Top 6 Social Proof Apps and Tools to Build Your Brand: An In-depth Review

In the vibrant Shopify universe, building robust social proof is an absolute game-changer. You may have understood nuts and bolts and learned about best practices of social proof, but applying it seamlessly to your Shopify stores requires more than knowledge. You need a helpful social proof Shopify app and tool to do it. 

If you’re struggling with choosing the most suitable Shopify social proof apps and tools for your store among thousands of apps out there, this detailed review will help you. 

Let’s dive into the top 6 social proof apps and tools for Shopify stores to build your brand and increase sales.

1. Judge.me 

You can easily find many social proof apps on the Shopify App Store, but Judge.me has been known as one of the best review apps for Shopify stores so far. 

It’s a valuable tool that not only helps you collect customer reviews and star ratings but also displays these product reviews in many creative forms, thereby building trust and boosting sales for your stores.

While initially presented as a product reviews app, Judge.me goes beyond its surface by offering more than just customer reviews. You can create and showcase almost all necessary types of social proof on your website with Judge.me.

Rating: 5.0/5.0 (16.500+ Reviews)

The rating and the number of positive reviews speak for the quality of this social proof app - a 5/5 Star Rating with more than 16500 reviews. 

Key features for social proof

• Collect reviews automatically: This feature is advantageous for growing businesses with large numbers of customers, as you can send unlimited review requests. You won’t need to manually track time to send emails and messages to ask for customer reviews. With Judge.me, you can schedule automatic review requests to be sent to your customers via email, Push, and SMS after order fulfillment. Thus, you can reach customers easier to generate numerous customer social proof to engage new visitors.  

• Import reviews from AliExpress and other apps: If you already have reviews from other apps and marketplaces, don’t waste them. You can import the available reviews from your AliExpress store directly with Judge.me and from other apps with a CSV file. The more reviews you have, the more trustworthy you are!  
• Make your reviews stand out anywhere: You can show reviews and ratings of customers in many creative ways and everywhere in your store. You can place review widgets and star rating badges on product pages, add a carousel of featured reviews anywhere in your stores, create a floating tab at the side of your pages to showcase both product and shop-level reviews, or even create a page for all reviews with Judge.me. By highlighting customer social proof everywhere, you can influence customers in every stage of their shopping journey.

• Showcase celebrity social proof: This feature enables you to utilize celebrity social proof on your website by synchronizing photos and videos you are tagged in on Instagram and publishing them on your store homepage. Thus, you can easily promote videos and images of influencers with your products on your websites. 
• Strengthen social proof with Import reviews from AliExpress: Judge.me provides medals for shops based on the quality and quantity of your reviews. You can also add these medals to the footer of your online store as additional social proof.

• Offer discounts for referral: Judge.me can help you make the best use of “Wisdom of friend” social proof by generating a referral link after your customers complete a purchase on your Shopify stores. By sharing this link, both customers and their friends can get discounts if their friends use this link to place an order. 

Drawbacks of the app

• Lack of features for expert approval and certification: The only badge and medals you can show with Judge.me are the medals provided by Judge.me themself. There is no option in the Judge.me app to show certification, medal, or expert approval from other sources. 
• Can share from Facebook & Instagram only: You can import and highlight videos and images on Instagram & Facebook only. Judge.me lacks settings to feature videos from other sources. You can only show images and videos, not the entire social media post of influencers on your store. 

What do customers talk about Judge.me?

• Feature-rich and customizable: Many customers appreciate the abundance of features that Judge.me offers. Users mention the ability to customize review request emails, attractive review display widgets, and the option to include photos and videos in reviews. This versatility allows businesses to tailor their review strategies to match their branding and customer engagement needs.
• Excellent Customer Support: Many reviews highlight the top-notch customer support provided by Judge.me. Users mention prompt responses to queries and assistance in setting up and troubleshooting the app. 
• Decrease in page speed: While most users give Judge.me positive reviews, some complain about how it slows down their website. 

