How social proof helps Looka shine as a new brand in a new industry

Looka is an AI-powered platform that allows small businesses and entrepreneurs to create a custom logo and build a brand they’re proud of.

If this sounds like a futuristic concept, it is. The industry just came about in the last decade, presenting an interesting challenge to players in the space.

Compared to real live graphic designers — who can easily build trusted relationships with their clients through ongoing face-to-face interactions — Looka saw an opportunity as a new player in the online logo-making industry to grow a strong brand reputation and gain fast traction.

Read on to learn how Looka has made waves in a new industry (with a new brand identity) thanks to some help from social proof and online reviews.

Why a trustworthy brand reputation matters to Looka

The team at Looka has a singular goal: to make great design accessible and delightful for everyone.

Small business owners turn to their platform as a trusted design tool in the first crucial steps of their entrepreneurial journey. Rather than seeking out a designer, customers use Looka’s logo maker to take creating a brand identity into their own hands.

And they need to trust that by using Looka’s service, they’ll get a beautiful design that represents their unique business.

Boosting recognition and awareness after rebranding

Looka is still a young pup of a company. Because it was only founded in November 2016 (with the name “Logojoy”), and subsequently rebranded in May 2019, they thought it would be an uphill battle to gain the entrepreneurial community’s trust.

They realized that a typical entrepreneur would approach their company with a skeptical eye. They might subconsciously ask themselves all sorts of questions, including:

• Will Looka take my money and run?

• Will they deliver all the logo files that were promised?

• Will Looka’s customer success team be available for post-purchase support?

Building trust in a new industry

To further complicate matters, Looka’s industry barely existed until this decade.

Back then, logo makers were unsophisticated, with the quality of designs falling around amateur at best. So it’s safe to say that the logo-making industry needs a publicist. It needs to inspire more trust.

By contrast, graphic designers have historically inspired plenty of trust. They were able to work closely with entrepreneurs (in person, over the phone, via email) and hold their customer’s hand throughout the process.

They could answer specific design-related questions and provide the logic for their proposals. The designer may have also held a fancy degree or had previous clients to use as references.

Unfortunately but understandably, Looka’s graphic design platform doesn’t offer any of this. So they needed their customer reviews on Trustpilot to give prospective customers reassurance that:

• They truly didn’t need any design skills to create their logo

• They could make changes to a design after buying a logo package

• They could really design a logo in under an hour

• They were getting a cost-effective solution to get a logo designed

• They'd be getting higher quality designs than the competition

• They'd have an unlimited number of logos to choose from

Looka has had to scale a mountain when it comes to building trust in a new industry with a brand new identity. But thankfully...

Trustpilot verified reviews to the conversion rate rescue.

Funnily enough, Looka stumbled upon Trustpilot. They were researching Google’s guidelines about the third-party companies it trusts when deciding whether to give a company Google Seller Ratings, and Trustpilot seemed to be the most credible of all the options available.

Because Looka had accumulated close to a million customer signups (and 50,000 purchasers) at the time, they knew they could use Trustpilot’s manual review invitation feature, allowing them to retroactively email past customers en masse to kickstart their success even before putting automatic review invitations in place.

And that’s exactly what they did when they first joined Trustpilot, and they gathered an impressive 1,000+ verified reviews in just one month.

The team at Looka made sure to employ best practices in their email invitations, which ensured that their conversion rate for review responses was as high as it could possibly be.

First, they kept the email super short and to the point. Second, they let them know it would only require two minutes of their time. Turns out response rates skyrocket when you manage expectations and respect busy schedules.

As a result of this influx of new verified reviews, any time a prospective customer would Google “Logojoy reviews” or “Looka reviews,” they’d see Looka’s Trustpilot listing pop up.

And since Looka’s average review has consistently been over 4.5 stars, prospective customers instantly saw that they can use the platform with confidence, increasing Looka’s signup-to-purchase conversion rate.

On top of these rapid improvements to their online reputation, Trustpilot also adds value to many distinct teams at Looka.

The customer success team: Striving for perfection in all areas of the business

The customer success team at Looka uses Trustpilot reviews and insights as a way of gathering feedback on all areas of the business (positive or negative). They then action this feedback by making recommendations on how they could tweak the product features, marketing messaging, or customer interactions.

Their internal recommendations can be as minor as editing a couple of words on Looka’s website. One example would be changing “business cards” to “business card designs,” so that customers aren’t misled into thinking they’re getting physical cards mailed to them.

Or it could be as complex as developing a new product feature that allows someone to use a monogram symbol as the first letter of their company name in a logo design. In fact, many of Looka’s newest and most well-liked product features started out as a suggestion in a Trustpilot review.

Finally, taking the time to respond to reviews daily gives Looka’s customer success team a chance to follow up on issues that may have been missed in other chats or emails. Responding to all reviews (both 5 star and 1 star ones) brings the team closer to their customers by allowing them to have an open dialogue after purchase.

The customer success team doesn’t just see these responses as a form of engagement. They see it as a way to inspire trust in potential customers — and let them know they care about them every step of the way.

