. How often do I get new reviews on all platforms?
3. Do I have testimonials only on a case story page?
4. Do I have enough social proof?
5. How often would I like to get new reviews and testimonials?
6. Where would I like to use testimonials and reviews (landing pages, social media, home page, sales presentations, offers, brochures, …)

Answering these questions will help you decide on the best social proof software to streamline your social proofing activities.

Social Proof Tools Are Built Different

Not all social proof tools are the same. Some are more robust than others. Some of them are more convenient for beginners. Others require some technical knowledge and previous experience. They all have the same goal, inspiring trust with potential customers.

Instead of using multiple different tools to capture, store, and publish your customers’ shopping behavior, reviews, and testimonials, an efficient social proof software tool enable you to do it from one place.

They can also be used to handle social proof notifications. This helps you track and make use of additions to your positive social proof signals. Social proof notifications make keeping track of new developments as easy as possible.

Some social proof software help you count the number of total purchases on your online store and publish it in a visible location so that all visitors can see it. This is also called the fear of missing out

Other solutions help you capture customer reviews in real time or send an automated follow-up email after the purchase.

Regardless if you go for the best social proof software solution or a social proof app they all aim to boost conversions, engage customers in personal and meaningful conversation, gain more social proof from existing customers, collect customer reviews, and establish instant credibility.

14 Best Social Proof Software Tools to Consider

Below, you will find 14 social proof tool reviews so that you can make a smart decision and get the right tool for your business.

1. Trustmary

Trustmary is a social proof tool that helps you:

• Use all of your existing social proof effectively.
• Gather more social proof from your existing customers.
• Showcase reviews that matter with personalized widgets.
• Increase NPS and all other satisfaction metrics

Using Trustmary is easy. As an added bonus, it also integrates natively with your CRM.

You can gather feedback, get more social proof, and leverage the social proof on your website through one platform.

You can even import your existing reviews from different platforms, such as Google, G2, and Facebook.

Social proof can be in the form of reviews, testimonials, and even video testimonials. Nevertheless, websites with social proof always perform better than those without.

How to Add Social Proof on Landing Pages

Adding social proof near the CTAs on your site will have a massive impact on your conversions. You have the possibility to experience a 22,6% increase in your conversion rate just by using testimonials.

When you use Trustmary, you can choose from the social proof widget library:

• Testimonial and review widget
• Lead generation forms
• Lead generation pop-ups
• Social proof pop-ups

And you can even A/B and multivariate test which works the best for you! And use AI marketing tools to understand your audience better.

Free Social Proof up for Grabs!

Trustmary’s end-to-end solution enables ways of using social proof that is unmatched in the industry. It can easily be used as a plugin for WordPress and many other sites.

It’s best for companies who have an existing customer base and actively do lead generation from their website.

Trustmary is something you should consider if you have happy customers and are looking to create an automatic testimonials generator that’ll help you in lead generation. It has many tried and tested customer review templates ready to be used.

You can try it for free to get the first results. If you want to integrate it with your CRM, check the pricing to find the best fit for you.

2. Wisernotify

Wisernotify is a social proof marketing tool designed to spark real-time social proof, FOMO, and urgency with notifications that engage every visitor at just the right moments. The tool aims to increase conversions by prominently displaying social proof notifications that influence visitors.

Wisernotify’s automated notifications showcase dynamic social proof elements like:

• Recent purchases and sales activity from real users. This creates urgency by signaling interest and demand. When visitors see others buying, they want in on the action.
  
• Current users viewing or engaging with products. Showing active interest validates to visitors that they’re looking at popular, in-demand products.
  
• New newsletter subscribers and social media followers. More followers give the impression of an active, sought-after brand.
  
• Positive customer reviews and testimonials. Direct feedback builds credibility and trust in your business.
  
• Time-sensitive promotions expiring soon. Scarcity spurs visitors to buy before missing out on deals.

These notifications influence visitors by creating the fear of missing out. When a prospect sees others actively purchasing or engaging with your brand, they feel compelled to join in.

Wisernotify integrates seamlessly with e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce to deploy targeted social proof messages across your site and shopping journey.