Price 

• Forever free plan
• Awesome: $15 per month

2. Ryviu

Ryviu, a robust app designed to leverage social proof and enhance the credibility of your online store. With its array of features and user-friendly interface, Ryviu has quickly become a go-to solution for businesses seeking to amplify their online presence. Let's delve deeper into what makes Ryviu stand out, its drawbacks, customer feedback, and pricing structure.

Rating: 4.8/5.0 (~1400 Reviews)

Key features for social proof:

• Product review collection: Ryviu simplifies the process of collecting and managing product reviews. With customizable review request emails and automated reminder notifications, businesses can encourage satisfied customers to share their experiences, bolstering social proof.
• Import reviews from multiple sources: AliExpress, Shopee, Amazon, Etsy, CSV, etc.

What do customers talk about Ryviu

Price

Ryviu offers a range of pricing plans to accommodate businesses of all sizes and budgets:

• Free
• Basic: $5,24/ month
• Advance: $7,49/ month
• Unlimited: $14,99/ month

Ryviu's transparent pricing model ensures that businesses can select a plan that aligns with their budget and objectives.

3. Loox

Loox has emerged as a robust solution in social proof, offering a range of crucial features that empower businesses to build credibility, engage customers, and boost conversions. 

Rating: 4.9/5.0 (12500+ Reviews)

Key features for social proof

Loox comes equipped with a suite of features designed to leverage the power of social proof effectively:

• Customer reviews with photos and videos: Loox enables businesses to gather and showcase customer reviews and visual content. This adds authenticity to testimonials and gives potential customers a glimpse of real experiences with products.

• Automatically send review requests: One of Loox's standout features is its automated review request system. This simplifies the process of collecting feedback from customers post-purchase, ensuring a steady stream of fresh content.
• Discount for photo reviews: Loox enables you to give a discount code to your customers when they leave reviews with photos or videos. This gift will increase your customers' likelihood of giving you a positive review.  

• Display reviews in many different ways: The tool provides various display options for showcasing reviews on your website. Whether it's a dedicated reviews page, pop-ups, or a sidebar widget, Loox offers customization to match your brand's aesthetics. These reviews are also highlighted everywhere, across the buyer journey, from the homepage to the cart page.

• Moderation and Filters: Loox includes moderation features that let you filter and curate reviews before they go live. This ensures that only genuine and relevant content is displayed, maintaining the integrity of your social proof.
• Encourage “wisdom of a friend”: What makes the referral feature of Loox stand out  is that it engages your customers in many stages of purchasing, from pre-purchase to post-purchase stage. By offering discounts for both customers and their friends, you can encourage visitors to share your stores when they visit for the first time or invite their friends after purchasing or giving you a review. Moreover, with Built-in fraud detection, Loox ensures that only legitimate customers participate in your referral program.

Drawbacks of the app

• Limited review requests for the basic plan: You can only enjoy unlimited review request emails in the Premium plan. With basic plans (beginner and growth), you can send a maximum of 6000 review request emails a month. 
• Focus on Product review & Referral program only: Loox is one of the best review apps for Shopify stores, but as it focuses on product review, this social proof app lacks features for other types of social proof like influencer social proof, expert approval, and certification. 

What do customers talk about Loox

• Customization and design: Loox's customization options for reviewing display widgets receive praise for allowing businesses to match the widget design to their store's aesthetics. Users appreciate the ability to fine-tune the widget's look and feel, making it seamlessly blend with their website's design.
• Ease of Use and Automation: Reviewers frequently highlight Loox's user-friendly interface and seamless integration with Shopify. The automation feature for review collection, where customers are prompted to leave reviews after purchase, is highly regarded. This functionality saves time and ensures a steady flow of fresh reviews without manual intervention
• Unreasonable pricing structure: The most common concern of customers with Loox is its pricing structure. Some users found the pricing tiers relatively high compared to its features and benefits.

