Explore · Chapter 3 of 3
Small, named proof
You do not need a wall of logos. You need one specific story told in a specific voice.
Small, named proof beats big, anonymous proof every time. "Trusted by 10,000+ businesses" is easy to dismiss. "Aya, a ceramicist in Lisbon, rewrote her homepage in an afternoon and stopped losing readers on the first line" is not.
If you do not yet have named proof, use illustrative proof — clearly labelled. A story from a composite reader, or a walkthrough of what a customer experience looks like, is more honest than manufactured social proof and more useful than none at all.
Apply this week
- Write one 80-word story of a real (or clearly illustrative) reader shift.
- Include: who they were before, what changed, what is different now. No adjectives you cannot back up.
Sit with this
Whose story on your site is doing the quiet work of earning trust?