A great indicator that you’ve designed a delightful user experience is having happy customers advocate for you, speaking positively about your products to family, friends, and – if you’re lucky enough to make an influencer happy – their online followers.
This is an example of ‘social proof’, and in this post our UX Designer Nabila Hisbaron talks us through our use of social proof to support postgraduate student recruitment.
In a recent user research sprint, we learned just how important social proofing can be for potential postgraduate applicants.
What is social proof?
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon in which we look to other people’s behaviours and experiences to help guide our own decisions.
Think of a long queue at an ice cream parlour, making you think that their product must be delicious. Or a friend discouraging you from paying for a ticket to see a movie, because they themselves didn’t enjoy it.
For potential applicants who are about to invest a large chunk of time, money, and energy towards a postgraduate degree, social proofing can be a powerful way for us to humanise and validate their expectations.
Social proof in higher education
There are quantitative ways to social proof the student experience – for example online ratings, world university rankings and employment statistics.
More descriptive, qualitative forms of social proofing include testimonies on the university website, reviews on student forums, influencer marketing, and student/alumni case studies. This gives happy users the opportunity to share exactly why they love their experience with the university.
Social proof can be generated internally as part of university marketing, and externally by people reviewing autonomously. Think of a university-branded video posted on our official Youtube channel, versus someone’s day-in-my-life vlog posted on their personal Tik Tok account.
Both contribute to the overall university brand experience. This post mainly focuses on university-generated social proof, although there is a limit to how much we can cultivate positive brand perception.
“I don’t care for seemingly fake reviews”
For a recent user research sprint, we explored what people interested in postgraduate study value when browsing universities (think: ‘top-of-funnel’ or the discovery phase of their customer journey). Our goal was to use these insights to inform content and design decisions for our brand awareness campaign landing pages.
We conducted remote interviews with 12 home and international students about their browsing behaviours, motivations, and frustrations.
Nothing gets me more excited than participants sharing unexpected insights! We didn’t expect to hear such impassioned reactions towards university testimonies and student quotes in particular – especially since this topic of social proof was completely unprompted during the interviews.
Participants were sceptical, and some even irritated, when they brought up student testimonies on university websites. 50% of participants expressed sceptical or irritated sentiments about overly general or inauthentic social proof being used.
Here’s a quote from one of our participants, a current undergraduate international student who is browsing for master degrees in Europe and the UK:
“I don’t care for seemingly fake reviews. They’re really, really positive, but they all kind of say the same thing, right? Like ‘moving here was super hard, but I found a group of people that can support me. And now I’ve found my true passion’. From an advertisement point of view, I get why [the University] would do that. But as a student who’s trying to actually learn about the course, it’s not very [helpful].”
The most surprising part about this sentiment is how other participants echoed this exact frustration.
Is the university website a trustworthy source for social proof?
Our participants shared how they’re currently hunting for social proof. Speaking to family, friends, and university lecturers for recommendations was mentioned by all the participants. Other popular methods are student vlogs on Youtube, third-party student forums, and world rankings sites.
After hearing about their scepticism towards testimonies on university websites, the fact that none of these popular channels were university owned wasn’t a surprise to me.
The medium is the message here. Social proof on external sites gives the perception that reviewers are more authentic and, thus, more trustworthy. This is something that university-branded content has a hard time competing against. So how can we optimise social proofing on our university website for prospective postgraduate applicants?
Optimising university-generated social proof content
We are not looking to change behaviour – users are going to do what makes sense to them. They will continue to read forums, use social media, and even come across less-than positive anecdotes every once in a while.
But from our interviews with people interested in postgraduate study, there are clear opportunities to improve social proofing on our website:
1. The university has a license to speak about the academic experience
We’ve found that postgraduate applicants are especially critical about applying to the right programme, as they are more academically specialised than their undergraduate counterparts.
This is where our university website can shine. The university digital estate is arguably the only credible place to speak truth to the academic experience.
Participants shared with us that they value reading about past projects, placements and internship experiences. They want to know what it could be like to study here, through the voice of a student or even a lecturer.
This can take the form of testimonials, case studies, Youtube videos… it all depends on what the user needs at that point in their customer journey. We just need to make sure that we’re doing it in a way that complies with Competition and Markets Authority regulations.
2. Be specific
A common frustration participants shared with us is how university testimonials are too positive and/or too general. It’s hard to summarise the entire student experience in just a couple of sentences. It sparks even more scepticism when it’s overly positive, as it lacks the nuance that postgraduate applicants expect from their student experience.
Specificity is key. I recommend avoiding sharing nondescript testimonies, that don’t position the university as uniquely competitive. Here’s a quick test: remove the university logo, and if your testimonial sounds like it could have come from any UK university, then it’s probably not helpful for a user who is browsing several universities at a time.
3. Be strategic
Let’s not waste the users’ hunger for social proof, and incorporate social proofing in your content strategy. Below, I’ve included an insightful bar graph from Smashing Magazine/TrustRadius about people’s feelings towards reviews and case studies as social proof. And here is an excellent article about social proofing best practice in ecommerce with learnings we can adopt in student recruitment.
This shows that social proof is more than just testimonials and quotes – there’s a whole science behind effective practices that can aid in conversions.
4. Always put a face to the experience
An easy but crucial one: it’s vital that we put a face to who is speaking. Along with their name, don’t forget to include at least a picture of the person sharing their insight, their credentials (such as student, alumnus, lecturer, industry partner etc.), and signpost to the programme they’re affiliated with. This is especially important for university-generated content as it helps legitimise your social proof efforts.
5. Leverage social media as the window to the student experience
Applicants often imagine themselves studying at the university in question and seek to vicariously experience student life through the eyes of current students.
Our participants shared that they prefer to watch non-university affiliated Youtubers to get a sense of student life. I know that my peers in other universities collaborate with social media influencers to help guide their university-related content, all while remaining separate from the university brand.
This method of influencer marketing is an approach that both respects and leverages known user behaviour. Here’s an interesting article about influencer marketing in higher education.
Some final thoughts
On a human level, social proof comes from the need to settle one’s anxieties by listening and watching other people’s lived experiences. We have only scratched the tip of the iceberg, having stumbled across this insight thanks to our user research participants. Perhaps there is opportunity to dive deeper into social proofing in student recruitment another time.
Have you had positive (or negative) reactions towards an example of social proofing? Comment below with your examples.
Do you want to learn more about your users’ behaviours, motivations, and frustrations? Do you want support in testing your digital products and solutions with real users? Complete our digital projects support request form, or email nabila.hisbaron@bristol.ac.uk for how we can collaborate.
My teammates Jamie and Josh are writing an excellent piece about the design and development elements of the ‘Campaign landing page’ sprint I referred to, which will be published here soon.
Great paper Nabila & team. Good luck on the next project
Very insightful! Thank you 🙂
What approach do participants prefer when seeking to understand student life at a university, according to the passage?
They preferred to browse on social media and forums that are not affiliated with the university to get a “real” understanding of student life, as some participants believed that reviewers are more authentic if they were separate from the university. Furthermore, all participants reported asking their friends/family, peers, and lecturers about their anecdotal experiences at other universities.