Price

• Basic Plan: $9.99 per month
• Growth Plan: $29.99 per month
• Unlimited Plan: $59.99 per month

4. Ali Reviews

Ali Review has established itself as a prominent player in  social proof solutions, equipping businesses with a range of features to bolster credibility, drive conversions, and enhance customer engagement.

Rating: 4.9/5.0 (13000+ Reviews)

Key features for social proof

Ali Review offers an array of features tailored to harness the power of social proof:

• Import reviews from AliExpress: If you already sell your products on AliExpress and have reviews for your products, you can use Ali Review to import product reviews from AliExpress directly to their store effortlessly. This provides immediate social proof and valuable insights for potential customers.
• Customizable display: Like other Shopify social proof apps, this app offers various ways to display reviews on your website, including widgets, carousels, and grids. This level of customization helps match your branding and design aesthetics.

• Review request automation: Ali Review enables automated email requests for customer reviews post-purchase. This feature streamlines the process of collecting authentic user feedback.

Drawbacks of the app

• Primarily for AliExpress users: The tool's core advantage lies in its auto-importing reviews from AliExpress. However, you must pay for an upgraded plan to import reviews from other platforms using the CSV importing feature.
• Limited reviews for a product: AliExpress limits the number of reviews shown per product for basic plans. If you want to use unlimited features, you need to pay for the Enterprise plan with the highest price. 
• For customer reviews only: This app is one of Shopify's best review apps but lacks the features for all other types of social proof.  

What do customers talk about Ali Reviews

• Easy to import review: Many customers love AliExpress for its seamless integration with various platforms, which makes importing reviews from AliExpress, Amazon, and other sources a breeze.
• Fantastic customer support: Most users gave AliExpress positive reviews due to its professional support. According to them, the customer support team responds to them promptly and is always willing to help them.
•  Limitation of free and starter plan: Many customers said they almost couldn’t do anything with free and starter plans.  

Price

• Free Plan
• Starter Plan: $9.90 per month
• Essential Plan: $19.90 per month
• Premium Plan: $49.90 per month

5. Grovewave 

Grovewave is one of the most recommended Shopify social proof apps. This app provides solutions for many types of social proof like customer, celebrity, and friend social proof. 

Rating: 4.8/5.0 (1900+ Reviews)

Key Features for Social Proof

Grovewave offers an impressive suite of features tailored to maximize the potential of social proof:

• Generate more qualified reviews: Beyond the text review, Growave enables your customers to upload images, adding a dynamic visual element to social proof. By combining this feature with auto sending review request feature and reward for review feature, you can encourage your customers to leave more reliable reviews to engage and enhance trust from new visitors.   
• Engaging Q&A review section: This app leverages customer social proof to the next level through Q&A sections, where potential buyers can ask questions that previous buyers answer. This fosters a sense of trust and encourages pre-purchase interaction.

• Various review display options: Grovewave offers a customizable review widget to showcase your social proof content strategically on your website. These widgets can include recent reviews, user-generated content, and trust badges, creating a compelling narrative around your brand. You can tailor it in many forms, from grids and carousels to a page, and put it anywhere through the buyer journey.  

• Moderate and curate reviews: Grovewave gives you control over what user-generated content appears on your website. This ensures that only relevant and high-quality posts are showcased, maintaining the integrity of your brand.

• Achieve social proof from Instagram: Grovewave seamlessly connects with your Instagram account, allowing you to showcase real user-generated content on your website. This app fetches UGC from Instagram through branded hashtags and enables you to create shoppable galleries across your site: product and collections pages, home pages, and dedicated landing pages. It also displays these customer photos on specific product pages as  social proof to show how your products may look . You can also use the Instagram UGC feature for celebrity social proof by sharing images from Instagram celebs on your store. 

• Reward for sharing: This referral program encourages customers to refer a friend, increasing traffic to your Shopify store and building trust based on friend social proof by rewarding both customers and their friends when one places an order with shared links. 

