3 Unique Ways to Use Social Proof for SaaS Sites

To say that the use of social proof is ubiquitous these days would be an understatement. On nearly every ecommerce and SaaS site, you’ll see some combination of customer reviews, logos, testimonials, and/or third-party badges. You’re probably doing it and so are all of your competitors. In fact, they’re so common now that it’s not entirely surprising that when I tested the use of logos and badges, the observed lift was very small if not insignificant.

So is it even worth doing anymore? It is of course, if for no other reason than it is basic table stakes at this point. But when everyone is doing the same thing, what can you do to stand out?

In this article, I’ll focus on the SaaS market and share some unique ways that brands are leveraging social proof on their websites.

Contextual Testimonials

Of the examples in this article, this one is my favorite because it is so simple and unless I’ve missed something, there doesn’t seem to be much adoption out there. I’ve done some digging and I don’t think there is any sort of industry standard term for it so I’m going to call them contextual testimonials.

A standard testimonial is a customer quote that speaks in broad terms about their overall experience and satisfaction with the product and may be accompanied by a name, title, and other details. While there is nothing wrong with this type of testimonial, I just find them to be very common.

A contextual testimonial on the other hand, takes it a level deeper and takes a customer quote about a very specific thing, and places it in context. In the example from Webflow (a no-code web builder) below, the “Fine-tune Typography” messaging is closely accompanied by a testimonial that speaks to the virtues of that specific feature.

I find this to be a simple way to promote the validation of features and highly effective when viewed by a user for whom that feature is of great importance.

Show How Customers Use Your Product

Ecommerce sites that ship physical goods have been using this tactic for years. It’s not uncommon to visit a consumer retail site and see UGC videos from customers that show how they’re using the product and what they like about it.

This is a playbook that I think SaaS sites should steal more from. While case studies may accomplish this to a certain extent, they’re just not that authentic. Most users, particularly in B2B, know that case studies are not actually generated by the customer and are in many cases, even ghost written.

In this example from Descript (a podcasting product), they have a page for “Studio Sound” and a content block featuring videos from YouTubers where they walk through, in detail, not only how they enable the studio sound feature in-product but also showing off how well it works. Some of these videos are so detailed that it borders on pre-onboarding.

Socially Native Testimonials

While curating and displaying customer testimonials can be effective, it is once again, a highly popular execution. It is also one in which users know it is a common practice for brands to write them and just get the sign off on it. It is significantly more authentic and meaningful however, when a customer writes a testimonial about your product of their own volition. People won’t do that unless they truly love the product and publicly associating themselves with it conveys a level of status.

In this example from Mixpanel (a product analytics tool), they feature written anecdotes and positive proclamations from users through social platforms like Twitter/X.

Although these are public posts and you’re generally free to use them without approval, I think it’s a good move to reach out and get permission. Plus, this can be a good way to build relationships with customers and influencers that are already talking about you to their followers.

Conclusion

Social proof is here to stay and its ability to sway prospects into becoming customers is widely undisputed. But you can’t necessarily just “do” social proof by slapping some logos on your site and calling it a day. To stay competitive and for social proof to work effectively, it is important to keep an eye on what others in your industry are doing and on the broader landscape at large. And if it feels like they’re all doing the same thing, that’s usually a great time to get creative and test new ideas.