37signals.com blog has an excellent example of how social proof can be a conversion catalyst. Am sharing their post snippet–
There’s a flash flood warning for all of Chicago today. Unfortunately there’s water in my basement (like other Chicago home owners)…
The flood fixing company U.S. Waterproofing has a cool feature on their website. Look at who we’ve helped in your neighborhood–
Back to my post …
See U.S. Waterproofing interface live– http://www.seepage.com/getreco.php?zip=60606
Now, U.S. Waterproofing is a Chicago based company so they are using their Google Map mashup to attract Chicago customers. But you could do the same for your ecommerce business. You could export a list of addresses shipped to in the last X years and create a Google Map mashup that places a pin over each shipped destination. Then, shoppers could zoom in to see different locations in their state where other shoppers have bought your products.
Don’t think it’ll work? A/B test it. Don’t know how to A/B test? Post a comment and I’ll help you out.
Comments 2
Would this raise any privacy concerns for the shoppers?
Author
In the U.S. Waterproofing example they don’t reveal the actual address, but you bring up a really good point. I hadn’t considered privacy angle. One option is to only export city level data into Google Map.
Thanks for the comment, Karthik.