You might have heard of ‘social proof‘ and how it can significantly influence the consumer’s decisions and actions.
Well, in the realm of online marketing, social proof has emerged as a powerful tool to boost conversions and sales since it helps move customers along the shopping journey by reaffirming their decisions to purchase a certain product or service.
However, the best way to collect and apply this social proof is to subscribe to a social proof platform, such as EmbedSocial. That said, I’ll cover all the best social proof tools you can use today and boost your bottom line.
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What is social proof?
‘Social proof’ definition
Social proof is rooted in our need for social validation and the desire to belong. Well, in the context of business marketing, social proof refers to the use of various tactics to leverage this psychological principle to influence consumer behavior.
For instance, you can utilize customer testimonials and reviews, case studies, various endorsements, social media shares, and more. The ultimate goal is to provide the evidence needed to convince others to trust and value your products and services.
Here’s one such example of a satisfied customer recommending our platform:
When shopping online, you’d most likely to get a product with hundreds of positive reviews. Also, you might try a new restaurant if several of your friends have recommended it. In either case, you’re relying on social proof to make a decision since UGC impacts the decision-making process.
What are social proof tools?
‘Social proof tools’ meaning
In the context of online businesses, social proof tools describe your users’ activities, including purchases, sign-ups, reviews, product media, etc.—all of which create a sense of trust, credibility, and urgency in the public’s eyes. They help you do social listening, get social proof, and display it on your website.
Social proof tools work because they tap into the human tendency to follow the crowd. When visitors see others engaging with a product or service, they perceive it as popular and trustworthy, making them more likely to convert—particularly effective in an online environment where establishing trust is challenging.
Moreover, social proof tools provide a dynamic and interactive element to your website, enhancing user engagement. They offer a real-time glimpse into the activities of other customers, creating a sense of a vibrant and active community.
In essence, social proof tools are a powerful way to harness the influence of the crowd to drive conversions and sales, as they provide tangible evidence of your product’s popularity, building trust and encouraging new visitors to take action.
So, whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, using a social proof platform into your marketing strategy can significantly enhance your performance.
10 best social proof tools to try out!
You’ll definitely find a social proof platform for your needs below, since the tools I’ve collected excel at getting all the social proof you need to win over the crowd:
- EmbedSocial—Complete user-generated content platform
- Proof—Best for real-time social proof notifications to increase conversions
- ProveSource—Most versatile tool for displaying user activity and engagement
- Fomo—Best for creating urgency with live social proof pop-ups
- TrustPulse—Most beginner-friendly platform for automated social proof
- Vouch—Best for leveraging video testimonials as social proof
- Loox—Most visually engaging social proof tool for photo reviews
- Yotpo—Best for multi-channel social proof with advanced review features
- Evidence—Most customizable social proof tool for tailored campaigns
- Trustpilot—Best for building trust through verified customer reviews
1. EmbedSocial—Complete user-generated content platform
EmbedSocial is a user-generated content (UGC) platform that allows businesses to collect UGC and display social media feeds, reviews, stories, and photos on their websites. It integrates with all major social media networks and offers various widgets and templates to suit different website designs.
Key features:
API integrations with all major social media networks
AI-powered reviews management tools
Pre-built templates for reviews, stories, forms, or feed widgets
Mobile responsive and ADA compliant
Works with 99.9% of web builders & e-commerce platforms
Pricing:
There’s a free plan with a social proof pop-up widget with custom reviews.
Conversely, paid plans start at $29/month with a free trial for 7 days. Also, the ‘All Products’ plan includes the PRO-level plan of every product and is available for $64/per month. That said, this offer may expire soon.
Benefits for businesses:
Businesses can collect customer testimonials via social media and display them all in one place.
It allows businesses to automatically collect and display all their Google reviews on their websites and sell more with the help of their existing customers.
It offers a complete and native Shopify reviews app that sends emails after each purchase.
Businesses can engage web visitors with immersive Instagram story widgets.
It allows businesses to show web forms in engaging formats with banners, floaters, or button widgets.
