Including Social Proof On Your Food Truck Website

Your food truck website is one of your hardest working employee. It never calls in sick or complains about having to do too much work. The last place vendors should ever cut corners is on their website. Invest in it, build it properly and it will deliver more value than all of your other marketing channels. So, how do you know if you’re website is built properly? Today we’ll discuss an influential factor that your food truck’s website needs to have in place in order to be successful: social proof.

Social Proof – Experts, Celebrities, Strangers and Friends

Social proof works by tapping into the part of our brains that wants to fit in with the crowd. We’ve all experienced some degree of fear of missing out. This is the same promise of social proof on your website.

People simply don’t trust you as much as they trust your customers, authority figures, or experts. So take advantage of this by letting them sell for you. There are 5 types of social proof:

Expert

Endorsement from a voice of authority or organization. An example would be getting recognition from a local food reviewer for having one of the best taco trucks shops in your town.

Celebrity

People idolize celebrities and we figure that if something is good enough for them, then it’s good enough for us. An example of using celebrity social proof would be getting a 5/5 star rating from a local celebrity chef for food quality. The great part of this type of proof is because they are also an expert. A celebrity review could come from local sports celebrity or the mayor of your town.

User

People trusting experts or celebrities makes sense. People trusting total strangers doesn’t really make sense, but it works. This is referred to as user social proof. An example would be showcasing your best Yelp Reviews, Food Truck Reviewz, Tweets, Facebook Posts, etc.

Wisdom of the Crowds

This type of social proof is approval from large groups of other people. It’s showing evidence that thousands have eaten at your food truck. The “Fear of Missing Out” is a real thing. It’s a form of social anxiety, and it’s a compulsive concern that one might miss out on an opportunity.

Friends

This is the best type of social proof. Our example is pretty self-explanatory; it would be your friend telling you try out a new food truck. A strategy vendors can use to implement this strategy would be to introduce a refer a friend program. Create a special to-go box as a thank you for customer referrals; it could contain a dessert sampler, miniature versions of your food truck’s dessert specialties.

Downsides to not having any social proof?

Now you know the different types of social proof. So what might consumers think if they come to your food truck website and don’t see any?

You aren’t trustworthy.
Your truck is too new to take a risk dining at.
You aren’t being visited by anyone because you have poor quality food and service.

Don’t risk losing business by not including social proof on your website.

The Bottom Line

While getting a celebrity or expert endorsement might not be the highest priority for you, go ahead and scrape together your Yelp, Food Truck Reviewz, Facebook and Google Reviews for customer testimonials to share. Social proof is very important for your website, and ignoring it will only hurt you.

So how do you use social proof on your food truck website? Let us know in the comment section or on social media. Facebook | Twitter