Default Social Proof is Killing Your Conversions
Hello I’m Shane and welcome to another issue of The CRO Weekly where each week I explore how to build a high converting Ecommerce store. If you’re not subscribed, join 256 other smart folks by subscribing here:
Getting my car repaired is my worst nightmare.
I know nothing about them. It feels sort of emasculating to talk to a mechanic and say “eh idk it makes this wub-wub-wub noise” knowing they know just how little I understand. It’s like I’m asking to be ripped off.
“Oh that wub-wub-wub noise? That means your thingy is broken and will cost $600” they tell me as they head to the back office to celebrate charging me 10x the real price.
Yes, these fears are irrational. Most mechanics are probably great. But that doesn’t change whats on my mind when I go searching for one.
Finding a mechanic and getting to the point
My car is making that wub-wub-wub noise and so today I’m looking for a mechanic. I go to google and type ‘car repair’ to find 10 places near me.
Two locations were about the same distance away and had 4-5 stars. That’s when I clicked in to read the reviews for Hamilton’s Repair Shop and saw this:
5 stars
“These guys are awesome. They have always treated me fairly and honestly. One time they told me I could get a part I needed from online for $20 and make the repair myself. They easily could have charged me over $300 to do it themselves and I wouldn’t be any the wiser. I tell anyone who asks me about a mechanic to go here.”
- Peter
Wow. Talk about music to my ears. Peter just addressed my number one fear when looking for a mechanic. He said that instead of charging him, the mechanic told him to go home and do it himself because it’s easy and cheap.
That is clearly not someone who’s looking to rip someone off. I immediately stopped my search and called them. I’ll be bringing my car in today.
Congrats Shane, what does this have to do with Ecom?
This isn’t just a nice story. It’s the reality of how we all shop today. Whether it’s for car repair or a face wash, we look to reviews to understand if a product is right for us. Making that decision requires us to overcome our doubts and trust the product/service to be as-advertised.
The doubts we have are different for every business. For a mechanic it’s: is this place gonna rip me off? For a face wash it’s: is this going to actually work for me? and for a snack it’s: is this stuff going to taste good?
In general, these doubts surround our subjective experience. For example, if your claim to fame is that your cereal tastes as good as fruit loops but is actually healthy, I want to know if your cereal actually tastes as good as fruit loops. I can determine if it’s healthy by my objective standards by reading the nutrition ingredients but taste is a subjective experience, which is what we look to reviews for.
How we collect reviews
The challenge is, you’re probably collecting reviews by asking “what did you think about the product?” This leads to most of your reviews saying something like “I love it!”
Which, while it’s an endorsement of your product, has no more value than if someone just left 5 stars. That 5-star rating is an endorsement of your product. The value of the text is to help people overcome hesitations related to the subjective experience of your product.
The first step in collecting better reviews is asking – what are those hesitations our customers have before purchasing. Instead of brainstorming, just go ask your customers. Send a survey with the question: “Did you have any doubts or hesitations before purchasing X?”
We’ll use taste as an example. Most customers reply to that survey question saying “I just wasn’t sure if it would taste good.” Now, in our review request, instead of prompting people with ‘write a review:’ we can say “What do you think about the taste of X?”
You may still get some “It was great!” responses but now people who write a bit more will focus their review around the taste of the product. You can cycle through different review prompts and experiment until the majority of reviews you get are speaking to the specific hesitations customers have when considering your product.
Featuring reviews
Imagine you had UGC content from an influencer that said “it was great. 5 stars” would you put any media spend behind that? Of course not.
But you might not realize that’s exactly what you’re doing on your store.
It’s become common to see a set of featured reviews somewhere on a store.
A lot of brands do this using the widget provided by the review app (like above). The widget that doesn’t let you select which reviews to features but instead just shows different 5 star reviews.
With this widget, you end up with a bunch of “this is great” type reviews.
Instead, roll your own layout and simply pull whatever reviews you want to feature there. This way you can feature the best reviews that speak to a specific value proposition or hesitation customers have with your product.
I’ll leave you with some examples of this being done well:
Bite uses bold text to highlight a key value proposition ‘in an easily recyclable container’ and a common hesitation ‘easy to use’.
JUDY:
Highlights value prop - ‘ room to put our fireproof/waterproof documents’
Highlights authority - ‘husband in the military says it’s good’
Highlights product value - ‘I could never put this together on my own’
Caraway - both reviews highlight their value propositions of aesthetics, easy to clean, non-toxic, and how easy it is to keep them organized.
That’s all for today! If you enjoyed this piece, please do me a favor and let me know on Twitter:
Thanks for reading, and see you next Wednesday!