Things to Include in Your Website Testimonials

One of the best things about social media today is the opportunity to see what other people online say or do. Such an opportunity makes websites like Facebook or Twitter very popular. Your website and blog itself usually gains more traction or attention when endorsed by other people who do not get paid to endorse you. The testimonials section of your website can turn a lot of visitors into paying customers.

Your testimonials should not only make potential customers realize that other customers have happily bought from you before, they should also make your potential customers feel completely safe and ready to buy after reading a testimonial. Your testimonials should exist to both make customers feel safe and make your customers ready to buy right away. Testimonials are a form of a social connection between potential customers and existing customers.

In order to make sure your testimonials are effective and do not actually harm your credibility, make sure your testimonials include the following five things.

5 Things to Include in Your Website Testimonials

1. Relevancy to the page a potential customer is looking at.

   One thing you should do for any testimonial is to try and have relevant testimonials. A customer looking to buy a car may not buy a car from you if your testimonials are from customers who bought laptops from you. Similarly, if customers want to buy Product A, and your testimonials are about Product B, try to include Product A testimonials. The entire reason you have testimonials is to make customers feel less scared for jumping into new waters. You want your potential customer to know that other customers have taken the same leap of paying you money and are satisfied with it too.

2. The freshness of a testimonial.

   Nothing destroys the meaning of a great testimonial more than the relevancy of freshness. If your testimonials are from 1999, no one knows if your website or product is doing as great today as it did several years ago. Try to include fresher testimonials, or avoid using dates if possible. You should know that customers tend to buy more if they see a fresher testimonial left within the last several months.

3. Any identification or contact information to validate and verify a testimonial.

   Almost every scam website that sells a product includes fake reviews with fake names and information. Try to include some identifiable information like a website address that belongs to the customer. You can always ask your customers about some contact information that potential customers can use to verify testimonials on your website.

   Another thing you can do is what Daniel from Daily Blog Tips does in his newsletters. Daniel lets his newsletter subscribers know that any testimonial he includes for his product or blog advertisement can be verified by you by contacting Daniel, who will then ask the original testimonial customer to contact you directly.

4. Reputable customers.

   In your testimonials, try including some reputable customers or customers who bought something extremely important. If a potential customer wants to buy a $100 product or service from you and majority of your testimonials are from customers who bought a $5 product, that potential customer may hesitate to try on something that has a different price tag than what other testimonial customers have purchased, even if those other testimonials customers love you and your website offering.

5. Accessible from any page on the website except the shopping cart.

   Your testimonials should be accessible from any page of your website except your shopping cart. The more ways and areas your customers can see that you actually have other customers who are happy with you, the more they would be willing to trust the different pages and products your website brings to those potential customers. Also, the reason your testimonials should not be in your shopping cart is very simple: avoid adding unnecessary distractions in your shopping cart. If customers have added something to their shopping cart, they already trust you a little bit at least. Simply focus on enhancing their shopping cart and buying experience from then onward.

Do Your Website Testimonials Have These Essential Things?

Have you incorporated any of the above elements into your online customer testimonials section? Which of the above points do you think would help your customer testimonials display the most?

Please share your thoughts, experiences, tips or any questions in your comment below. Thank you for reading.