Wisernotify offers a free plan as well as paid packages starting at $16/month.

3. SocialProve

SocialProve is a simple yet very efficient social proof tool. It brings familiarity to both your desktop and mobile website version. SocialProve enables you to display a real-time on-site notification to your visitors.

You have the freedom to choose what the notification will showcase.

For instance, you can tell your visitors how many people purchased a particular product in the last seven days or how many people are currently looking at the same web page. You can also notify visitors about recent orders.

SocialProve can help you fuel your social proofing strategy. It can be instrumental in creating a sense of urgency and fear of missing out.

It is a relatively easy tool to use. You can integrate it with your website without writing a single line of code. All you have to do is copy/paste SocialProve code anywhere in the <head> section of your home page. Once you do it, you can log into your SocialProve dashboard and easily create Live Activity, Activity Combo, Live Count, or Visitor Combo notifications.

The tool comes with out-of-the-box notification templates. However, if you choose, you can completely customize notifications, change language, enable visitors to disable notifications, and add links to your notifications.

It supports integration with several platforms and software, including Google Tag Manager, WordPress, Wix, Zapier, click funnels, etc.

There are three distinct SocialProve subscription plans, starting at $29 per month with 25,000 notifications.

5. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a software suite tailor to cater to the needs of online businesses. While the tool comes with a website builder and SEO tool, we will focus on the features that facilitate social proofing and target conversion rates.

Constant Contact email marketing feature can help you outshine the competition with great-looking and informative emails that arrive right when your potential customers need them.

The tool comes with an intuitive, drag-and-drop email editor. You can use it with minimal technical knowledge to create stunning emails.

Furthermore, Constant Contact offers marketing automation features. You can automate your email marketing to anything you can imagine ranging from welcoming new subscribers to setting smart triggers for email series.

When it comes to social proofing, Constant Contact does a marvelous job integrating social media marketing with email marketing. It comes with everything you need to expand your social media presence, grow your audience, and communicate trust to your target customers.

Constant Contact allows you to use paid ads on all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

You can share your email on a post-by-post basis too. The tool also comes with a convenient post scheduler so that you can prepare multiple posts in advance and schedule their publish times.

The reporting and analytics features are there as well. You can even directly respond to comments and messages from one place.

Constant Contact has two plans, with the price starting at $20 per month.

6. Thrive Ovation

If you are using WordPress, you should check out Thrive Ovation. It is an all-in-one WordPress plugin built to help you benefit from social proofing. Thrive Ovation enables you to develop and use a testimonials library for your online store.

Thrive Ovation comes with some compelling features. For instance, you can use positive customers’ comments and transform them into beautiful testimonials with one click.

The plugin automatically copies and pastes the customer name, picture, and comment into your testimonials library.

The plugin also has support for Twitter and Facebook. If one of your customers leaves a positive review or mentions your product or brand, Thrive Ovation can pick it up and import it into your library.

The testimonials library comes with some neat features too.

You can label the testimonials as Ready For Display, Awaiting Approval, Awaiting Review, Rejected, Untagged, No Picture, and more. It streamlines testimonials management.

The plugin also enables you to send the approval email to a customer and make sure the customer accepts the testimonial. This will help you add more authenticity to your website and appear even more trustworthy.

With Thrive Ovation, you can publish testimonials anywhere you want – homepage, product pages, or landing pages. There are several professionally designed testimonial templates, but you can customize them how you see fit.

The Thrive Ovation WordPress plugin will set you back $39 for a single site license.

7. Repuso

Repuso’s team decided to choose a simple ad line to promote the software “Collect social proof reviews, showcase on your website.” This line sums the Repuso to the point. It streamlines ratings, testimonials, and reviews collection and enables users to publish them on the website easily.

Repuso integrates with social media platforms. Once you connect it with your social media channels, it will automatically look for your brand and product mentions and grab the reviews for you.

When it comes to Repuso testimonials collection practices, you can also take matters into your own hands. It comes with handy widgets you can use to invite customers to leave their reviews on your website.

