Table of Contents
- What Are Customer Reviews?
- Insights on Customer Reviews
- Customer Reviews and Business Strategy
- Related Reading
- 4 Top Customer Review Types Ideal For Your Website
- 1. The Power of Testimonials: Authentic Customer Stories
- 2. Review Badges and Widgets: Inviting Trust
- 3. Boosting SEO with Attributed Reviews
- 4. Keeping It Fresh with Review Stream
- How Testimonials Software Can Increase Conversion Rates and Build Trust for Different Business Models
- 7 Key Benefits Of Customer Reviews On Website
- 1. Better Understand Your Customers & Improve Customer Service
- 2. Credibility & Social Proof
- 3. Fight Experience to Save Margins
- 4. Allow Consumers to Have a Voice and Create Customer Loyalty
- 5. Improve Rankings
- 6. Consumers Are Doing Your Marketing for You
- 7. Reviews Generate More Reviews
- 5 Strategies For Effectively Displaying Customer Reviews On Website
- 1. Create a Dedicated Customer Review Page on Your Site
- 2. Incorporating Different Types of Testimonials
- 3. Leveraging User-Generated Content
- Encouraging Customers to Share
- Showcasing Social Media Reviews
- Integrate Social Proof
- 4. Design and Format
- Placement Matters
- Above the Fold
- On Conversion Pages
- Highlight Specific Results
- Using Rotating Carousels vs. Static Display
- Related Reading
- How To Get Customer Reviews For Your Website?
- Use a Testimonial Tool to Collect Customer Reviews for Your Website Easily
- Testimonial Collection and Display
- Centralized Management and Import Functionality
- Email Requests for Customer Reviews
- Text Messages (SMS) for Customer Reviews
- Collect Reviews from Your Website Header or Footer
- Social Media Reviews from Customers
- Ask in Person for Customer Reviews
- Build a Wall of Love for Free Today with Testimonial
- Related Reading
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Title
5 Unique & Effective Ways To Display Customer Reviews On Website
Date
Nov 10, 2024
Description
Maximize the impact of customer reviews with these five creative ways to showcase testimonials on your website
Status
Current Column
Person
Writer
Imagine you’re checking out a new restaurant in town. You’re hungry, and they look promising, but you want to know more before you dig in. So, you turn to the web. There, you find their website, chock-full of glowing customer reviews. You don’t want to wait another minute to try their food. You’ll take the next bite that’s available! This scenario illustrates the power of customer reviews on websites. Customer reviews can make or break a business. 89% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase. Reviews are so critical that they can be ranked just behind price and product details on the elements influencing a buyer’s decision. If you want to change how potential customers view your business, you must prioritize collecting customer feedback. This will help you improve your products and services, but displaying their reviews on your website will boost your reputation, increase your visibility, and help you close more sales. This article will help you start by explaining how to display customer reviews on your website and introducing you to the best customer feedback tools to help you get there.
One of the best tools for collecting and showcasing customer reviews is testimonial software. This solution makes it easy to gather customer feedback and display it on your website to help you achieve your goals.
What Are Customer Reviews?
A customer review is a form of feedback or personal evaluation provided by a customer who has used a product or service, typically published on:
- Company websites
- E-commerce platforms
- Review-specific sites
These reviews offer insights into:
- Customer satisfaction
- Product performance
- Service quality
Customer reviews help potential buyers make informed decisions and can influence a company’s reputation and credibility.
Insights on Customer Reviews
According to BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey, 75 percent of consumers regularly read customer reviews before purchasing:
- A product
- Hiring a company
- Investing in a service
While your friends may call to tell you about a product or service they loved or hated, they are also likely to post positive feedback online or leave a scathing review.
Customer Reviews and Business Strategy
Businesses can’t avoid ratings, so instead of dreading this input, make customer reviews a part of your customer experience strategy by mastering how to ask for and earn excellent reviews. Use our guide to:
- Learn why customer reviews are essential
- What popular review sites do your customers use
- How to get and use reviews
- How to respond to all types of client feedback
Related Reading
4 Top Customer Review Types Ideal For Your Website
1. The Power of Testimonials: Authentic Customer Stories
Testimonials are the classic form of customer feedback. They’re typically:
- Short
- Direct quotes from clients about their experience with your business
- Often include the name and, where possible, a link to the client’s website
Testimonials help build trust by letting new customers see firsthand feedback from others who have used and appreciated your product or service. You strengthen their credibility by attributing these testimonials to actual people or businesses.
