Social Proof
Social proof is the tendency for people to trust what others have already chosen, so on a store it shows up as reviews, ratings, sold counts, and customer photos that signal a product is a safe, common choice and make a hesitant shopper more willing to buy.
On a Shopify product page social proof takes a few concrete forms: star ratings near the title, written reviews with names and dates, customer photos and video, and counters such as "1,200 sold" or "32 people bought this today". Each one answers the same quiet question a shopper is asking, which is whether other people like them have done this and been glad they did. Reviews that mention the use case, fit, or a specific worry tend to convert better than generic praise, because they let a reader recognise their own situation.
The honest caveat is that social proof only works while it stays believable. Curated five-star walls, hidden negative reviews, fake urgency counters, and incentivised ratings all read as social proof for a while, then backfire when shoppers sense the pattern, and several of them sit against platform and advertising-standards policy. A handful of specific, verified, slightly imperfect reviews usually outperforms a flawless block of perfect ones.
Most stores already have enough genuine reviews to be persuasive; the gap is that they sit unread, uncorroborated, and invisible to search and AI assistants. Making existing reviews readable, verified, and citable so they actually surface where shoppers and AI look is the problem BetterReviews works on.