Templates for Responding to Negative Reviews

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Reduces Perceived Risk: A customer is taking a risk when buying from a brand they don’t know. Seeing that thousands of others have had a positive experience acts as a powerful safety net, making them more comfortable proceeding with the purchase.

Enhances Credibility and Trust: Claims made by a brand about its own product are often viewed with skepticism (“marketing hype”). Endorsements from real customers, experts, or media are seen as unbiased third-party validation, instantly boosting trust.

Creates FOMO (Fear of Missing Out): Showing real-time activity (e.g., “5 people just bought this in the last hour”) or popularity (e.g., “Best Seller”) taps into the human desire to belong and not miss out on a good thing, prompting a faster purchase.

Improves Conversion Rate: By increasing trust and urgency at critical points (like the product page or checkout), social proof directly increases the percentage of visitors who become paying customers.

Social Proof

These tactics can be implemented on your website and organic channels to convert existing traffic more efficiently, thus increasing sales without a bigger ad budget.

Action: Display star ratings prominently near the product title and “Add to Cart” button. Feature both an aggregate score and individual, detailed reviews (ideally with customer photos/names).

Best Practice: After a purchase, trigger an automated email sequence to solicit a review. Respond to all reviews, positive and negative, to show excellent customer service and transparency.

Impact: Products with 5+ reviews are up to 270% more likely to be purchased than products with zero reviews.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Real-Time Activity and Urgency

These tactics can be implemented on your website and organic channels to convert existing traffic more efficiently, thus increasing sales without a bigger ad budget.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Action: Display star ratings prominently near the product title and “Add to Cart” button. Feature both an aggregate score and individual, detailed reviews (ideally with customer photos/names).

Best Practice: After a purchase, trigger an automated email sequence to solicit a review. Respond to all reviews, positive and negative, to show excellent customer service and transparency.

Impact: Products with 5+ reviews are up to 270% more likely to be purchased than products with zero reviews.

Real results, straight from the source

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

Expert tip from Esin D. Habif, product marketing lead (outbound)

“As a creator or entrepreneur, you’re often wearing multiple hats. You’re designing the website, you’re optimizing for SEO. This means you need a website builder that makes it easy and very learnable for you to do all of those things, on the same platform and still deliver as if working with experts in those fields.”

Social Proof & Sales FAQs

Q1: What exactly is “Social Proof” in the context of sales?

A: Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect the correct behavior for a given situation. In sales, it means leveraging customer testimonials, reviews, expert endorsements, and purchase volumes to show potential buyers that others trust and value your product, thereby reducing the risk of a purchase and accelerating their decision.

Q2: How does social proof save me money on advertising?

A: Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect the correct behavior for a given situation. In sales, it means leveraging customer testimonials, reviews, expert endorsements, and purchase volumes to show potential buyers that others trust and value your product, thereby reducing the risk of a purchase and accelerating their decision.

Q3: Which type of social proof is the most effective?

A: Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect the correct behavior for a given situation. In sales, it means leveraging customer testimonials, reviews, expert endorsements, and purchase volumes to show potential buyers that others trust and value your product, thereby reducing the risk of a purchase and accelerating their decision.

Q4: We are a new business and don’t have many reviews yet. What can we use?

A: Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect the correct behavior for a given situation. In sales, it means leveraging customer testimonials, reviews, expert endorsements, and purchase volumes to show potential buyers that others trust and value your product, thereby reducing the risk of a purchase and accelerating their decision.

Q5: Should I display negative reviews, or only the positive ones?

A: Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect the correct behavior for a given situation. In sales, it means leveraging customer testimonials, reviews, expert endorsements, and purchase volumes to show potential buyers that others trust and value your product, thereby reducing the risk of a purchase and accelerating their decision.