2. Review Badges and Widgets: Inviting Trust
Review badges and widgets are visual prompts encouraging visitors to read or leave reviews about your business. These badges are usually linked to major review sites like Google or Yelp, giving customers easy access to reviews on platforms they trust. If you showcase reviews from just one source, Google Reviews is a popular choice due to its strong reputation and visibility in search results.
You can easily create custom buttons with Canva or similar tools to match your site’s design and direct users to these review platforms. Badges enhance your site’s credibility, are lightweight, and won’t slow down your site’s loading time. Most importantly, they give visitors a straightforward path to see your business’s social proof.
3. Boosting SEO with Attributed Reviews
Embedding customer reviews with attribution can bring SEO benefits to your site. While testimonials can sometimes appear static, adding links to the client’s website or directly to the review platform makes the feedback more dynamic and valuable. Utilizing schema markup can boost this further by structuring the reviews so that they’re more recognizable by search engines, helping them appear prominently in search results.
Schema markup tools like Schema Creator help generate the code for structured data, while Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool lets you preview and refine how your reviews appear. Attributed reviews with schema improve visibility in search engines and make your site look more polished and professional.
4. Keeping It Fresh with Review Stream
Review Stream, offered by Grade.us, simplifies keeping reviews up to date by automatically pulling recent feedback from various sites. Instead of manually highlighting a few reviews, Review Stream continuously updates your site with snippets from recent reviews. This tool doesn’t affect SEO directly, as it loads asynchronously, but it’s effective for keeping reviews current and relevant.
Review Stream has plugins for those using:
- WordPress
- Joomla
- Drupal
It automatically fetches reviews via API, making it easy to integrate. The widget respects all stakeholders:
- It displays reviews with full attribution
- Links back to the source
- It gives businesses control over which reviews appear
How Testimonials Software Can Increase Conversion Rates and Build Trust for Different Business Models
Testimonial simplifies the process of building trust and credibility for businesses.
Our software allows accessible collection and display of authentic client testimonials, featuring:
- Video and text options
- An embeddable ‘wall of love’ widget
- A clever Email Assistant
- Third-party review imports
Ideal for:
- Content creators
- Agencies
- eCommerce
- SaaS companies
This testimonial software helps boost credibility and conversion rates by showcasing real customer experiences. Build a wall of love for free today with Testimonials.
7 Key Benefits Of Customer Reviews On Website
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1. Better Understand Your Customers & Improve Customer Service
Customer reviews provide valuable insight into your customers’ minds. Analyzing testimonials left by your customers helps your company understand overall customer satisfaction, as they can provide your business with feedback regarding what your customers truly want.
You will improve customer service by quickly and efficiently resolving consumer issues using this insightful information as input. This will create a positive experience for the consumer and keep your focus on their needs.
2. Credibility & Social Proof
We have been social creatures since the moment we come to this world, and we are interested in what others say before we make our buying decisions. Much like we would ask friends and family for recommendations, review sites allow us to do this online with just a few clicks.
3. Fight Experience to Save Margins
Reviews enable new businesses to stand shoulder to shoulder with more established competition and potentially gain a favorable niche in people’s estimation and expectations. Look at it this way: which company would you instead buy from, one with 50 3-star reviews or one with five 5-star reviews? Voila! You just took the discussion away from the discount and price!
4. Allow Consumers to Have a Voice and Create Customer Loyalty
Consumers who take the time to leave an online review for your business are far more likely to feel a certain loyalty to you and keep coming back. Leaving a review and establishing a relationship with your business allows consumers to feel like they have a voice even behind a desktop and/or mobile and/ or tablet screen and can provide feedback in a positive and meaningful way.
5. Improve Rankings
Reviews are the most prominent ranking factor in local search. It helps businesses rank well, even if they have low-quality link profiles. According to SEJ, “pages with reviews which mention a keyword and the name of a city, were found to have higher rankings in Google’s local pack. At a high level, having a keyword you are trying to rank for and mentioning a city in which you are working to rank in reviews has a high correlation with high-ranking Google My Business results.”