It integrates with Slack to notify businesses whenever they get a review from various sources.
Businesses can send their customers emails or SMS messages to ask for feedback.
It allows businesses to display TikTok feeds and showcase interactive social proof website content.
EmbedSocial is one of the best social media aggregators when it comes to collecting proof from third-party review sites and social media platforms, with the most potent widget editor to display social proof in sliders, feeds, or popups.
2. Proof—Best for real-time social proof notifications to increase conversions
Proof is social proof software that helps businesses increase their website conversion rates by displaying real-time customer activity notifications like live visitor count. It builds trust with website visitors, encouraging them to take desired actions such as signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or registering for a webinar.
Key features:
Displays real-time activity of other users on critical landing pages to new visitors
Customize the design and content of your notifications to match your brand
Provides insights into how your notifications are impacting your conversion rates
A/B test different versions of your notifications to see which one performs better
You can use Proof on multiple domains with a single account
Pricing:
Proof offers a pricing structure that scales with your visitors. The Pro Monthly plan costs $79 per month and includes 10,000 unique visitors, unlimited domains, unlimited notifications, A/B testing, conversion analytics, and live chat support.
Benefits for businesses:
Proof can significantly enhance the effectiveness of a business’s online presence. By leveraging the power of social proof, it can:
- Increase your sales proof to get more leads, sales, and revenue;
- Provide valuable insights into customer behavior, allowing businesses to optimize their marketing strategies;
- Be set up easily, making it a practical solution for businesses of all sizes.
3. ProveSource—Most versatile tool for displaying user activity and engagement
ProveSource is a social-proof marketing platform that streams recent customer behaviors on your website to build trust and encourage conversions. It leverages the power of social proof to increase trust, conversions, and sales by showcasing evidence of customer activity and achievements.
Key features:
Stream recent customer behaviors
Fully customizable notifications
Optimized for mobile
Advanced analytics and insights
Easy integration with website and apps
Pricing:
ProveSource offers a free plan with basic features. Their paid plans start from $21/month for the Starter plan, $49/month for the Growth plan, and $166/month for the Monster plan. They also offer a 7-day free trial for their paid plans.
Benefits for businesses:
ProveSource helps businesses build trust with their visitors by showcasing real-time customer activity.
Social proof notifications encourage visitors to convert, increasing sales and sign-ups.
The notifications keep visitors engaged and reduce bounce rates.
ProveSource is easy to set up and customize, making it a user-friendly tool for businesses of all sizes.
4. Fomo—Best for creating urgency with live social proof pop-ups
Fomo is social proof software that showcases recent customer interactions on your website to build trust and increase conversions. It’s a versatile tool that can be integrated with a wide range of platforms to display a variety of notifications.
Key features:
Real-time social proof notifications
Customizable notification templates
Advanced targeting rules
A/B testing capabilities
Rich analytics and insights
Pricing:
Fomo offers a free 14-day trial. Their pricing plans are as follows:
Starter: $25/month for 8,000 notifications/month and 1 website.
Essential: $50/month for 20,000 notifications/month and 3 websites.
Plus: $99/month for 100,000 notifications/month and unlimited websites.
Pro: $149/month for 300,000 notifications/month and larger notifications limit.
Advanced: $199/month for 1,000,000 notifications/month and larger notifications limit.
Unlimited: $499/month for unlimited notifications.
Benefits for businesses:
Fomo helps businesses build trust and credibility with their visitors by displaying real-time customer interactions.
Social proof is a powerful motivator. Seeing others take action can encourage visitors to do the same, leading to higher conversion rates.
With Fomo’s analytics, businesses can see which notifications drive the most conversions and adjust their strategy accordingly.
Fomo is easy to set up and customize, making it a user-friendly tool for businesses of all sizes.
5. TrustPulse—Most beginner-friendly platform for automated social proof
TrustPulse is a powerful social proof notification app that helps businesses increase conversions and build customer trust. It leverages real-time activity and user behavior to generate dynamic, automated social proof notifications. The platform is designed to boost credibility, inspire customer confidence, and drive conversions.