Every review that the tool collects ends up in the testimonials library, which you can access via the Repuso dashboard. You can publish reviews, ratings, and testimonials anywhere on your website.

You can do so inline or use a Repuso floating widget to make a testimonial prominent.

When it comes to integrations, Repuso doesn’t fall behind the competition. It supports integration with dozens of tools and platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Zendesk, iTunes, Google Play, and more.

Repuso comes with three subscription plans starting at $9 per month.

8. Crowdy.ai

Crowdy.ai is another in a wide array of social proof software tools built to help online-based businesses boost conversion rates and increase sales.

However, Crowdy.ai stepped up the social proofing game allowing its users to capture and publish video testimonials.

Crowdy.ai video testimonial feature is easy to use for both business owners and customers.

All you have to do is ask customers to record a video via a simple survey, and the tool will do the rest for you. You can also use it to find existing videos on Facebook or YouTube and publish them on your website.

To add authenticity to testimonials, Crowdy.ai integrates videos with the social media profiles of your customers.

It uses cutting-edge technologies to deliver videos to your website without slowing it down, thus ensuring a premium user experience.

Crowdy.ai also comes with a survey builder. Survey builder features a library of white-labeled testimonial forms and rating surveys. You can customize them to complement your website. The tool also allows you to record a video of your own and politely ask your customers to leave a review.

You can choose to display the ratings and testimonials anywhere on your website. The tool also has a rich snippet feature, which you can use to add ratings to Google search result pages.

Crowdy.ai offers three subscription plans starting at $7 per month.

9. Yotpo

Yotpo is a comprehensive, eCommerce marketing platform. It comes with many marketing features, and some of them are tailored to facilitate your social proofing efforts. Let’s start with reviews and ratings.

Yotpo leverages in-mail technology to help you launch a big scope review and rating collection initiative.

This feature will help you collect site and product reviews, product ratings and build helpful Q&A pages to boost conversion rates.

You will have access to pre-made email templates. You can customize all templates or build one from scratch to boost those email open rates and review completion rates.

Yotpo is very easy to use and integrating it with your website is a smooth ride.

Publishing reviews and ratings is a walk in a park. This social proof software allows you to publish reviews and ratings at key conversion points across your web pages and website. Whether you want it on the checkout page, category page, or product page, you can do it with a simple click.

The email dashboard offers instant insight into analytics.

You can see how many emails you’ve sent, how many of those were opened, and how many reviews and ratings you’ve managed to collect. Conversion dashboard will help you assess the success of your social proofing strategy.

Yotpo also comes with rich snippets, Google Seller Ratings, and Google Shopping Ads to help you boost your brand reach and drive more traffic to your website.

It offers free and premium plans. The price is only available for customers who request a demo on the official website.

10. Provely

Provely focuses on providing its users with real-time social proof. This social proof software excels at making things easy for end-users.

Adding Provely to your website is a two-step process. First, you need to create and design your pop-up widget. There are several presets you can choose from.

Widget customization is also straightforward.

You can choose a template and set the color scheme appropriate for your website. Once you create a widget, all you have to do is copy/paste the code to your website, and you are ready to go.

Provely offers two types of pop-ups – live and past data. Live pop-ups will showcase lead and sale notifications to website visitors in real-time.

Past data pop-ups will show historical sales and lead notifications. You can test both of them to discover which one is the better option for your specific marketing needs.

Users can also set location and frequency. The location allows you to display pop-ups only to visitors coming from specific geo-locations.

The frequency setting is pretty much self-explanatory. It will enable you to set how often you want the notifications to pop-up to a website visitor.

Provely offers three subscription plans with the price starting at $17 per month.

11. Shared Counts

Shared Counts is a simple WordPress plugin to help you communicate your online content’s credibility to your website visitors.

The plugin enables you to accomplish two things. First, it offers visitors a convenient way of sharing your content on social media. It supports all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Your visitors will be able to spread your word with a simple click on the appropriate button.

The second thing Shared Counts accomplishes is social proof via Share Count Total. When a visitor arrives at your website and sees that you have something that hundreds of people shared, they will see you trustworthy.

Shared Counts buttons can be customized to complement your website design and layout.

