Social Proof

People become repeat customers with those online businesses they've come to trust. Because the business has reliably fulfilled their orders in the past, it has earned the repeat customer's trust. However, earning trust requires the customer to have past experience with a business. How does the owner of an e-commerce site get the newcomer to take a chance and make a first purchase? It's all about appearances.

Just as business people look, act, and dress professionally so that people will feel comfortable doing business with them, one's e-commerce site must also convince its visitors that they need not worry about losing their money or personal information to cyber criminals. The site must convince visitors that transactions will occur smoothly and that any issues …show more content…
Most are confident that Amazon's immense success and popularity are proof enough that dealing with them is safe and that their transactions will go smoothly. If millions of people have no qualms about buying billions of products from Amazon, they can't all be wrong.

This phenomenon of allowing the actions and opinions of others to influence one's judgment is called social proof. One form of social proof that Amazon uses to great effect is user ratings and reviews. Even though your e-commerce site isn't an Amazon.com (yet), you can improve your conversions using customer reviews, ratings, and testimonials.

If your products, service, and customer service are good, you should get positive reviews. However, negative reviews are always possible. A few of these make your reviews seem more believable. In addition, most people can assess the merits of both positive and negative reviews. Reviews given by angry or spiteful people will be seen as such by most viewers. If any negative reviews are legitimate, take these as useful feedback and respond by saying you are taking action to correct the