What is social proof? How does it work? In this blog post, we'll go over this marketing strategy and how it can help you increase sales online.
What is social proof?
Social proof is when you reassure a potential buyer by allowing them to see what previous buyers had to say about your product and services. This can be achieved in various ways, the end result being; Build trust to increase sales.
What is Lifeboat doing about it?
In our latest release (dated 24th June 2021), we've released a new feature to all Lifeboat stores, enabling store owners to start accepting reviews. When enabled users can enter ratings and reviews directly on the merchant's website. This enables potential buyers to view these reviews and make a more educated decision on their purchase thus increasing sales and reducing returns.
Read our manual on how to enable product reviews;
Improving SEO
Apart from being great to improve sales, reviews in Lifeboat also get an extra "something something". When enabled, we automatically add the relevant schema markup to product listings. The markup helps improving rankings on Google, but more importantly, it improves the click-through rate. Because of this markup, product listings will be able to show star rating and even some of the reviews directly on Google when users search that product. An example can be seen below;
Automating the process
Like most things in Lifeboat, we wouldn't have been happy if we just slapped on the reviews feature. It had to have as much automation as possible.
Automatically Publish Reviews
Store owners can decide if the product reviews are automatically published or not, drastically reducing the time needed in managing reviews.
Automatically email customers
When enabled, this feature will automatically email customers to leave a review about their purchase. The way it works is simple;
- A customer makes an order
- The order is marked as "Delivered"
- The customer receives an email 24-48hours later encouraging them to leave a review
Again, the goal here is to reduce the time and effort needed in effectively managing reviews.
Verified Buyer Badge
The holy grail of social proof is when a review can be verified against an actual purchase. According to various studies reviews left by verified buyers impact sales by as much as 300%! Lifeboat has this covered too. For a review to obtain the "Verified Buyer" badge a few things have to happen;
- The user leaving the review, must have been logged in when making the order (guest checkout cannot obtain the verified buyer badge)
- The user leaving the review, must have been logged in when leaving the review (guest reviews cannot obtain the verified buyer badge)
Conclusion
The reviews feature can help you boost sales online, and we encourage all the store owners to enable it. If you run into any issues, our support team is here to help.
