Happy Sunday!

Hope you're hydrated and took advantage of this weekend’s beautiful weather to get a good sweat in too. This past week, on 3 separate calls, a common pain point came up… one makes $500K a month, one at $8M, and one at $9M. 3 established brands, of different sizes, all facing the same issue. I had to make this week’s newsletter about it.

On our calls, all three brands asked me the same question: how do we make the website work harder for my customers? Different categories, different teams, different marketing channels, different revenue. It didn’t matter… the answer kept coming back to the same two things.

The page needs an angle and social proof. Those two. That’s what today’s newsletter is about. But, before we get into that...

Vendor of the Week

Roku Ads Manager — the holiday media buy built for teams that cannot just outspend everyone.

Every year, the same rollercoaster around Q4 media happens… Meta CPMs climb, every brand pushes a deeper promo than the year before, and the team with the biggest budget buys the most day-of attention. Smaller teams are left squeezing more out of the same crowded feeds.

Well… this year that changes. The bigger opportunity is customers are already sitting in front of a Roku TV. In 2025, Roku viewers streamed 33.8 billion (with a B) hours between October 1 and January 15, and their annual peak number of streamers was during BFCM.

Roku Ads Manager gives smaller teams a self-serve way into that moment. Campaigns start at a $500 minimum, can target down to a DMA, ZIP code, or neighborhood, and connect exposure back to online outcomes while the season is still happening.

The more interesting piece is their Action Ads. A viewer can press OK on the remote to shop, learn more, or send the offer to their phone. With Shopify and Roku Pay, they can even check out on the screen. Their brand case studies show Action Ads producing 3x lower CPA and 4.5x more goal actions per campaign.

That's the opportunity. Do not try to win the holidays by yelling louder in the same feed. Show up where holiday viewing is already happening, then make it stupidly easy to buy. Plus this creates a lot more awareness in your target market for digital channels to feed off.

Build your holiday campaign with Roku Ads Manager.

A dense PDP can still be a dead PDP

Here's the thing, the 3 brands I talked to had "good" pages. Product photos, features, FAQs, reviews, shipping info... the works. Every box checked. Yet, the pages still read like inventory. That's the trap. Most teams treat the page like a checklist instead of an argument. A technically complete page with no animating idea is just a well-organized shelf.

The page needs an unapologetic point of view. A wide-tent angle that tells the shopper how to see the product. How to interpret it. Where it fits in their life. Why should they get excited about it. How they best utilize the product to benefit their life.

The angle gives the product a purpose in their mind and it makes the page feel like it's talking to a person, not displaying an object. Once you pick the angle, everything on the page gets a job. The copy, the photos, the education... and especially the proof (which is why I feel it’s so important).

The angle gives every piece of social proof a job

A logo, a review, or a creator video isn't automatically persuasive. It has to reinforce your point of view. If the angle is morning clarity, then "these electrolytes cleared my morning brain fog" does real work. "These taste so good" is pleasant and weak. If the angle is durability, a photo of the product still going strong after five years beats another generic five-star rating. If the page is for side sleepers with shoulder pain, the strongest proof on that page better talk about shoulder pain.

So stop asking if your page has social proof. Ask what each piece of proof is proving and remember why you need it. You know that friend who loves telling you things you didn't ask for, and you're never sure if they're telling the truth? That's how a new customer sees your brand. You're asking a stranger to pull out their credit card. Social proof is how you earn it.

One more thing: social proof is a layer, not a section. It belongs above the fold, in the middle, and at the bottom. In that order. Most teams just bury a reviews widget at the bottom and call it done.

The Proof Stack

These aren't isolated widgets. They're a system. Here are the eight layers and what each one is for.

The brag bar. A strip below the hero that says "thousands of real people trust us, so should you." Use publisher logos your customer actually recognizes. An older audience trusts The New York Times. A younger one responds to PopSugar. The logos should reflect the audience, not the founder's ego. And pull the one sentence that lands the punchline. Recognition gets attention. Specificity sells.

Reviews with an angle. Most review carousels are wallpaper. The reviews that sell carry an outcome, an objection handled, or a moment of relief. "The blades are incredibly strong" is good. "The blades are so strong I get a close shave, but I don't get razor burn anymore" is great. The second one closes. Ask questions that pull out the before-and-after. And put the numbers where they count: "4.8 stars from 12,000 customers" is a signal. "4.8 stars" is decoration.

Quick aside: on the PDP, a real review widget (browsable, photo reviews, verified badges) consistently delivers a higher conversion lift (it's one of the highest-impact single changes you can make).

Real customer photos and videos. A real customer using the product lands differently than a polished, commissioned UGC. It should feel discovered, not manufactured. Eight Sleep's Wall of Love is the classic. Jolie screenshots iMessages from customers and puts them on the page. Minimal editing, maximum credibility. It reads like documentary evidence.

Creator proof that carries through. Creators hand you proof, language, and demos all at once. The mistake is treating them like an ad that ends at the click. If a creator wins by talking about shoulder pain, the landing page better keep talking about shoulder pain. Don't just run their ad. Build the entire funnel behind them.

Partnerships and collabs. A strong collab is a co-sign. You borrow the aura of a bigger partner. But a random logo swap isn't proof. The partner has to help the shopper understand who the product is for. Then turn it into photography, quotes, and on-site proof that works for months.

Out-of-home and cultural presence. Shoppers associate billboards with real companies, so the media buy itself signals scale. But the real unlock is putting it on the site. Photograph the installation, capture reactions, document the moment. The point isn't "we bought a billboard." It's "this brand exists in the real world."

Traction proof. Concrete business facts. Units sold. Years in business. Retail doors. If a family business has been running for 40 years and sold a million products, that belongs at the top of the page. If you're in 12,000 stores, that carries more weight than another brand-y headline.

Demonstration and named authority. Show the evidence. Side-by-sides, before-and-afters, cost-per-use math, a named expert. Graymatter puts a firefighter, a special forces officer, and an NFL player at the top of the page because the product is cognitive performance. Then the PDP switches to everyday customer reviews. The placement matters as much as the proof. And kill the vague "trusted by thousands" language. "81% noticed less shedding" beats "clinically proven" every time.

Don't just dump all eight on the page

The strongest pages pick the proof that supports the angle. Quick filter: Is it relevant? Does the customer recognize it? Does it name an outcome? Does it feel earned? Is it sitting next to the claim it supports?

Different customers need different proof. The skeptic needs the expert quote. The impulsive buyer needs the star count. The empathetic buyer needs the review from someone who sounds like them. Social proof shouldn't decorate the claim, instead it should finish the claim.

That's all for this week.

The newsletter started with the goal to give ideas on how to better show social proof on your PDP (and across landing pages, emails, etc.), but without an angle, even the best PDP isn’t going to convert someone who’s never heard of you before.

In today’s day-and-age of media buying and where/how traffic gets to the website, every page and every step of the consumer’s journey needs to hit people with an angle and social proof. It’s the best way to get someone genuinely interested in what you have, so they even spend the time looking into why it’s so great.

It is Sunday night tonight, so I hope you plan to get a full 9 hours of sleep tonight (I’m aiming for 9.5 myself). Have an amazing upcoming week. I’ll see you next Sunday, same time, same place!