5 Effective Ways to Use Social Proof

If you saw a crowd of people sprinting out of a building, you're probably not going to investigate why they're running—you'd just join them.

We use social cues to help us make decisions.

Knowing that other people liked a product is a signal that you might also like it.

Over the next few minutes, I'll show you 5 really effective ways to use social proof, even if you don't have millions of users.

In principle, 🙋‍♂️ Social Proof provides some reassurance in what you’re about to do. 

This effect comes from the awareness that there are others doing the exact same thing as you.

It's a very basic instinct of "others are doing it, so I should".

So here’s Planta, for example, telling you that your plant is amongst 32 million others on their app:

In theory, this might work in providing some reassurance around the popularity of the product, and perhaps could be better than not putting anything there at all.

This number could be 3 million or 300 million, but without framing exactly what that means in context, it may not be very effective at conveying the right magnitude for social proof, because large numbers tend to lose meaning beyond a certain threshold.

It's also common to show testimonials at key moments.

Me+ shows reviews from a handful of random users during onboarding, while also adding the “millions of users” context on the screen:

In fact, it's likely that they've added some latency into this process, to slow you down, and make sure you have a chance to read them.

You might glance at some of these reviews, and see a bunch of five stars floating around, but it’s probably not going to do much at this point: are these believable? Isn’t it obvious that they’ll have selected the popular ones?

Clearly, social proof can be far more effective by making a few tweaks. So let’s start adding a few layers to how we can harness the power of popularity.

When upselling travel insurance, Hopper tells you that 351k users opted into it in the past year:

They could’ve shown you how many people opted for travel insurance ever, which would likely be in the millions.

But they’ve limited the frame of reference to a single year, resulting in a smaller, more digestible figure (351k) instead of a larger, but more arbitrary one.

Speechify does something very similar, but with one key difference:

They’ve taken that large number, and whittled it down to an even smaller chunk of time: a single week.

Suddenly, it’s a little bit easier to contextualise that large number: even though the number here (1.5m) is actually larger than what Hopper shows you (351k), it's slightly easier to imagine a week than a year.

"1.5 million in a week" likely creates a little bit more of an impact than trying to wrap your head around 351k in a year.

Or perhaps you could go one step further, like HelloFresh:

32,000 people signed up for their service just today. And that’s even easier to visualise—it’s a lot!

The point is this: social proof isn’t just about sticking the largest possible number on the screen, it's about selecting the right frame of reference.

Smaller time frames might be easier for the user to make sense of, rather than larger or unbounded ones.

This might be reassuring to smaller companies: social proof doesn’t need large numbers at all.

For example, Cherrypick will match your chosen diet with a specific testimonial just before you hit a paywall:

Notice how this is similar to the Me+ example, because they show 5 stars and a short review from an anonymous user.

But the key difference is that instead of showing this during the account creation, they’ve displayed it just before the paywall, after you’ve selected your dietary requirements.

That specific testimonial, at this specific moment in time, provides reassurance that Cherrypick is indeed suitable for you, specifically as a vegetarian (or you, as a vegan, and so on).

Amazon continues that theme of providing reassurance at just the right moment:

Notice how they don’t specify how many customers keep this item, or even a percentage.

They just tell you that they do, and that’s often enough to tip you over the edge when deciding to add something into your basket.

Fiverr does something similar:

You don’t actually have to know the exact number of repeat buyers, just that there are a significant number of them, which frames the freelancer as being reliable. 

In fact, this cue is probably more effective than the actual rating system (4.9/5), because there could be a lot of highly-rated freelancers, but this one has repeat business.

Here's another technique: showcasing fewer, more meaningful users.

When prompting you to sign up for a premium subscription, Medium will show you an assortment of people with job titles and companies that are related to the type of article you were reading. 

So if you were going through an article on web development, you might see this:

This dynamic cast of relevant users adds more credibility than if they were people completely unrelated to your interests.

This is why Duolingo will show you the achievements of your friends, and not strangers.

You might not care much if ‘anon4883’ built a 1,000 streak, but Randy, the guy who you occasionally see at your running club? Yeah that might work.

This is also why when signing up to be a host on Airbnb, you can talk to an existing, experienced host:

Again, this could’ve been an anonymous user, or even live chat support, but focusing on a specific person who has a shared interest as you (Deborah, the Superhost) makes whatever they're about to say feel genuine.

Okay, let's look a slightly different approach.

Instead of just telling you how many people reviewed an app or used it, social proof can also be useful to create a sense of belonging and community.

Headspace, for example, will show you how many people are doing a specific meditation right now, so it feels like a living, breathing (couldn't help myself), exercise:

Flipd also uses this to great effect:

If there’s 2,752 people studying with you right now, you’re a little bit more likely to stick to your focus session than if you felt like you were doing it alone.

Gofundme uses the same idea, with a dynamic count of how many people have supported a cause, while you’re staring at your screen trying to decide if you should donate:

There are people donating right now, so it must be an active and popular cause, right?

Too Good To Go, an app to order food that would otherwise be thrown away, tells you exactly when a food bag was sold out:

Instead of just labelling it as ‘Sold out’ or even ‘Sold out this morning’, the hyper-specific ‘09:12 today’ gives you the sense that this is live, and being used by others.

These examples exert a slight pressure to start (or continue) using the product, because they create a sense of being connected to something happening dynamically.

Let's recap those 5 ways to use social proof:

So remember, you don't need to have millions of users before you start using social proof in your designs.

In fact, if you're a niche product, finding the right person might be way more effective.