Key features:
Tracks your website’s real-time events like purchases, sign-ups, and more
Show how many people are taking action in a given period
Display the right message to the right person at the right time
Customize the design of your notifications to match your brand
Works seamlessly with WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, and more
Pricing:
TrustPulse offers four pricing tiers, each with its own set of features:
Basic ($5/month, billed annually): Essential social proof tools for small sites and bloggers. It includes usage on 2 sites, 2,500 unique visitors, unlimited campaigns, and no hidden fees.
Plus ($10/month, billed annually): Great for growing businesses who want to do more, it includes everything in Basic, plus usage on 3 sites, 10,000 unique visitors, and advanced features.
Pro ($19/month, billed annually): Must-have if you sell ANYTHING on your website. It includes everything in Plus, usage on 5 sites, 25,000 unique visitors, and Pro features.
Growth ($39/month, billed annually): Perfect for growing teams and agencies that need results. It includes everything in Pro, usage on 10 sites, 100,000 unique visitors, and Growth features.
Benefits for businesses:
TrustPulse helps businesses increase their conversion rates by leveraging social proof.
Seeing real-time notifications of others taking action builds trust among website visitors.
TrustPulse boosts your business’s credibility by showing real, verified activity on your site.
With its user-friendly interface, TrustPulse is easy to set up and use, even for non-technical users.
Compared to other social proof marketing tools, TrustPulse offers affordable pricing plans, making it accessible for businesses of all sizes.
6. Vouch—Best for leveraging video testimonials as social proof
Vouch is an asynchronous video communications platform allowing businesses to communicate with short, authentic videos from their workflow. It brings context and impact to sales, marketing, customer success, recruitment, and more.
Vouch is designed to be fast, short, and friction-free, allowing you to communicate with your audience asynchronously with short, guided videos.
Key features:
Communicate with your audience asynchronously with short, guided videos.
Add controls when you capture video from customers, prospects, and candidates.
Record and send a Vouch to anyone via Slack or email. Welcome users by embedding Vouch in your onboarding workflow.
Edit and stitch together videos without relying on complicated editing tools.
Vouch’s central library stores and transcribes all of your videos in one place.
Pricing:
Vouch offers a free plan with basic features.
Their paid plans start from $30/month for the Starter plan, which includes up to 5 seats, unlimited live campaigns, custom branding, editable transcriptions, and HD downloads. They offer a custom Teams plan with additional features for larger teams or markets.
Benefits for businesses:
Vouch allows businesses to communicate more effectively with their audience using short, personal videos.
By using video, businesses can increase engagement with their audience, leading to higher conversion rates.
Vouch integrates with popular work tools, making incorporating video communication into your existing workflow easy.
With automatic transcription and tagging, businesses can easily manage and search their video content.
7. Loox—Most visually engaging social proof tool for photo reviews
Loox is a Shopify reviews app that empowers businesses to grow their brands by turning real customers into ambassadors. It allows customers to submit visual reviews, share product experiences, and refer friends, thereby enhancing the credibility of your business and products.
Key features:
Automatically send emails to customers requesting reviews.
Encourage customers to submit photo reviews by offering discounts.
Cater to a global audience with support for multiple languages.
Allow customers to submit video reviews for a more authentic and engaging review experience.
Customize the appearance of your reviews to match your brand.
Pricing:
Loox offers three pricing tiers:
Beginner ($9.99/month): Includes review request emails, discounts for photo reviews, and multilingual support.
Growth (Starting at $34.99/month): Includes everything in Beginner, plus video reviews, full customization, Google Shopping integration, and the removal of Loox branding.
Unlimited ($299.99/month, 50% off limited time offer): Includes everything in Growth, plus unlimited review requests, unlimited referrals, full Klaviyo integration, and priority support.
Benefits for businesses:
By showcasing real customer reviews and experiences, Loox enhances the credibility of your business and products.
Social proof in the form of customer reviews and referrals can significantly boost conversions.
