Testimonials are a great way to build trust with your audience and potential customers. But how should you show testimonials on your website?
Why are testimonials important?
Having evidence that other people in their situation have used your services or purchased your products and been satisfied makes it much more likely that others will take the leap and try your offering for the first time.
When browsing online, 93% of customers will read reviews before making a purchase, according to research by Dixa. Similarly, 72% of consumers say positive testimonials and reviews increase their trust in a business.
All this shows that you should seriously consider having reviews or testimonials on your website!
1. Include customers’ headshots or company logos
For a review or testimonial to have any weight, it needs to be legitimate. Even if you know your testimonial has come from a reliable source, your audience may not, and a good way to legitimise them is to include a headshot of the person who left the review, or a picture of their company’s logo. If it is a recognisable logo of a well-known company, this will give your audience confidence even at a glance.
2. Link to your clients’ websites
Linking to your clients’ sites is good practice for a couple of reasons. For one, it gives some credibility to your client and shows that they are a real business that benefited from your services. Secondly, it can also boost the authority of both your sites by linking to each other – good for them, good for you.
3. Use different review formats
Written reviews will make up the core of your feedback, but if you can, it is a good idea to mix in some other content types, such as photos, or a video testimonial.
You will likely have to organise this yourself by reaching out to your satisfied customers and asking if they would be willing to talk on camera about how you helped them, which can leave a stronger impression on your audience.
You could also consider writing up a couple of your reviews as case studies that clearly outline the problem your client faced, how you solved it, and the resulting feedback. This is an approach we’ve taken with our own portfolio of work!
4. Add customer quotes to your homepage
While you can also have a dedicated testimonials page for full reviews of your services, it is a good idea to have some snappy, attention-grabbing quotes from the best testimonials on your homepage. This will add some legitimacy and confidence to your brand, even if your customers don’t navigate to the testimonials page.
5. Include product-specific customer reviews on product pages
If you have an ecommerce site with multiple products or services, this is a great way to organically include some positive feedback from your customers.
For example, if a customer has given your latest pair of trainers a glowing review such as “the comfiest shoes I have ever worn”, then that would look great included at the top of the product description – just make sure you can credit the quote or link it back to the full review.
You can also include a full review feed on product pages so that browsing customers can see what others thought about your products. This is something we implemented when we designed the ecommerce site for Bazoo, a sustainable bamboo toilet paper brand.
6. Create a dedicated testimonials or reviews page on your site
Having full-length testimonials on your homepage can be messy and make your site seem cluttered, but you should still include them somewhere. That’s why we would suggest having a dedicated page to publish your (hopefully) many positive reviews.
Just make sure the navigation to this page from the homepage is well-signposted. That’s what we did when developing the website for Cosmetica, a skincare clinic in London – the homepage had a short selection of reviews with a full reviews page under the treatments.
The best way to show testimonials on your site depends on what you sell and what your brand is, but there are lots of different ways to do it. Use snappy positive quotes organically within your services pages or home page, and product-specific reviews on product pages. You can then have a dedicated page for longer-form testimonials or reviews that your audience can browse.