How Hunter & Gather lifted conversion by 14% by targeting social proof to the right visitors
The Challenge
Hunter & Gather sells clean, high-quality collagen, protein, and supplements direct to consumer. Their product pages do a lot of work - ingredient credentials, benefit callouts, review scores, variant comparisons. It's a considered purchase for a health-conscious audience.
To help nudge visitors toward a decision, the team ran a social proof message on product pages. Messages like "1,025 people loved this product in the last 24h" were shown alongside the product imagery to build confidence and reduce hesitation.
The problem was targeting. Social proof was shown to everyone, regardless of how close they were to buying. In the Closing the èƵ Gap report, 58% of visitors never had any intent while onsite (yet often get sold to like they do). When you show the same nudge to a first-time browser as you do to a returning customer with items in their basket, the signal gets lost. Worse, it can feel pushy to visitors who are not ready for it.
Without a way to distinguish who needed reassurance from who didn't, the team could not see whether social proof was helping or hurting across different audience segments.
The Hypothesis
By segmenting social proof by intent, Hunter & Gather could see where it genuinely drives conversion and where it hurts - turning a blunt tactic into a targeted one.
In Closing the èƵ Gap, targeting social proof with intent drives an average 20% lift in conversion, while ‘x sold last week’ social proof has a -1% conversion impact on low intent visitors. Messaging that ignores where a visitor is in their journey can actually do more harm than good.
The Solution
Hunter & Gather used Made With èƵ to segment the performance of their existing social proof message by visitor intent. Rather than changing the creative or the placement, they measured how it performed across different intent states: Low, Building, and High.
The implementation was straightforward. The social proof message, showing how many people had recently engaged with the product, continued to run as before. But now the team could see, in real time, which visitors responded and which did not.
No new tools were required, and no redesign. The experiment was not about building something new. It was about understanding what they already had.
The Impact
Without èƵ, social proof was shown to every visitor on the product page. The overall result looked flat, with no clear signal on whether it was working.
With èƵ, the picture was completely different. The same message, measured by segment, showed a clear split.
Key Results:
- Low èƵ: -6% social proof actively reduced conversion
- Building èƵ: +11 a strong positive response from visitors gaining confidence
- High èƵ: +14% the biggest uplift, from visitors closest to purchase
By not showing the social proof message to low intent visitors, Hunter & Gather could turn a flat test into a meaningful conversion driver. The tactic did not need fixing. The audience did.
This pattern shows up again and again: it works for visitors who are already leaning in, and it backfires for those who are not. The instinct to show it to everyone feels logical. The data says otherwise.
Not everything works for everyone. Social proof is one of the most common tactics in ecommerce, and one of the most commonly wasted. This play shows that the difference between a flat result and a double-digit lift isn't the creative. It's who sees it.
Ready to find out where your tactics actually work? Explore more about Product Visits with èƵ.