The platform provides an engaging way for customers to share their experiences, thereby increasing customer engagement and loyalty.
With multilingual support, you can cater to customers worldwide.
8. Yotpo—Best for multi-channel social proof with advanced review features
Yotpo is an eCommerce retention marketing platform that turns one-time shoppers into lifelong customers. It offers a suite of connected solutions that maximize your customers’ value. The platform includes SMS marketing, loyalty, and referrals, reviews, subscriptions, email marketing, and visual user-generated content (UGC).
Key features:
Yotpo provides a platform to drive sales and make instant connections through text messages that customers read.
The platform allows businesses to increase conversion by showcasing their customers’ authentic reviews.
Yotpo motivates customers with rewards and turns them into brand advocates.
The platform helps boost recurring revenue by offering convenience at the click of a button.
Yotpo allows businesses to create personalized email experiences that drive sales and boost customer lifetime value.
The platform enables businesses to connect emotionally with real-life photos and videos.
Pricing:
The pricing details are not explicitly mentioned on the website.
Requesting a demo or contacting Yotpo directly for specific pricing information is recommended.
Benefits for businesses:
Yotpo uses perfectly-timed engagements and rewards that are tailored to each customer to boost lifetime value (LTV) and drive repeat purchase rates.
From average order value (AOV) to recurring revenue, Yotpo offers a range of ways to grow revenue, with a goal for 50% of your sales to come from repeat shoppers.
Yotpo helps convert more shoppers with authentic content that alleviates hesitation, rewards that motivate, and messaging that creates a sense of urgency.
Yotpo puts all your retention solutions on one platform, allowing you to create seamless post-purchase journeys tailored to each customer and track performance. This helps you see what drives your retention forward and take action to optimize.
9. Evidence—Most customizable social proof tool for tailored campaigns
Evidence is a powerful social proof tool designed to increase conversions by showcasing real-time social proof on your website. By leveraging the power of social proof, Evidence helps businesses build trust, create urgency, and boost conversions.
Key Features:
Evidence displays real-time notifications of recent customer activity, such as purchases, sign-ups, and reviews, creating a sense of a busy and trusted business.
With Evidence, you can customize the design, timing, and display rules of your notifications to match your brand and target audience.
Evidence allows you to target specific visitor segments with personalized messages, enhancing the relevance and effectiveness of your social proof.
Evidence provides detailed analytics to track the performance of your social proof notifications and optimize them for better results.
Pricing:
Evidence offers a range of pricing plans to suit different business needs.
The Basic plan starts at $29 per month, offering essential features for small businesses. The Pro plan, priced at $79 per month, includes advanced features and priority support.
The Business plan for larger businesses at $199 per month provides premium features and dedicated account management. (Please note that pricing may vary, so it’s best to check the official website for the most accurate and up-to-date information.)
Benefits for businesses:
- Evidence increases conversions by showing real-time customer actions.
- It helps build credibility by displaying authentic user activity and engagement.
- The platform is highly customizable, allowing businesses to adjust it to match their brand aesthetics and messaging.
- It boosts urgency by using social proof to create FOMO and drive more sales.
- Evidence integrates easily with most marketing platforms, making it simple to implement.
10. Trustpilot—Best for building trust through verified customer reviews
Trustpilot is a powerful customer review management tool that allows businesses to collect, manage, and leverage customer reviews. It’s designed to help businesses enhance their online presence, build brand trust, and improve customer experience by showcasing real, verified customer feedback.
Key features:
- Trustpilot allows businesses to send out review invitations to customers, encouraging them to share their experiences.
- Businesses can respond to reviews, flag and report inappropriate content, and gain insights from customer feedback.
- Trustpilot offers a variety of widgets that businesses can use to display their star rating and review count on their website.
- Trustpilot integrates with various eCommerce, helpdesk, and marketing platforms, allowing businesses to streamline their review management process.
- Trustpilot provides analytics dashboards that help businesses learn more from their customer feedback.
Pricing:
Trustpilot offers several pricing plans:
- Standard Plan: Starting from $250 per domain per month, this plan includes 500 verified review invitations per month, 8 website widgets, an ad-free profile page, and more.
