Nice and easy! Here's a video of @wesbos explaining why he does it:
If 3,271 other people have signed up then ...
Be interested in any other underrated social proof hacks?
I've tried this as well as an indie hacker project that showed social proof in real-time. It displayed things like "Sam in Brisbane, Australia just bought a monthly membership" or "78 people watching screencasts on Alchemist Camp in the past 8 hours".
After four full months of testing, there was no statistically significant boost in free or paid signups. My mastermind partners had similar results. At least from my POV, this kind of social proof hack is overrated, not underrated.
Someone going out of their way to recommend a service (in person or online) is probably very underrated though.
Interesting. Can't argue with your stats. Cheers for sharing. I think it's contextual. Every site is different. Every product is different. Personally, I don't particularly like the, "Sam in Brisbane ... " style messaging.
Very interesting findings.
But every time I hear founders saying this tactic isn't working, I find it's because the social proof is totally out of context.
If I'm in Argentina, it matters very little that "Sam" in Australia bought something, but if you said someone in Buenos Aires bought something, I'd be pretty inclined to read/buy more.
Maybe this could the detail that makes this tactic work?
I was a bit lazy in typing that up. The tool did show city as well as country, but it was basically the same as any of the popular social proof widgets.
In theory, this should have encouraged more traffic / purchases from areas where lots of people were already interacting (i.e., San Francisco, Sao Paulo and Sydney), but I couldn't find any evidence of that either.
Maybe your audience was first exposed to this tactic in a scammy context, so they didn't react to it the way they should have had?
Because I used to do something similar with Chatbot marketing and it worked wonders, but only in the beginning.
I also find these social proof tactics really only work once or twice per user - so whichever company pulls them first sucks all their profits.
Yeah, personally, this is where I stand. It's very contextual tactic. If facebook started doing it people would not be happy. But an high reputation individual like Wes Bos can pull it off ...
I don't like it when people do those kind of things, especially those pop up messages saying so-and-so just bought xyz.
I think it's partly because I've seen it so many times and many scammy type marketeers try these things, admittedly in a less polished way. I guess I've grown to distrust these kind of things and if I'm to believe them I need to trust the website/person, otherwise I'm going to assume the data is probably false.
But I also feel like it's peer pressure. I'm an adult, I will make a decision on buying something because I need it, not because other random people have bought it.
I might also be getting old, meh. :D
I feel exactly the same way. The only reason I still gave it a try is that I've been spectacularly wrong about similar things in the past (like how much email people want to get from me).
I agree with the peer pressure point. I don't like people trying to persuade me to do something. And it nearly always drives me the other way. But I think we're in the minority there. If “everyone's going to the pub”, most people will go along as well ...
Someone else echoed your thoughts on Twitter. And my response was, that I think this type of social proof hinges on the company / individuals reputation. It's contextual.
Wes Bos / Basecamp (the two examples in question) have great reputations, they offer 100% refunds and this type of social proof feels ok to me. Because it's them doing it. And I like them.
But when booking companies / spammy marketers do this we suspect the worse. So as a marketer / booking company I'd avoid this tactic. But people who sell development courses (i.e. Wes Bos) are not considered spammy, so it feels ok (just my two cents)
IMHO it works for low priced items and for a general audience. There are so many newbies out there that have no idea how marketing works and sadly or not they believe in everything they see. So use it for doing good. :)
Agreed. most people aren't thinking as analytically as us Indie Hackers. One you know it's a trick you're a bit pissed off. But most people aren't thinking deeply.