The marketing team: Social proof helps build a brand customers can feel confident buying from

The marketing team at Looka makes the most of the Trustpilot widget in every way possible. From Google Seller Ratings, Review Snippet stars in organic search, and TrustBoxes on landing pages, to quotes from the Image Generator on social media.

Simply put, Looka wants their prospects to know they’re in safe hands. Showing off the great experiences of their recent customers is a great way to do that.

It’s all about the social proof for the marketing team. Social proof is the influence that the actions and attitudes of the people around us (either in real life or online) have on our behavior. The "proof" element is the idea that if other people have done it and it went well, it must be correct.

So if people are buying from Looka and rating them with five stars, then people who have never used a logo maker are more likely to do the same.

Google Search Network: Seller Ratings lead to more sales for Looka

Every day, Looka spends thousands of dollars on Google Ads. Other industry players do the same, so the competition is fierce to say the least.

With Google Ads, the name of the game is to outcompete your competitors on CTR (click-through rate) and ROAS (return on ad spend). Getting Google Seller Ratings had a big impact on both of these metrics for Looka.

Let’s start with CTR. You wouldn’t be shocked to hear that a prospect is more likely to click an ad if it includes 4.5 bright yellow stars (with the reassurance that this is the average rating of hundreds of reviewers). So it leads to a higher CTR.

With this higher CTR, Google assigns you a higher quality score (a grade out of 10 that rates the relevance of your ad to the search and searcher).

With a perfect quality score (10/10), you can achieve up to a 50% discount on ad inventory over an “average” competitor. And it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that a 50% reduction in your ad costs will lead to a higher return on ad spend.

SEO: The sky's the limit with star ratings in organic search

For Looka, cultivating a presence on a third-party review site was a great move for off-page SEO and building up credibility in the eyes of almighty search engines.

As a newer brand, growing their presence on Trustpilot helped them show off their authority, relevance, and trustworthiness to Google, leading to a steady increase in their organic rankings, especially around key search terms for their business like "logo maker".

When potential customers type "Looka" or "logo maker" into Google, they're likely to come across Looka's business profile page on Trustpilot at the top of organic search results, complete with trustworthy review snippet stars. On top of additional clicks through to their site from their Trustpilot profile, this kind of brand authority even moves the needle for their overall organic SEO strategy.

Landing pages: Tipping them over the edge at the moment of truth

There’s a concept in marketing called “moments of truth,” which was first coined by the CEO of Procter & Gamble, A.G. Laffley. These are the most important touch-points you have with your audience — ones where you can truly earn their loyalty and see an increase in engagement.

For Looka, one of those moments of truth occurs on their landing pages when they ask people to start designing a logo by typing in their company name.

At this point, customers may have many objections. Will this take hours? Do I have to sign up for an account? How much will I have to pay? Do I need any design skills?

Looka tries to address as many objections as possible through clear and educational copy. But there’s one objection that no amount of copy can address: have other customers had a positive experience using Looka?

That’s why Looka turns to TrustBoxes to make their landing pages more trustworthy. They’re beautifully designed, mobile-responsive, clickable, and strike the fine balance between attention-grabbing and subtle. Most importantly, they provide all the social proof we need during a crucial moment of truth.

As a result, Looka gets a higher visitor-to-signup conversion rate by having these present under each of their CTAs.

The operations team: Getting the top 1% talent to sign on the dotted line

When the operations team is trying to attract and retain top talent, they’re often asked about whether they’ve achieved product-market fit. Since many candidates won’t have heard about Looka before interviewing there, they want to know that we have a large and passionate customer base.

The best way to prove this out is to show off their Trustpilot reviews with the carousel widget. The carousel widget pulls in the 25 most recent 5-star reviews, with a timestamp, the customer name, the title, and details of the review. The timestamp, while subtle, lets candidates know that Looka is selling hundreds of logo packages every day.

While Looka can’t prove what impact the carousel widget has on the quality and quantity of applications, they’re willing to bet that having Trustpilot reviews on their careers page helps us attract more of the top 1% of talent in Toronto.

The product team: Removing the most painful pain points

The product team looks at any one or two star reviews to make sure there are no recurring bugs or major pain points that multiple customers are experiencing.

As soon as they identify any such cases, they’ll log them in Asana as a bug and have a developer look to squash the bug ASAP.

The below example perfectly summarizes an example where there’s a bug that we wouldn’t have been able to catch and action without the help of (unfortunately but fortunately) negative reviews on Trustpilot.

Unlocking business development opportunities through customer feedback

Looka has also been able to prove to potential business development partners that they truly are best-in-class by comparing their Trustpilot rating with their competitors.

Doing so has allowed them to develop an affiliate partnership with Wordpress.com, which has unlocked significant growth.

Looka powers their innovative business forward with customer reviews

As a company that’s just shy of its third anniversary, Looka faces the same challenges that other young companies face.

One of their primary challenges is product innovation — finding ways to stay ahead of the curve and be able to compete against their competitors in the design space.

As their product evolves, Looka’s main focus is maintaining customer happiness. The team at Looka understands that they wouldn’t be where they are today without them, so they’re constantly aiming to support and educate them as they change moving forward.

Ready to take a page out of Looka’s book and make customer reviews work for all aspects of your business? Create a Trustpilot free account on the link below.