- Growth Plan: Starting from $600 per domain per month, this plan includes everything in the Standard Plan, plus additional features like personalized branding, access to a full 22-widget library, and advanced review analysis.
- Scale Plan: Starting from $900 per domain per month, this plan includes everything in the Growth Plan, plus unlimited verified review invitations and additional insights and analytics.
- Enterprise Plan: This is a custom plan with pricing upon request. It includes access to APIs, unlimited user seats, a fully personalized Trustpilot.com profile page, and a dedicated Account Manager.
Benefits for businesses:
- By showcasing real, verified customer reviews, businesses can enhance their online presence and build brand trust.
- Trustpilot allows businesses to respond to reviews and engage with their customers, improving the overall customer experience.
- The insights gained from customer feedback can help businesses make informed decisions and improve their products or services.
- By displaying social proof in the form of customer reviews, businesses can increase their conversion rates and boost sales.
Best social proof apps for your business: Comparison table
To showcase how the best social proof tools compare to each other, I’ve divided them into two categories, thus making it easier for you to see the differences.
The categories cover users looking for social proof tools that provide customer reviews and tools that aggregate notifications from third-party platforms.
Here is the comparison table of the reviews management software category:
And here is the comparison table for social proof tools that provide a display of customer data in the type of popup notifications:
Benefits of using social proof apps for your business
Using social proof apps can have a powerful impact on your business, helping to increase trust, credibility, and conversions, as these tools work by showcasing real customer actions and feedback, which helps influence potential buyers’ decisions.
Here are some of the top benefits you can expect to get:
- Boast customer trust by displaying real-time reviews and testimonials.
- Increase conversion rates through urgency and FOMO-driven notifications.
- Improve credibility by showing verified user actions and purchases.
- Enhance brand reputation by highlighting positive customer experiences.
- Simplify customer engagement with automated social proof displays.
- Strengthen marketing strategies by integrating with existing platforms.
Incorporating social proof apps into your business can lead to a significant performance boost and build a connection with your customers while driving sales.
Conclusion: You need a social proof tool right away!
When it comes down to it, social proof software is a great way to boost your business numbers and increase your conversions.
After all, with the right tool, you can easily embed a simple code to showcase website activity, traffic, and popular website platforms.
Many of these tools offer basic monthly plans and custom pricing options for those needing more advanced features. Some even offer a free trial period to test the software before committing to it.
With all of these options available, you will definitely find the perfect social proof tool for your business to help engage with website traffic, increase your conversion rate and maximize your success.
FAQs about social proof tools
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon in which people conform to the actions of others under the assumption that those actions are reflective of the correct behavior. Regarding conversions, social proof can help by providing evidence that others trust a business or product, and encouraging new customers to do the same.
In marketing, social proof is a tactic used to ease the minds of worried customers. It involves using testimonials, reviews, endorsements, case studies, and social shares to show that others have had a positive experience with a product or service.
Yes, social proof works. Numerous studies and tests have shown that social proof can significantly increase conversion rates, customer trust, and sales.
You can get social proof by encouraging customers to leave reviews, share their experiences on social media, provide testimonials, or participate in case studies. You can also display any media coverage or endorsements your business has received.
You can add social proof to your website by including customer testimonials, reviews, case studies, or social media feeds. You can also use social proof tools to display real-time customer activity.
A social proof platform is a tool or service that helps businesses collect, manage, and display social proof on their websites.
Examples of social proof include testimonials, star ratings, reviews, case studies, “a number of items sold” counters, and “currently viewing” notifications.
Social proof apps are tools that help businesses display social proof on their websites. They can show real-time activity such as purchases, sign-ups, or reviews.
Customer reviews and testimonials are among the most popular forms of social proof, as they have been shown to influence customer behavior significantly.
Social proof notifications are real-time notifications that show the actions of other users. They can display activities such as recent purchases, sign-ups, or reviews.
FYI: You can embed user-generated content on your website automatically. Sign up now.