Posted by Scott Stanford
Last updated 6th February 2021
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Creating a powerful testimonial on your website is a crucial step towards building a layer of social proof that builds trust with prospects and customers alike.
All too often, companies rely solely on the unedited written feedback of existing customers without providing any prompts in advance for indicators of the areas of a testimonial that are known to engage customers.
Without further ado, the areas of a testimonial page that will build traction are:
It may seem like a given, but helping potential customers to relate with your social proof is imperative if you want to achieve online success. It gets accomplished when website visitors can connect with the testimonial provider - including the name, a job role/position and even the organisation they represent. Those working in similar roles, or in similar industries yearn to hear the feedback of their peers.
What if the testimonial is for an individual?
When working with testimonials from individuals (as opposed to companies), you may want to consider including the location in which the author is based instead of their job role or organisation name. As above, other non-business customers may benefit through hearing from someone who has been in a similar predicament to them (and who may even be based locally as part of their decision-making process).
So the meat of a testimonial page is the written message from the author. You want to ensure that the testimonial speaks not only of how happy they are as a result of using your product or services, but also help to outline the problems they initially face. Alongside this, go into the specifics of how you have helped them to overcome the hurdles confronting them.
Why a short testimonial too?
The reality is in today's fast-paced and dynamic world; website visitors may digest content in a variety of ways. By getting an excerpt of the testimonial, you'll be in the best position to include this but not just in the testimonial page itself, but also your service pages, blog posts and other rich content pages.
We'd always recommend boosting the quality of your testimonial pages where you can. Going above and beyond the standard text and author in your set of feedback will only aid you in connecting more efficiently with potential customers. One approach for this is the use of a rating system against your testimonials (for example a 1-5 star score). Website visitors will be able to quickly ascertain how pleased their peers are with your offering and will be able to identify those reviews which suggest areas for improvement.
The added benefit of using a rating system (where the correct the schema is attached) is that search engines like Google make use of them. What they do is take these enhanced data sets to build rich snippets in the search result pages. What does this mean for you? More chances of being found in the top 10 results for the keywords and search terms that matter!
Our inbuilt testimonial manager is the go-to approach for creating the feedback engine that attracts customers time and time again.
By now we should all know the power of an effective written testimonial. Why not make use of an audio recording from your customers or better still a short video testimonial explaining the reasons why they worked with you and the value it has delivered?
The stats are clear on this. Video content converts by up to 80% better than standard text content alone, so don't miss out on a fantastic opportunity and an easy win to improve the quality of your testimonial pages.
See a video testimonial in action:
improvements on conversion rates can be achieved when using video content
If you were wondering how best to collect powerful testimonials from your existing customers, the process could be made easier with an online form. A form like this will allow customers to provide feedback in an intuitive and unbiased way whilst giving you the freedom to collect only the information you need.
It would help if you aimed to gather the same details as those outlined in the steps, to ensure that every testimonial you receive meets the same high standard and consistent criteria.
Scott is one of the founders at Sites Done Right and leads the development and customer success teams. Able to get his hands dirty in development when needed, he works on our platform roadmap of fantastic features to delight our customers.
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