6. Consumers Are Doing Your Marketing for You
Positive online business reviews are worth a great deal and can offer your business benefits that a simple marketing campaign can’t. In a nutshell, they are like micro–marketing campaigns that keep working long after the online review has been posted, providing, thus, a constant positive image to potential customers and creating a continual brand awareness that benefits the business for both the short and the long term.
7. Reviews Generate More Reviews
When a business has already received online reviews, it encourages other visitors to leave their own feedback. The appearance of several reviews gives new customers the incentive and confidence to submit their own opinions on a particular product or service.
5 Strategies For Effectively Displaying Customer Reviews On Website
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1. Create a Dedicated Customer Review Page on Your Site
Adding a testimonials page to your website collects all of your customer feedback in one place, making it easy for potential customers to find the reviews they need to make a purchase decision. A testimonials page also means you don’t have to crowd other parts of your site to fit every review. Instead, you can add a few reviews to your product pages and then link to the complete testimonials page.
For instance, our testimonial page (Wall of Love) displays all of our testimonials, both text and videos, on a single page. Our Wall of Love tells stories of how businesses use our tool to gather website testimonials and build social proof. You can also easily do this by using Testimonial.to.
2. Incorporating Different Types of Testimonials
Adding just text won’t cut it. Visitors must pay attention to your testimonials, so you must go into multimedia mode. Text and video testimonials can be displayed with case studies and review badges.
3. Leveraging User-Generated Content
If your users are giving you kind words, you should wear it like a badge (or a testimonial on your website, in this case).
Encouraging Customers to Share
To maintain a steady flow of fresh customer reviews, it’s essential to actively encourage your customers to share their experiences. This can be done through follow-up emails, surveys, or even offering incentives like discounts or entry into a giveaway.
Provide simple, user-friendly forms or offer to conduct brief interviews to make it easy for customers to submit their reviews. You can also use customer reviews by embedding them on your website so customers can leave them quickly.
Showcasing Social Media Reviews
Social media reviews from platforms like Google, Yelp, and Facebook are valuable sources of social proof. These reviews often appear in search results and can be integrated into your website using widgets or plugins.
Displaying these reviews on your site provides additional testimonials and reinforces their credibility since they are hosted on third-party platforms. This transparency can further build trust with your audience.
Integrate Social Proof
Include real-time social proof, such as a feed of recent reviews or customer tweets. This keeps your customer reviews up-to-date and relevant while showcasing that people actively engage with your product or service.
4. Design and Format
How testimonials are presented matters.
Here are a couple of vital tips.
- Visual Appeal: The visual presentation of customer reviews can significantly impact their effectiveness. Adding images like customer photos or company logos can make the testimonial more relatable and trustworthy.
Videos are even more powerful, conveying emotion and authenticity that text alone can’t capture. Consistency in design elements, such as font, color, and layout, ensures that testimonials blend seamlessly with your overall site aesthetic while standing out enough to catch attention.
- Highlighting Key Phrases: Highlighting key phrases or sentences—such as those that mention specific benefits, outcomes, or emotions—can draw the reader’s eye to the most compelling parts of the testimonial. Use:
- Bold text
- Larger fonts
- Even quotation marks to set these phrases apart.
- Authenticity and Relatability: People are likelier to trust feedback from someone they perceive as a natural, identifiable person rather than an anonymous review. For testimonials to be effective, they must feel authentic. It adds credibility and makes the testimonial more relatable, including:
- The customer’s full name
- Photo
- Job title
- Company (when relevant)
- Categorize Testimonials: If your website serves different industries or customer types, categorize your testimonials accordingly. This helps potential customers easily find customer reviews from others like them. For example, you could organize customer reviews by:
- Industry
- Use case
- Product type
Placement Matters
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to placing testimonials, but that still doesn’t mean you should place them randomly. Here are some of the most common practices regarding where the testimonials section should be located.
Above the Fold
The above the fold area of your website is visible to users without needing to scroll. This space is prime real estate for your most compelling testimonials because it’s the first thing visitors see when they land on your site. Placing testimonials above the fold reassures visitors that others have had successful experiences with your brand, which can significantly reduce bounce rates and encourage them to explore further.
On Conversion Pages
Conversion pages like product, pricing, and contact pages are where potential customers make critical decisions. Placing testimonials on these pages serves as a persuasive nudge, addressing any last-minute doubts and reinforcing the value of your offering. For example, a testimonial from a customer who found your service worth every penny on a pricing page can help justify the cost.
