Report: Retailers and Brands’ Adoption of True Social Proof Messaging

As competition for consumer wallet share intensifies and shoppers get more digitally savvy, retailers and brands are constantly on the lookout for tools to boost engagement, conversion and sales. There’s never a shortage of tools that claim to solve it all, but when done right, social proof messaging stands out. It's a great conversion booster that can be implemented quickly, with limited disruption, and yields immediate results.

Social proof isn't a new concept — consumers have been exposed to it through reviews, ratings and badging (i.e., stickers on products calling out new or trending items). But more sophisticated and true social proof messaging is on the rise and the results cannot be overlooked. Real social proof messaging is used to help shoppers make informed purchasing decisions based on the behaviors of others — i.e., the “wisdom of the crowd.” Social proof messaging is typically categorized as popularity, scarcity, authority, reviews, trending and urgency messaging. Harnessing the power of your customers, retailers and brands can provide multiple messaging options that can be tailored to your brand identity, as well as sync with sales and inventory data to provide accurate, real-time nuggets of information.

According to FitForCommerce’s new Omnichannel Retail Index study, a high percentage of benchmarked companies (91 percent) are currently using badging on their website. However, real social proof isn't widely adopted yet, making it a competitive advantage for those retailers and brands that have implemented this feature.

Methodology

The FitForCommerce Omnichannel Retail Index takes the pulse of the state of digital commerce and omnichannel retail. Every year the Index depicts how leading U.S. retailers and brands are delivering on the omnichannel promise, highlighting industry trends and best practices that can help you build your omnichannel road map and make informed investment decisions. In this special study, FitForCommerce consultants mystery-shopped 100 brands and retailers across 13 verticals to assess the use of social proof. The comprehensive 2022 Omnichannel Retail Index will be coming out in Q3 this year.

Key Findings

• Ninety-one percent of benchmarked retailers and brands have badging somewhere on their sites, often found on category/product listing pages (PLPs) or product detail pages (PDPs). Out of those companies, 65 percent include more than one type of badge messaging.
• Of the 100 benchmarked companies, only 18 percent have implemented social proof messaging. And out of those, only 39 display social proof messaging throughout the conversion funnel or across the shopping journey (not just on one section of the site).
• Out of those with social proof, all of them had social proof messaging on PDPs, but only 39 percent showcased social proof messaging on the category page. The lack of social proof messaging throughout the site highlights a missed opportunity to guide product discovery, drive clicks through to the PDP, and reinforce buying decisions in the cart.

To learn more about social proof, dig deeper into the findings, see examples of best-of-breed, understand possible conversion rate lifts, and much more, download the whitepaper here.

Kathy Kimple is the chief retail officer of FitForCommerce, the digital strategy consulting arm of OSF Digital.