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Show HN: I made a toast that shows what visitors are doing in real-time

proofybubble.com

Hey HN, A couple years ago, I switched from my corporate 9 to 5 job to become a Tech Educator. Starting with little social proof was tough, I only had testimonials from past colleagues.

Existing social proof tools were charging $75/month i.e. ($900/year) and were too complex to use.

This is why my partner and I built ProofyBubble for my Next.js Course Early Access Launch.

We saw a real jump in revenue the moment we added ProofyBubble to show off our website traffic, waitlist signups, incoming sales, and past sales.

I've since used ProofyBubble in all my products - my newsletter subscribers grew, sales increased, and I launched my course with tons of social proof.

I hope it helps you as much as it helped me. Would love your feedback please.

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Whenever I see these pop up I basically never believe them. They are even worse when made up scarcity is involved.

I want to go one step further and say this is actually a dark pattern.

Agree, super ironic that they’re apparently called “Social Proof” haha

I agree. As a programmer I never believe this is actual interaction of people but instead random events programmed to show up to spoof activity. There's no way to verify the truthfulness of the data. As a consequence I distrust the website and make an effort to find a different seller.

Yes, but we're not typical customers.

Makes it even worse if they find actual people to deceive.

what would make you trust us? I am asking so I can show more legitimacy as I'm also a programmer and I agree with you

What you're trying to solve is a form of social validation and trust that brick and mortar stores implicitly have: 1. They have to have spent a reasonable amount of money to actually be there; 2. A busy store with lots of people at the registers means there's enough trust to spend money here.

To solve this in a virtual environment you'd need a comparable amount of implicit trust. For #1 it's doable: have a trustworthy domain name. Amazon.com is a lot more trustworthy than look-at-my-shop.tk. For #2 I don't think there's a trustworthy equivalent, since it's either off-site by a third party or unverifiable by users.

These are all dark patterns used in the SaaS community and it takes zero effort to create. Two valid alternatives to this product: (1) lie (2) average out whatever proof throughput you get and simulate the events

Not just the SaaS community, unfortunately.

Exactly, like the bubble/up-sell in the Uber app that claims 'busier than usual' circumstances can only be remedied by paying a little more for a quicker pickup.

Agreed. I’ve actually ended purchasing from alternative places because of these things.

If I feel like a site is trying to pressure or rush me into a sale then I usually end up feeling negatively towards that site and thus shop elsewhere.

Oh really? This helped to show actual social proof vs fake it. Users that sign up can't really fake it

I've seen similar 'innovations' on other e-commerce sites. There is zero reason for me to believe that the statistic it's showing is real, and my first reaction is always to try and dismiss/remove it because it's distracting.

I'm slowly developing a new form of banner-blindness for all things present in a website's "gadget layer" - that place where all 3rd party add-ons go that actually hurt the user's experience. I'm talking about the social tab thing that we sometimes see, the Intercom chat bubble in the lower right, etc.

Sorry OP, it looks like a nice implementation of a truly terrible new e-commerce trend :(

thank you for your feedback! It does connect to real integrations though so wanted to ask you what can we do to build your trust? It genuinely helps show live momentum.

I believe you. I'm probably the worst type of buyer to answer these questions. I don't do fomo-based shopping at all.

Whn I buy something I buy entirely based on it's merit alone.

Sorry!

Gotcha! Do you also find the testimonials fake on the site?? I find it sometimes as friends help each other and I want to know how the product really is

I'd say its about 50/50 for me encountering testimonials that come accross as clearly fake. These are most easy to spot where the seller is hyper local, but the reviews are from obviously not local-sounding names. But then I do come accross testimonials that appear legit, and they do help with my buying decisions.

I would often rely on a Google review of the seller to determine whether or not it's an outright scam, and for hobby related stuff I might rely on forums where fellow forum goers might recommend a specific product/service.

So basically for me personally I would prefer independent 3rd party ratings/reviews/recommendations, but at this point I'm even a bit allergic to things like trustpilot, as I fear for incentives that are profit aligned rather than customer trust aligned.

I came just to find out what a 'toast' is in this context. I'm understanding it's a 'little popup'... is that right?

Yes, named that way because they pop up (mostly) from the bottom like the bread when a toaster is finished.

https://web.dev/articles/building/a-toast-component

The difference being that the toast is real

I attempted to explain this using the existing definitions, and they didn't quite fit!

A 'toast message' is a little popup that contains information for the user.

For some weird reason a lot of standard UX patterns are named after food. Hamburger menu, kebab menu, toast message, chips/pills, snackbar etc etc

I thought this was going to be a camera that prints onto pieces of toast in real time.

It feels creepy and scary.

When I see stuff like this I assume it’s all faked anyway.

I see, curious to learn why? Even though viewers integrate with 3rd party?

people can easily made a fake one + no one is gonna believe it, tho sometimes it does work

No one can fake it though as they have to integrate with real services and we monitor it actively. That's the whole point of using a 3rd party. But curious to known why you thought it would be fake?

The op meant someone can make their own component that’s fake. Not that they’d send fake data to your service.

And there’s no way to distinguish a component that uses your real social proof from someone else’s fake social proof.

Gotcha, We added a verified by ProofyBubble text there but Do you think there’s a better way to distinguish?

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