Highlight Specific Results
Effective testimonials should focus on specific, measurable results that the customer achieved. Instead of vague statements like "Great service!" go for customer reviews like "Our sales increased by 25% after using this software." This adds weight and gives potential buyers a clearer idea of what they can expect.
Using Rotating Carousels vs. Static Display
Another placement issue is this: it’s not where but how the customer reviews are displayed. So far, the two most popular options have proved to be rotating carousels and static testimonials.
Rotating carousels Pros: Rotating carousels allow you to display multiple customer reviews in a single space, keeping the page clean and uncluttered.
Cons: Important messages might get missed, especially if the rotation is too fast or slow.
Static display Pros: A static display ensures that all key customer reviews are visible simultaneously, giving them equal weight and ensuring nothing is overlooked.
Cons: Static displays can take up more space on the page, potentially leading to a cluttered design if not managed carefully.
Related Reading
How To Get Customer Reviews For Your Website?
Use a Testimonial Tool to Collect Customer Reviews for Your Website Easily
Collecting testimonials manually is no walk in the park. It can be slow and labor-intensive, often leading to missed opportunities to showcase positive feedback that could help potential customers make informed decisions. Tools like Testimonial streamline collecting and displaying customer feedback, making it faster and more efficient.
Testimonial Collection and Display
With platforms like this, you can send automated requests, capture testimonials in various formats (text, video), and even import reviews from third-party sources. Testimonial also provides features like an embeddable “wall of love” widget, allowing you to showcase customer experiences directly on your site without hassle. This simplifies the collection and presentation, making building trust and credibility with new visitors easier.
Centralized Management and Import Functionality
A tool like Testimonial lets you import testimonials from:
- Review platforms like Google or G2
- Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter (X) or Instagram
Some even have built-in invite systems so you can automatically invite people and track the status of their testimonials.
Email Requests for Customer Reviews
Email requests remain one of the most effective channels for collecting customer testimonials because they're straightforward and scalable. You can ask for positive feedback in bulk by emailing your email list, or you can send an individual testimonial request by sending a direct message to your customer's email address.
You can set up automation so happy clients receive an automatic email when they complete an action. For example, ask for a testimonial two days after buying my product. After a positive customer service interaction, ask for a testimonial. That way, your customer success team will only need to remember to do this occasionally.
Text Messages (SMS) for Customer Reviews
Text messages (or SMS) offer an intriguingly direct and personal channel for requesting customer reviews. Customers receive dozens, and sometimes hundreds of emails per day. In an age where inboxes are cluttered, a text message can gracefully cut through the noise. Because text messages are so direct, they carry a higher risk of intrusion or annoyance if not done thoughtfully. Make your request respectful, clear, and concise, ideally integrating it as a positive customer experience. This way, you encourage valuable testimonials while maintaining the sanctity of personal space.
Collect Reviews from Your Website Header or Footer
The header or footer of your website serves as prime real estate for collecting valuable feedback. It's an area consistently visible to your audience, often catching their eye right before they navigate away or complete an action on your site.
Strategically placing a simple but engaging call-to-action (CTA) here can encourage loyal customers to share organic feedback. Given that they're already on your platform, it minimizes friction, making it exponentially easier for them to participate. It's convenience coupled with visibility! Pro tip: When Collecting testimonials passively, use incentives like discount codes and gift cards to incite more people to leave a testimonial.
Social Media Reviews from Customers
If you've already built a social media following, you're sitting on a gold mine for collecting testimonials. Your audience is engaged, they know your brand, and they're likely to have positive experiences they're willing to share. A single well-crafted post asking for reviews can generate immediate and numerous client testimonials and, sometimes, even traffic via public social media posts.
Ask in Person for Customer Reviews
If you’re new to this and don’t have an established email list of customers, asking in person can also be effective. Whenever your customers come to your shop, you can kindly ask them for a written or video testimonial. This way of asking is convenient for business owners who nurture face-to-face relationships.
Build a Wall of Love for Free Today with Testimonial
Testimonial lets you create a 'wall of love' to display on your website, showcasing glowing customer reviews and boosting your credibility. This customizable widget features an interactive design that allows visitors to browse and filter customer testimonials to find the most relevant information. You can also embed video and text testimonials, making it easy to display authentic reviews in various formats.
Related Reading
- Capterra Alternatives
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