There are several styling options to make Shared Counts buttons website-friendly. You can also choose where you want to display the buttons, be it before or after the content.

The plugin is light, and it won’t affect the website loading speeds even on websites that have millions of unique visitors per month.

The best thing about it is that it is free and regularly updated.

12. OptinMonster

OptinMoster is a powerful digital marketing tool built to help you generate more leads and boost conversion rates across the board. OptinMonster delivers one of the best and most visually appealing pop-ups on the market.

You can use it to make engaging marketing campaigns, capture new subscribers, and communicate trustworthiness.

The tool allows you to transform any element of your website into an opt-in form. You can target your visitors with specific campaigns based on their online behavior or geo-location.

Although comprehensive, OptinMonster is easy to use. It comes with a drag-and-drop builder and dozens of professionally designed templates. The pop-ups are optimized for screens of all sizes, and you can customize them to achieve specific goals.

The tool supports many different pop-ups. Whether you want to use a fullscreen welcome mat or a non-intrusive lightbox pop-up, you will be able to do it all with OptinMonster.

You can have multiple campaigns in place and set a smart trigger for each one of them. For instance, you can use exit-intent, scroll, inactivity, or timed display triggers.

Furthermore, OptinMonster offers in-depth analytics so that you can make changes on the go to improve your conversion rates. It supports integration with other software, including social media platforms, Salesforce, MailChimp, ZenDesk, and more.

OptinMonster offers four unique plans starting at $14 per month.

13. SmashBalloon

Wouldn’t it be great if you could be able to stream social media mentions of your brand and products in real-time on your website?

SmashBalloon is a WordPress plugin that makes it possible. While it is a plugin, its features and use cases clearly define it as one of the social proof software tools.

SmashBalloon can display any social media content on a WordPress website. It supports Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook Groups. Installing SmashBalloon is easy.

The plugin is easy to use. You can make beautiful social media feeds without writing a single line of code.

The social media feeds are optimized for desktop and mobile devices. You can customize them to match your website design and branding.

If you have more than one social media channel, SmashBallon will be able to integrate into all of them. It uses cutting-edge technologies to enable fast and smooth loading times without affecting your website experience.

SmashBalloon drop-down box can be published anywhere you need it. If you place it on your landing and product pages, you will be able to provide social proof and boost your conversion rates.

You can get the plugin separately for every supported social media platform or get the all-in-one bundle. It is available in four different subscription packages, with the price starting at $39.20 per year.

14. Boast

Boast is a versatile social proof software. It comes with many features, and it’s surprisingly easy to use. Unlike other tools we’ve covered so far, Boast will help you collect and publish testimonials and reviews in all available formats – text, audio, and video.

To start collecting the testimonials, you need to paste the Boast snippet of code into your website’s HTML code. You can also directly share the Boast link via email to expand your social proofing strategy.

The software also has a comprehensive dashboard. You can use it to track all testimonials, both pending and approved ones. In the testimonials library, you have access to features such as edit, tag, and approve.

Keep in mind that only the approved testimonials will get on your website. Make sure to visit your testimonials library for some testimonials management regularly.

Boast supports integration with Google Analytics, YouTube, Facebook, WordPress, and MailChimp. You can leverage the integration capabilities to push the testimonials across different channels and build credibility with your prospects. It keeps up with the best social proof tools on the market.

Boast offers four subscription plans, with the price starting at $16 per month.

Deciding on Social Proof Tools

We’ve covered the top 12 best social proof software tools you can use to increase conversion rates. However, if these software seem a little too much to work, have a look at these 5 best social proof apps.

Social proof apps are lighter to start using!

You’ve probably noticed that each one of these tools tackles the social proofing challenges in a unique way. Some are focused on displaying social proof notifications, while other streamline testimonial and review collection and publishing. They’re all aiming to improve your live visitor count, one way or another be it by putting on display social proof material you gathered or using video testimonials, online reviews or other user generated content.

Consider checking these 10 best review softwares as well! Or if you’d rather collect customer feedback and measure CSAT, you can read our comparison on the best CSAT tools to try.