Social proof refers to real‑time information about other visitors’ activity on your site. You can add social proof to your product recommendations. For example, to increase interest and conversions, you can display messages such as "10 people are viewing this product" or "6 recently bought".
Social proof messaging is based on recent visitor activity, including purchases, cart additions, and product views, over a short, configurable time period. Displaying this information about other buyers can be a highly effective way of increasing sales, especially for products with limited stock, such as fashion or travel items.
You can use social proof and urgency messaging in two main ways:
Recommendations
Product details pages
Recommendations
Set up social proof
Create a Recommendation SmartBlock.
In the Edit SmartBlock step, on the Design tab, expand the Social Proof Messaging section.
Choose the appropriate urgency messaging according to these priorities:
First, attempt to show the number of products purchased.
If this number is below the specified threshold, fallback to carted data.
This represents the total quantity carted, not the number of people who carted one or more of the item.If this number is below the specified threshold, fallback to browsed data.
Additional options
You can edit additional options for each of the urgency types — purchased, carted, or browsed:
Setting | Description |
Enabled / disabled | Select the switch for the urgency type to choose whether or not to display this to visitors. |
Text | The text that explains the reason for urgency, for example, 23 are looking at this now. |
Minimum Carted/Purchased/Browsed | The minimum value that must be reached before this value is displayed to the visitor. |
Colors | Background and text colors of the social notification, in a format supported by CSS. |
⚠️ If you're based in the UK, ensure your social proof messaging complies with guidance from the CMA on consumer protection and misleading claims.
You can also set an overall fallback message to show if none of the minimum thresholds that you set are met.
Product details pages
On product details pages, the urgency messaging relates only to that product, and is included in a standard Slot. It's also possible to make it appear after a delay, or as a flash which zooms in from the side of the page, or lots of other creative options.
Contact the Support or Services teams for assistance with setting up these more advanced options.
Set up product details
To add social proof messaging to product details pages, you must use the legacy SmartBlock builder.
Go to Content > SmartBlocks.
Select the Recommendation tab, then select CREATE SMARTBLOCK.
In the banner at the top of the page, select to go back to previous version.
Under Tactic: Social Proof, hover over the template you want to use and select CREATE.