Motivating Shoppers with a Social Proof Notification

Playbook Theme: Demand Notifications
Business Goal: Conversion
Effort: Low

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The fear of missing out is real – shoppers are motivated to purchase when confronted with the knowledge that an item is only available or on sale for a limited time, low in stock, or in high demand. Brands can capitalize on this by incorporating demand messaging into their eCommerce strategy, highlighting important information to keep visitor’s in the loop. This can take shape in the form of product badges, notifications, push notifications, messaging, and more. In a reality where presenting a perfect value proposition isn’t always enough, grasping the psychology behind consumer decisions is key to driving sales and increasing conversions. 

Before You Get Started

Dynamic Yield provides social proof experiences based on reported purchases, product views and add to carts in a specific time frame. Since these are based on your product feed make sure to have a synced and validated feed and most importantly up-to-date 'in stock' data in your feed. 

Before you begin creating your social proof notification, we encourage you to consider how you would like to leverage the data. Here are a couple of popular conversion motivation strategies: 

Increasing Product Cache 

Using shoppers behavior to lend credibility to your product and reduce the barrier to purchase.

• “You’ve got great taste! {Product views} shoppers are checking out this same item”
• "Trending product. One of the hottest picks this week"
• Customer favorite. Over {product purchases} have been purchased just this week"

Increasing Purchase Urgency  
Use shopper behavior to induce a sense of scarcity and urgency

• "Going fast! {product purchases} orders this week" 
• "Don’t wait. {Product views} shoppers are checking out this same item
• Trending product {product purchases} orders this week. Don’t wait because stock is
  limited"

Step 1: Creating a Notification Campaign

There are different site Campaign types to choose from when creating a personalized experience on your site. This particular use-case calls for a Notification Campaign, which is most suitable for triggering subtle messages at the edges of the screen. Begin by configuring the campaign’s settings:

1. Go to Site Personalization › New Campaign and click Notification.
2. Assign a Name to the campaign. Use a name that clearly defines this campaign (e.g. ‘Social Proof Notification’) 
3. Assign a Label to categorize the campaign and associate it with similar campaign types (e.g. PDP).  You can later filter and search your entire campaign list based on Notes and Labels. 
4. Select the Notification's position on the screen. 
5. To configure the Trigger Select 'Advanced' › External component › Dynamic Yield Data. 
6. Select 'once per pageview' as the the Notification's Frequency. That is, how often you would like the visitor to see the notification.  
7. Click Next to add a targeted Experience

Step 2: Adding a Targeted Experience

All campaigns are comprised of 1-n experiences. Each experience can target different visitor segments. In this case, we will set the targeting to meet page popularity thresholds to ensure we are not prompting social proof notifications on unpopular products. 

1. Assign a Name to the experience. Use a name that clearly defines this experience (e.g. Product Views). 
2. Define the targeting conditions:
   
   • Who. Maintain the default value of 'all users'. 
     
   • Where. 
     • To ensure your notification is only displayed on PDP pages:
       Select Page Type ›  is ›  product. 
     • To make certain we displaying the notification for products with strong performance add a condition of either:
       'Product Popularity Views › is at least X. or 'Product popularity (purchase) is › is more than X.
       
     • To make certain we are only displaying social proof for products in stock, add a condition of:
       'Product page' › product with property › in stock› true. 
   • When. Unless you want to limit the exposure of the banner to a particular date and time, you can leave this with its default value: ‘All the time’.

Step 3: Creating the Notification Using A Template

A variation is the actual content you will be serving for in each experience. You can create a single variation or multiple variations and test or optimize which variation most resonates with your audience. 

1. Click on New Variation
2. Expand the Dynamic Yield template collection and select the 'Social Proof' Template. 
3. Assign a Name to the Variation that describes the content (e.g. Urgency). This name will be shown in the reports, and will allow you to quickly distinguish between the success of one variation over the other. 
4. Every Dynamic Yield templates is comprised of variables to allow you to quickly make changes without a developer’s intervention. Customize the Variable fields to your preference. Make sure your content corresponds to the selected targeting rule. That is, if you chose to target by product views, make sure your product performance and the notification's copy is based on views). 
5.  Click on Save Variation. 

Building a Social Proof Template from Scratch

You can add social proof content as a variable to any template. Information about product views or purchases of the product specified in the page context of a product page can be dynamically added to a variation as follows:

1. Use the HTML, CSS and JS tabs to define your template.
2. Highlight the text you want to define as a social proof data variable and click Convert to Variable.
   
   
3. Click the variable to open the Variable Settings pane, and select Product Performance as the variable type.
   
   
4. From the Variable tab, locate your new variable and define the variable value as the number of views/purchases for the available time ranges. The information will be dynamically taken for the SKU specified in the page context of the product page. 
   
   
   NOTE: You can add additional time range options, as well as only display social proof information about the user’s city. To enable these options, speak to your Customer Success Manager.

Step 4: Measuring Uplift by Activating a Control Group

Establishing a Control Group is essential for measuring uplift generated by any Dynamic Yield Experience, as the control group represents visitors who either receive no variation or a random variation.

1. Select the A/B Test Allocation method to test between the variation and a control group. 
2. Since our main KPI in this case is conversions, select Purchases as you Primary Metric. Another option can be using the  Add to Cart event as a primary metric. This would require you setting the add to cart event as Goal. Learn how to create a Goal.