Build Your Reputation With Testimonials And User Reviews
Are you stuck doing what you’ve always done to attract new customers, only to get the exact same disappointing results? As most business owners know, that trying to generate new business can be quite difficult, confusing and frustrating. Just trying to stay in business takes a lot of your time, money and energy, and sometimes this can feel like it’s just not worth the effort.
In today’s digital, mobile and social-driven economy, you cannot afford to ignore the impact of what potential customers are doing online, especially if they are posting negative comments about your business.
Don’t ignore what consumers may be saying online about your business!
By the same token, you could be doing your business a great disservice if you don’t promote the positive things your clients are saying about your products or services. User reviews, testimonials, and case studies are powerful when it comes to helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be included in your content.
In this article, you’ll learn how to achieve better results online with more effective user testimonials.
Testimonials And User Reviews
Legendary American showman and businessman P.T. Barnum once said that “Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd.”
P.T. Barnum understood the power of “social proof”. Using social proof as content is a powerful way of getting your business promoted effectively. Reviews and testimonials from your satisfied clients are far more persuasive when it comes to drawing new customers, clients or users than anything you say about your own products or services.
There is a source of untapped opportunities for generating new business that most small businesses just aren’t utilizing, or utilizing correctly … reviews and testimonials from your previous customers!
Customer testimonials and reviews are a great way to build credibility for your services and products.
Studies conducted by many leading firms all point to the same conclusion: testimonials and user reviews eliminate doubts potential customers may have about your product, help users select products and increases sales conversions.
Here are just some of the stats available to support this:
- According to a study by eVoc Insights, an organization that researches and measures user experience, “In general, 63% of users indicate they are more likely to purchase from a web site if it has ratings and customer reviews.”
- According to Reevoo.com, consumer reviews play a significant role in creating an average 18% uplift in sales and 50 or more reviews per product can result in a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.
- Site visitors who interact with both customer reviews and customer questions and answers are 105% more likely to purchase while visiting and spend 11% more than visitors who don’t interact with user-generated content (UGC). (Bazaarvoice, Conversation Index, Q2 2011).
- Customer reviews are significantly more trusted (nearly 12 times more) than descriptions that come from manufacturers, according to a survey of US internet users by online video review site EXPO. (eMarketer, February 2010).
(The figures above were sourced from eConsultancy.com)
Adding Client Reviews And Testimonials – Online Reputation Management
Clearly, you should be adding great reviews and testimonials from existing clients to your site.
User reviews and customer testimonials, however, can work both ways and impact your business both in a positive or negative way.
You see, people may not be saying bad things about your business, products or services directly to your face, but they could be posting disparaging remarks on Facebook or a user thread about a bad encounter they’ve just had with one of your sales or customer support representatives and this could be doing far more damage to your business than all the good work you’ve been putting into building it.
This is where online reputation management becomes important to your business success.
Misconceptions about managing your reputation online, such as the process being too complicated or too time-consuming (or the belief that you really don’t need to worry about it) may be seriously hurting your business without you even realizing it.
See this article to learn more about a simple yet effective plugin for WordPress users that can help to avoid the escalation of problem reviews about your business, products or services through effective customer review management:
Tips On Improving Your Conversions With Effective Testimonials
Testimonials, user reviews, and case studies are effective ways of helping you promote and market your products and services online and should be used in your content. When you include responses from users in your content, you:
- Show others exactly what problems and pains your products and services can solve for them and how easily it can do this.
- Help visitors identify and address their objections.
- Help potential customers connect with their motivations and facilitate moving them closer to a decision to purchase.
Below are some practical tips on how to create captivating testimonials:
- Avoid over-editing: You should try using the actual words used by your customers as much as possible. Leaving grammatical errors and misspelt words in the content helps keep your testimonials sounding authentic.
- Use photos: Images of people’s faces draw the most attention on a web page. Adding photos of your clients next to their testimonials and reviews will help increase visitor engagement with your site’s content.
- Tell a story: Stories are so much more powerful and memorable than just providing facts and statistics. The ability to present a customer’s horror story and how your solution saved the day will make a longer-lasting impression on those reading your content than presenting generic statements about how “excellent” the customer service was and giving “two thumbs up” service recommendations that all of us have heard a “million times” before.
- Use it in context: It’s good to add testimonials in your web content where it makes the most sense to place them, and where they can most effectively help sell your point. For example, think about the impact you will have on your visitor’s mind by adding a testimonial about what a “bargain” price your solution sells for before posting pricing information, or testimonials about problems you’ve helped clients solve before talking about the benefits of your services, or testimonials where clients are genuinely ecstatic about your customer service before offering guarantees or providing content designed to help your readers overcome their objections.
- Quantify your information: Which of the following statements is more powerful… “Since using your services, we have noticed an additional profit growth of $14,784 during the last fiscal year,” or “XYZ product has helped us grow our sales?” Whenever possible, publish testimonials containing quantifiable data, like how much your solution helped to increase their profits or reduce their costs by in specific percentages or amounts, how many hours they have saved, how many new leads or new clients they were able to generate, what kind of things are they able to do or experience now that they couldn’t do before, etc.
- Avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your site: Although this can be a little difficult when you are just starting out or have very few clients, it’s best to avoid using the same testimonial repeatedly throughout your site’s pages. Depending on the type of business you run, you could try to obtain more testimonials by offering limited review copies of your product, or a special launch discount for clients in exchange for an honest review and permission to publish it if you decide to use it.