Drawbacks of the app

• Can’t upload reviews with videos: Grovewave allows reviews with text and images only, so customers can’t post a review with video. This is one of the most prominent disadvantages of this app, as video is a powerful source to leverage the credibility of a review. 
• Can fetch photos only from Instagram : Another drawback is also related to video. Although this app does a great job of fetching photos from Instagram, it can’t get video from this platform (or any other platforms). This will make your review section static and not as impressive as stores with video reviews.
• No free plan: This app can be one of the best review apps for Shopify stores, but it comes with no free plan, which is one of the reasons why it’s not as popular as other apps on the list. 

What do customers talk about Grovewave

• Ease of use: Users generally appreciate apps that are easy to install, configure, and integrate with their existing systems. Positive comments often highlight straightforward setup processes and user-friendly interfaces.
• Many helpful features: Users mention specific features they found valuable, such as customer reviews, photo and video reviews, social proof widgets, and rewards programs. The effectiveness of these features in enhancing customer engagement and sales is often highlighted.
• Troublesome integration apps: Some customers complain that the integrations of Grovewave are  difficult to use.

Price

• Basic Plan: $9 per month
• Starter Plan: $19 per month
• Medium Plan: $49 per month
• Growth Plan: $99 per month

6. Minimog Theme

Social proof Shopify apps can add social proof to your store, and Shopify themes can also be great social proof tools Minimog themes can help you take advantage of almost all types of social proof in your store!

Rating: 4.97/5.0 (450+ Reviews)

Key features for social proof

• Recommend Trending/Best-selling products: You can affect your customer with ‘Wisdom of the crowd” by recommending trending & best-selling products. With the Product tabs block, you can highlight these products on your homepage to catch the attention of new visitors.

• Showcase proof from influencers at ease: Minimog has a video section that enables you to show Youtube videos or your own uploaded video on your store so you can easily include videos of influencers on your store. Besides, you can connect to your Instagram account and show chosen images of celebrities with your products in the Instagram section of Minimog.  

• Creative ways to show testimonials & customer reviews: Minimog has a testimonial section with 6 layout styles to enable you to showcase testimonials in many different ways and impress your customers. Besides, this social proof tool is also integrated with the best review apps for Shopify, like Judge.me, Loox, etc., so you can combine these apps in your store for a persuasive product review section.

• Trust badge for your products: You can add a badge or seal to instill trust in your potential customers for your products with Minimog. This social proof tool allows you to adjust the heading of the badge and upload your own badge images so you can freely upload certification & approval images for your products. 
• Use “Wisdom of friends” with social sharing: Social sharing features of Minimog allow your customers to share your stores and products to popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. 

Drawbacks of the tool 

• Can’t generate referral link: Minimog is just a theme, so it lacks the feature to create referral links and reward for referrals. Thus, there’s little motivation for customers to share your store with their friends, leading to the difficulty of using friend social proof. 
• Primary customer review feature: The features for customer social proof are just basic, with the possibility to display and customize the reviews. You can not manage reviews or auto-send review requests like using a social proof app. 

What do customers talk about Minimog

• Design quality: Many users applaud Minimog for its stunning blocks and sections, allowing them to attractively showcase social proof.
• Professional customer support: Most Minimog users love how customer support staff respond to them and resolve their issues immediately. 
• Need manual coding: Some customers said this theme needs manual coding to add some functions. However, these reviews don’t clarify their problems. 

Price 

With only $88, you can get Minimog with all premium features for social proof. 

In conclusion 

Social proof is a must-have element for your Shopify store in the realm of online shopping, as it’s the main method to build credibility and gain customer trust. Besides, it brings many great benefits to  your stores, like increasing customer engagement and conversion rate. 

However, choosing a suitable social proof tool for your Shopify store isn’t a piece of cake. Thus, with the detailed reviews of Shopify social proof apps and tools in this article, we hope you can choose the best one for your store.

If you want a social proof tool with more impressive features like stunning design or up-sell and sales-boosting features, Minimog is for you.

Try Minimog to leverage your store design and make the best use of social proof now ⇒