WordPress counters, we’ll dig into the topic right after we settle why they are useful. So, bare with me, will ya?
Thanks 🙂
Decisions, decisions, decisions…
We’re making them every day…consciously or not.
Our conscious decision-making process is influenced by:
- Our own experience
- The experience of others
In marketing, the experience of others is used as social proof. Social proof is the driving force that makes us copy the choices of others. Why do we copy the choices of others? Because it’s easier, and it shortens the decision-making process.
Let’s say you’re traveling and you want to stop for a drink. There are 10 pubs on the street. Which one would you choose? Probably the one that has the most clients inside. In just milliseconds you’ll form an assumption that the pub must be good.
Following the crowd is a shortcut most of us take.
We don’t always follow any crowd. We can be pretty selective.
We are social people, we still belong to certain tribes. We evolved from nomadic tribes to the vegan tribe, the eco-aware tribe, the Starbucks tribe, the indie-rock tribe, etc). And if someone from our tribe recommends something, we’ll take it for granted, most of the time.
The Flavors of Social Proof
Show, don’t tell…
When you praise your own service or product doesn’t have the same effect as when somebody else is doing it.
Venture capitalist Aileen Lee defined five forms of social proof across the web:
- Expert social proof. Credible experts or voices of authority in an industry have the power to influence choices. Whether it’s your favorite food blogger, product designer, activist, if they’re endorsing a brand, the brand is likely to generate more revenue and use the endorsement on its website.
- Celebrity social proof. A study made in Taiwan shows that consumers show greater recall of products that have been endorsed by celebrities – it doesn’t matter if they’re fans or not. When Selena Gomez was named brand ambassador of luxury brand Louis Vuitton back in 2016, ads were rolled out via Instagram. Back then, Selena Gomez was the most-followed person on Instagram. The post got 1 million+ likes in the first two hours it was posted. Likes might be a vanity metric, but definitely, a slice of those likes translated into Louis Vuitton purchases.
- User social proof. You wanna buy a cleaning robot. You go to your favorite electronics e-commerce store and look for one. The next second you’re browsing for reviews. Reviews, case studies, testimonials from users of products and services, are a gold mine for a website.
- Wisdom of the crowd. This is how the popularity of a place, product, service is measured. In marketing, it can be translated as “X sites build with the Y tools” (and here we can the first potential use for a counter!).
- Wisdom of friends. Last but not least. This might be the most powerful social proof method out there. It’s like I mentioned before: we belong to tribes, and family and friends are at the core of our main tribe.
Now, if we go back to our counters….where’s the connection between social proof and WordPress counters?
Counters can help you build trust among our visitors.
Counters are used to show the number of:
- Years of experience,
- Clients,
- Projects,
- Reviews,
- Countries where the business operates,
- Post views,
and more.
One thing that I personally dislike is that these counters mimic real-time, but, in most cases, this is a fixed number. The counter is set to go up till “120” or “70”.
I think this one is real-time, from the Ecosia browser.
For the Omniconvert website counter, my hunch is that it’s not real-time. Honestly, it’s hard to make it real-time…and maybe it doesn’t make sense to invest effort in making it real-time.
Now, a question for you: do you think that adding a counter brings more value to the users than writing a static number? Or is this just a fancy thing?
Test this before you answer it 🙂
How to Create Your Own WordPress Counter?
Piece of cake…I might say.
If you’re using a page builder or a theme that has this feature, you can do it via the Customizer.
If not, plugins can come to the rescue.
How to Create a WordPress Counter Using a WordPress Builder
For the purposes of this exercise, I’m using the Colibri Page builder plugin.
Here are the steps for creating a WordPress counter:
- From “All Pages” head over to your desired web page.
- Select “Edit with Colibri”.
- Go to the “+” sign and click on it.
- Go to “Components”.
- Find the counter component and drag it to your site.
- Select the sample counter section on the web page.
- Set up the title and the limit for the counter from the left-hand side panel.
- Make other adjustments (counter type, animation time, etc) from the panel.
And that’s it!
Let’s say you need to show off your number of clients, number of projects, and positive reviews. You’ll need to drag and drop 3 counters. It’s that easy.
How to Create WordPress Counters Using Plugins
- Head over to Plugins -> Add New in your WordPress dashboard,
- Search for a counter plugin in the search bar,
- Select the one that has good reviews and click on “Install now”. The button text will change immediately to “Activate” click on that as well.
- Head over to Plugins -> Installed plugins and look for the plugin.
- Select “Settings” from underneath the plugin (some of the plugins will require from start to Upgrade, meaning there’s no free plan). Follow the instructions for the setup.
Some plugins won’t have a “settings” option as mentioned above. You’ll have to look for the plugin in the dashboard. The plugin will come with some menu subitems where you can make the necessary configuration.
The setup should be as easy as shown in the previous chapter.
And, you’re done.
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Alina is a digital marketer with a passion for web design. When she's not strategizing she's doing photography, listening to podcasts on history and psychology, and playing with her 2 dogs and cat.