- Appeal to your ideal customer: As every infomercial featuring a celebrity endorsement, subject expert or “busy mom” knows, if you know who your best customer is, providing testimonials from people who your prospects can relate to can be a really powerful motivator and influencer. People want to see and buy from “better versions” of themselves, so make sure to include testimonials that speak directly to your best audience demographic.
- Reprint across different platforms. If you get a great comment on your Facebook page praising your solution, contact them privately asking for their permission to reprint the comment or post on your blog.
- Only use real testimonials. Many people can tell if you are employing copywriters to create your content. Outsourcing content is fine, but your prospects need to believe that the testimonials you provide on your site are real. Don’t compromise your credibility or reputation with false testimonials.
How To Get Testimonials From Your Customers
Just Ask
Getting a testimonial from a happy customer can be as simple as just asking for it.
Here are some useful guidelines for requesting testimonials:
- Contact clients after a specific period of time, e.g. 14 days with an email reminder for a testimonial if you have not obtained one immediately after completing your service.
- Add a field for testimonials in client satisfaction surveys.
- Take out your phone next time you visit clients or hand over a finished job and if they are delighted with the results, ask them if they wouldn’t mind recording a very short video testimonial/feedback interview. When recording your video, describe to viewers what you have done for the client and make sure to record the client’s positive reactions and responses.
- Make it easy and write it for them. When a client sends you a positive email thanking you for a great job that contains snippets of useful testimonial material interspersed with the rest of their message, grab the juiciest sections (only use what they have given you – don’t put words into their mouth), and use these to create a testimonial, then contact your client and ask them for permission to quote them on your site. Explain that you have already prepared something to help them save time and let them know they are completely free to edit what you have written however they see fit before replying with their approval.
Offer To Publish A Link Back To The Source Wherever You Quote Their Testimonial
Offer to publish a link to their site in exchange for their testimonial. This is often enough of an incentive to get clients to provide a testimonial. It also makes an implicit statement to visitors that your testimonials are real and can be verified.
Include Testimonial Requests In Your Auto Responder/Newsletter Messages
If you have a subscriber list, include requests for a testimonial in one of your newsletter messages. This should be timed to reach subscribers just after your customers have had a chance to assess the results of using your solution. Use words like “I need a quick favor” in your email subject and make the point of your email or message specifically about asking clients to provide honest feedback, a testimonial, or a product review.
Use LinkedIn
The LinkedIn “Recommendations” feature is a great way to solicit testimonials from other members for your profile. With LinkedIn, the process for requesting and providing recommendations is simple and user-friendly and the person providing the recommendation gets a link to their profile. If you get a recommendation on LinkedIn, ask for permission to reprint it on your website (tip: offer to publish a link back to their website or profile in exchange).
Create A Client Testimonials Section On Your Site
Create a “Testimonials” page and add a “read more client testimonials …” link pointing to your main testimonials page whenever you plan to add new testimonials on your site.
Useful Tip: You can measure the effectiveness of testimonials by how long visitors stay on the section of your pages or posts where you have added your testimonial content. A great tool for monitoring what visitors are doing on your site are “heatmaps”.
We have written an article about adding heatmap analytics to your website to analyze visitor behaviour here:
WordPress Plugins
If you use WordPress, you can use a plugin to add and display testimonials. Some plugins also allow you to add forms to your pages where users can submit feedback and testimonials.
Once your testimonial plugin is installed and set up (with instructions for adding testimonials via the submission form – if available), you then send clients to your “Testimonials” section.
Here are some plugins you can check out:
Easy Testimonials
Easy Testimonials is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add testimonials to your sidebar as a widget, or embed them into posts and pages using a shortcode. The Easy Testimonials plugin also lets you publish a list of all testimonials or output a random testimonial, and include an image with each testimonial, which is great to add a photo of the testimonial author, a logo, etc.
Easy Testimonials also provides a “pro” version that offers additional features and technical support.
Go here for more information about using the plugin:
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you add random or selected portfolios, reviews, quotes, or text with images or videos on your website. You can insert testimonials content via a shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and specify different display options such as random or specific ordering.
The Testimonials Widget plugin makes loads more features available via a premium version, including built-in functions for improved search engine results and developer support.
To download and use the plugin, visit this site:
Testimonials WordPress Plugin
This is a premium WP plugin that offers many great features right out of the box, including:
- Responsive design that resizes to display correctly on any device or browser.
- Options to display your testimonials in a widget or as sliders, slideshows, list layout, grid layout, etc. via a shortcode
- Styling options (display image at the top, bottom, or side of the testimonial, display testimonials in a speech bubble, customized font and background colors, font types and more.
To download the plugin, visit this site:
To learn how to add testimonials in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
In Conclusion …
User reviews and client testimonials are great sources of content that help your business add credibility, build authority, improve online reputation, and grow your sales funnel. Always ask for feedback, reviews, and testimonials from existing customers or clients, and start publishing these on your site.
Additional Info
The articles below provide useful information about creating effective users testimonials and were used when researching information for sections of this article:
- Ecommerce Consumer Reviews: Why You Need Them And How To Use Them
- How To Create Captivating Customer Testimonials
- 5 Tips For Knockout Testimonials
- Make Customer Testimonials Meaningful
- 7 Simple But Powerful Customer Testimonial Examples You Can Steal
- Your 5-Minute Guide To Writing an Amazing LinkedIn Recommendation
- How To Get Great LinkedIn Recommendations
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