Testimonials Page
purpose / objective
When you add customer Testimonials and Reviews to your website, your customers help you tell your story, market your products, and stand out from the competition.
A customer testimonial or review should help your potential customers visualise your product or service as the bridge connecting them to the solution they want. A brilliant testimonial can illustrate how you were able to solve a recurring challenge for your customers. Better still, it can do it with way more immediacy than a brochure or press release would. Especially if you go down the route of a video testimonial. They provide a human interest angle that enables customers to relate to, connect with, and better understand the products and services before them.
Here’s how they differ:
Testimonials
In a testimonial, the customer explains their experience with your product or service, why they chose it, and how it improved their lives.
- A longer, more detailed story about the customer’s experience before and after using the product or service.
- The customer provides the testimonial directly to the company
- Can be used on the website, in commercials, brochures, and other promotional materials
- Can be written down or in a video
- More impactful with greater length or detail
Review
Customer reviews will generally describe a particular interaction or a general overview of the customer’s feelings towards the company.
- A short snapshot of the customer’s experience using the product or service
- Often provided to a third party
- Usually featured on another website or with another service
- Usually in a written format, sometimes with a star-rating
- More impactful in larger quantities
Process
Every testimonial featured on a main page of a website should highlight a different customer win. Having a large block of testimonials that goes on and on about how unique your product is will quickly tire out your reader. Instead, we want to use smaller chunks of testimonials that focus on different features of your product or service and add them to specific pages. This tactic works because different site visitors you’ll be getting have various objections. Additional testimonials that say other things will appeal to them better than a large block of text.
Look through your testimonials for those that tie into the content on specific pages. A few of your best testimonials about a specific product or offer should be used on that specific sales page as well as your Testimonial page.
Then, your actual Testimonial / Review page will showcase all of these in full and categorised into topics so it is more easily digestiable by your viewer, and allows them to find reviews about a specific product or service more easily.
Instead of just featuring a few flattering quotes, consider turning particularly rich customer stories into full blog posts. Customer testimonial articles paint a clearer picture of your company’s relationship with a client, creating space for more details and takeaways.
Type of formats we can use:
- Quote (with photo preferably)
- Video
- Audio
Types of delivery:
- Story testimonials – this testimonial type tells a story from the customer’s perspective. This testimonial focuses on the pain point of a user (which is common amongst your users) and how your product helped them.
- Testimonials that highlight your business value proposition – almost every business has a value proposition, making them stand out from the competition. If you’ve got testimonials that tie into your value proposition, share them. We want to use them at the top of your landing page for maximum visibility.
- Number specific testimonials – there are general testimonials and specific testimonials. Specific testimonials backed with numbers work like a charm on your prospective customers. The numbers could be money made by using your product or % increases in proficiency, productivity, or revenue.
Authority testimonials – your site users love positive reviews from past customers; what works better than that are featured testimonials from influencers who have used your product. This works because influencers and experts are people your site users aspire to be like; they look up to them.
What a testimonial or review should cover:
- Indicate the customers’ problem.
- Highlight how the product solved the problem.
- Show how unique the solution is.
- Reveal how the customer experience improved.
Don’t have any Testimonialos or reviews? Consider these prompts.
- Ask for one – if you have a close relationship with your customers you can simply ask them for one as a standard process at the end of your program or as part of an automation workflow post purchase. Or, more generally you can segment your email list to capture past customers then send an email to asking for a review.
- Offer a discount – entice reviews by offering a discount in exchange for the Testimonial or Review. You can also create a popup form targeting previous purchasers who frequent your website.
- Satisfaction surveys – just like the name implies, this survey asks customers how satisfied they’re with their recent purchase from you.
Prompts to get great Testimonials / Reviews:
When interviewing a customer for a testimonial, keep in mind that you’re trying to tell a clear story that has a beginning, middle, and end. Follow the CAR model for establishing context, action, and result:
Context: Why did you choose to work with us/me? What problems were you looking to solve?
Action: What action did you take to resolve the issues? How were you able to utilise our products or services?
Result: What were the key results of our partnership? What were you able to accomplish with our help?