Power of Social Proof: How Italian Brand Broke Most Common Stereotype

What is “Social Proof” and why do people in eCommerce rave about it? Sure, you’ve seen a lot of advice about it but do you really use this tool in your eCommerce business? And if so, how to use it?

In short, social proof is a demonstration that other people have chosen your products, which then encourages others to do the same.

It is a hard work that can only be obtained through sustained product development, customer service, and analytics.

To show you this, we've written down a story of the famous brand “Moooh!!”, which has met the most common challenge on Shopify - the lack of social proof - and overcame it with great success.

Stereotypes that cause pains

Moooh!! is a fashion and lifestyle Italian company, led by Carlo Trotta with whom we've shared a special bond for many years. Carlo has started his business in late 2013 with just an amount of $100 when he moved from Italy to China. Since then, the company has grown by leaps and bounds, and today Moooh!! is the first PayPal foreigner merchant, operating from China.

“I started on Storenvy.com, where I’m the most followed brand, with $0 investment. On Storenvy I sold for around $450K. Then I was invited to sell on Wish app where I sold for more than $800K in less than 2 years. Deciding to have my own branded store was the next step.”

With these great achievements, “Moooh!!” team decided to go further and launch the online store on the Shopify platform. Even though it was already an established store with good sales and an A grade office in Guangzhou, China, the online store was creating headaches on every level, failing to deliver the results Carlo knew were possible. The main pain point was poor social engagement which caused the low site traffic:

“Reputation on Chinese based store is not that good and I needed a solution showing how real shoppers, not trolls or fake reviewers were interacting with the store.”

"Moooh!!" team needed to gain visitors’ trust, since there always has been a wrong stereotype about Chinese quality, making customers afraid to purchase items that wouldn’t meet their expectations. There even was a necessity to put the note about it on their Storenvy.com site:

“When you buy from Moooh!!, forget to think about “cheap” items from China and start thinking AFFORDABLE on well-curated collections of fashion and lifestyle items, delivered with a stunning customer service.”

So potential customers had trust issues. Carlo wanted people to know that “Moooh!!” is more than a just online site for shopping, it's an exciting unique experience where you can browse through pages of high-quality products at your own leisure and become involved in something new and innovative.

With all this in mind, Carlo started searching for a solution that would allow their marketing efforts to address the business goals of:

• Creating a future-proof and user-friendly lifestyle website and online store.
• Improving customer engagement and social proof.
• Finding a powerful, integrated solution for traffic and revenue growth.

“Community” is just official “Family”

The brand found that holistic solution in Growave, an all-in-one marketing platform that combined all the features that Carlo was looking for.

“Growave was the best platform to show how people were interacting with my website. Real people with social personal profile.”

Thanks to the Community feed product, “Moooh!!” has become more socialized and friendlier site, full of social proof just like Carlo wished. Moooh!!'s customers loved this feature. They enjoyed interacting with it since there are so many ways to learn more about the brand and mingle and exchange shopping experience at the brand’s site. It is a special place in store' website, as customers can open discussions, ask questions and share photos, videos or any other content.

“It’s a perfect platform for creating viral engagement, collecting leads and driving sales. Shoppers love to play with their social profiles and community feed. Growave is the best solution to socialize an e-commerce store.”

Build. Adjust. Design. Have fun!

This feature helps merchants to launch and build their own community around their site, create new sales funnels, generate leads. Moreover, it can be adjusted according to sites design. Colors, logo, titles, templates and other skills are easily customizable so there are no coding skills required.

Suggested reading: 7 design tips most successful Shopify stores use

The Community also streamlines what's happening in your online store: reviews, new items, added to wish lists and purchased items, videos, photos, comments and discussions. And of course, you can moderate the content.

There is also a sweet bonus inside the Community that uses social proof as motivation for your customers to make a purchase. It adds urgency using such kind of notifications as  “7 people added to their cart”, “ added to wishlist”, “commented”, “reviewed” and more.

Never miss the chance to show it in pictures

“I was looking for a Pinterest look-alike app with sharing and reviews, and the offered features made Growave stand out over others that I considered in Shopify App store. I’ve found everything I needed and more in your platform.”

The Reviews product, which allows adding pictures to the review, has kicked Moooh!!’s social proof up a notch. Customers love to attach pictures of their purchases which makes the product more popular and the site more trustful. 

The Reviews product allows to send unlimited review request emails, reward customers for posting and sharing reviews, embed a review slider on any Shopify page and improve store's SEO using Google Rich Snippets.

“Growave has helped us to spread the word about our brand and get the recognition of customers around the world and achieve their trust”

Delivering solutions, exceeding expectations and surprising is kind of our thing.

Now, the site looks cozier, brighter and friendlier :) The products, described above, helped multiply Mooh!!'s purchases by taking advantage of the feedback on the site within just a few months after implementing Growave. This, in turn, has helped them to become one of the most popular and unique online stores from China.

The whole revenue though is generated from sales in U.S., Canada, Australia, Germany, UK, France, Italy, South America, and many other countries, which means that Growave has achieved its purpose once again - solve the issue our clients had been experiencing. People from these countries trust and love Moooh!! and so do we.  :)

It has been 5 years since we know each other and became friends with the Moooh!! brand and its CEO Carlo Trotta. It has been a truly great journey which we are still enjoying and hope to enjoy year by year.

“Moooh!!” is making valuable the phrase “Made in China”, it lets people know that luxury can be produced in China and that luxury doesn’t always have to be expensive. The passion with which Carlo and his team work and their faith in a better inspire us to keep moving forward even though the whole world has a wrong stereotype about you.  :)

“Growave’s excellent customer service, website developing skills and availability to listen to the customer bits of advice surprised me. Availability of marketing products that integrate well between them and save time and money on having different apps from with different developers exceeded my expectations about this platform”