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Reviews and testimonials now play a major role in how people across industries make buying decisions. Hearing from peers about the value (or lack thereof) of a product or service lends credibility to the messaging.
Update – although originally written in 2019, this post received a full update in July 2022.
The best websites drive conversions. They’re not just a digital billboard for a company, but guide visitors towards the next step in the buying journey. Whether that’s e-commerce sales or B2B leads, that next step should be tangible, actionable, and natural within the website’s flow.
How you get to that point requires a comprehensive digital strategy. Your UX needs to be just right, as does your content. But not all of that content needs to be generated by you.
Reviews and testimonials play a major role in how people make buying decisions across sectors and industries.
Whether B2B or B2C, hearing from peers about the value or quality of a product or service, lends credibility and that important human touch to the messaging. Through the proper integration of the right reviews, you can significantly boost conversions on your website.
It’s difficult to overstate just how powerful reviews are in influencing buying decisions. According to one survey, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from a friend. As many as 40% consider them to be major factors in any buying choice.
It doesn’t end there. The same study also found that consumers spend 31% more with a business that has excellent reviews, while only 14% even consider buying from a brand that has a review average of 2 stars or fewer.
The message is clear. Managing your online reputation and acquiring reviews is absolutely crucial in today’s online environment. But it doesn’t end there. With the right website integrations, they can play a crucial role in your conversion rate optimisation efforts as well.
The short answer is wherever they feel like it. The long answer is a bit more complex than that. Google and Facebook are among the most popular options and are worth monitoring.
Industry-specific alternatives like Expedia and TripAdvisor can also be powerful. Feefo, TrustPilot, Reviews.io and other platforms offer more possibilities for brands to collect and manage customer feedback.
Options that denote whether someone is a confirmed customer can lend weight to your reviews, in a world where paid and fake reviews are rampant.
Don’t think that only independent sites can be used to build your reviews. You might already be collecting your own feedback, testimonials and case studies that have the same general effect. Much like the third-party sites, they act as credible and independent voices reinforcing your brand and product message.
The growth of online review sites over the past few years has been immense. On average, a business receives more than 15 new reviews every year on Google alone. The key then is leveraging this wealth of potentially valuable content, to help generate actual conversions and business growth.
You can increase the chances of your customers using particular review platforms by asking for feedback in follow-up emails and communications. Try to make it as simple as possible to do so, to increase take up.
Where you are offered the opportunity to respond to reviews, make the effort to do so. It shows engagement with your audience and a genuine interest in their feedback. It is a great place to have genuine communication with customers, and build rapport. Try to use unique responses rather than templated replies, which will be very obvious to anyone reading them.
Finally, don’t fall into the trap of having your own employees leave feedback, as this is very easy for someone to see through and will immediately lower your credibility.
Fortunately, sites like Google and Facebook offer easy integration possibilities. A quick Google search reveals countless tutorials to make the link. The challenge is not usually technical, but instead qualitative. Where can you integrate your reviews for maximum effect?
The simplest answer is on your conversion pages. Using your analytics tools, identify the pages that your visitors use right before they actually become leads or sales. Most likely these will be landing pages with sign-up forms or e-commerce product pages.
A strategically placed review highlighting the quality of your product or service might just give your users the final push they need to take the next step.
Don’t underestimate your homepage either. Most of the time, it’ll be your most-visited page and initial landing page. Testimonials here can lend immediate credibility to your brand messaging for new visitors who are deciding whether they want to dive in and learn more.
When it comes to reviews, words matter. At the same time, pictures can really help to amplify the words and give them more power and credibility.
Whenever possible add a face to the words that praise your brand or product. This turns some anonymous text into a more tangible, relevant, and personalised message. Humans buy from humans, and this applies to reviews and testimonials too. A photo can make a review feel more legitimate and more engaging.
A/B testing continually shows that the simple act of adding a face can increase your conversion rates by as much as 22%. It’s a simple step with a potentially significant pay-off.
Pro Tip: Reviews don’t have to be static text and images. Video testimonials can be immensely powerful. The human eye is naturally drawn to moving pictures. You’ll have to produce these videos yourself, but they add another layer of visual content that both adds to the user experience and helps to maximise your conversion rates. They’re also great for sharing on social media.
Having arrived at this point of the post, you’ve probably read between the lines an implied message that anytime a review has been mentioned above, it signifies a positive review.
That doesn’t have to be the case. It might seem counterintuitive, but including negative reviews into your website and 3rd party review platforms can actually be a powerful conversion tool. But how?
As outlined in this Daily Egg article, negative reviews build authenticity. Chances are that however excellent your business and customer service are, you will have some unhappy customers or negative feedback.
Some may be legitimate, some may be due to factors completely out of your hands, and some might be fake or left will malicious intent. Potential customers who are researching your brand will find those reviews, whether or not you want them to.
If you don’t hide them, and even include them on your site, you show genuine care for customer concerns and an ability to see the bigger picture. They can also offer useful insight for improvements.
This strategy is most effective, of course, if you actually respond to reviews, and know how to effectively respond to negative reviews. Rather than ignoring them or lashing out (we’ve all seen the examples of how not to respond) it pays to actually acknowledge them, ask for details, and investigate.
A legitimate concern may cause you to improve your business, and you can demonstrate that you listen and act upon feedback from your customers. It may even provide an opportunity to explain how your business stands out from the competition, like in the example above. At the very least, you have a chance to turn an unhappy customer into a brand loyalist simply by making them feel like you care and want to help.
A good problem-solving customer service experience and open communication can do wonders for how someone views your brand, and whether they will return and recommend you to others.
In short, integrating reviews into your website can be a powerful marketing and conversion mechanism. It also has the potential to open a hornet’s nest. If you don’t manage your reviews, any automated or even semi-automated feed has the potential for disaster.
That’s why we’ll end this post with a few tips on how to effectively manage your reviews before and while they’re live on your website:
With these tips, you can begin to build reviews into your marketing strategy and your website’s user journeys. Your success will increase naturally over time, building a better online strategy that enhances both UX and conversion rate.
Above all, remember that you get out what you put in. No amount of review management can make up for bad products and services, or poor customer service.
However, learning from negative responses and listening to customer feedback can help you improve your offering, products, and approach to customer service, and to begin to make up for past mistakes. If you take this opportunity and act on it, a predominately negative review profile can be turned around, and the negatives lost beneath a wealth of positive reviews.
Need help integrating reviews and social proof into your WordPress or WooCommerce website? Whether as an add-on to evolve your existing website or as part of the strategy for a full website redesign, we can help. Our web design team are UX professionals, so get in touch with us today to talk about your requirements.
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