Testimonials are the foundation of any well-converting website – 95% of online shoppers read reviews before making a purchase.
In fact, testimonials offer a range of benefits that make them simply indispensable.
They help alleviate the skepticism of your audience, paint visual pictures through authentic user experiences, help to crystalize your strongest benefits, and allow you to showcase your products without having to talk about them yourself.
However, even if you have a ton of great testimonials, you still need to find a way to display them effectively if you want them to serve your business.
Whether you’re using video testimonials or simple quotes, you still need to figure out the best way to feature them on your site so that they will be visible and get your message across.
So, to help you get started, let’s explore the essential aspects of testimonial page design and figure out exactly what you need to do to get the most impact out of every testimonial that you’ve got.
Make Testimonials Visually Appealing
Just as with any design project, you can’t underestimate the importance of making your testimonials visually appealing so that your site’s visitors will want to look at them.
As you can imagine, it won’t matter how compelling the message in the testimonial might be if it’s displayed in a way that’s hard to read or if it’s out of place on the page.
Therefore, you need to make your testimonial page design easy to look at.
There are numerous testimonial examples that you can use as a basis for your testimonial page, but whichever path you decide to go, the important thing is to make the page consistent, as well as in line with your entire website and brand.
One general rule is to avoid making your testimonial page look too salesy. Testimonials are incredibly powerful social proof elements on their own, so you shouldn’t skew them by adding sales elements which could make visitors doubt the legitimacy of the claims that are made.
Instead, try to put as many authenticity enhancing visuals as possible – whether it’s adding pictures to your quote-style testimonials, using real names and positions of the people behind the testimonials, or even linking to specific case studies related to each testimonial, the more elements you can add that add credibility, the more effective your testimonials page will be.
After all, people come to the testimonial page to look for confirmation that your product works, so don’t try to do too much and instead focus on making sure that you provide as much proof as possible that your product works, and works for the exact right type of people that the site’s visitor can relate to.
Link to Relevant Pages
As we already briefly mentioned in the last section, linking to relevant pages such as case studies can be an incredibly powerful tool for enhancing your testimonial page design and adding a ton of credibility to every word of your best customers.
But while linking to case studies and success stories is a great strategy, that’s not the only way to use internal (or even external) linking to make your testimonial page design more effective.
One thing that a lot of marketers are finding huge success with is adding links to a different landing or sales pages in some of the testimonials.
If you have a multi-tiered product selection or if you serve a few different types of clients, you could link up testimonials to the pages that are relevant to the contents of that particular message, giving your site’s visitors the opportunity to learn more about the specific products or services that they are most likely to be interested in.
That way, instead of having a cookie-cutter sales page for all of your clients, you could attract warm and interested leads to your landing pages from your own site, after they have already seen a ton of social proof and are much more likely to believe your claims.
One thing to consider is to not make the call to actions too salesy, as that may clash with the overall tone of your testimonial page. Instead, a simple suggestion to read more about that specific product is more than enough to entice people to whom that message is the most relevant.
Use Different Types of Testimonials
Today, there are more types of testimonials than ever before.
Not too long ago, most websites only used quote-style testimonials, and that was more than enough to get the message across.
But with changing user habits, and people preferring to consume information in different ways, adding more options to review social proof is essential for maximizing your conversion rate.
But what types of testimonials could you use?
Well, the aforementioned quote-style testimonial is still essential because it’s convenient to read and allows you to add clickable elements such as links to case studies or relevant product pages.
Another one you should consider adding to your testimonial page is a video testimonial – although they may seem more challenging to get, you’d be surprised how many of your best customers would agree to get on camera and talk about your product if you only asked them.
In some instances, even an audio testimonial can be very useful. It is easier to produce, as you can just record your customer while on a call (with his permission), and it can have the same impact as video testimonials.
If you integrate testimonials from your social media pages, that adds a layer of authenticity because people tend to trust real reviews from users of social media, as they perceive it to be a third-party website.
You could even add a rating from specialized review sites in your niche and allow people to add reviews automatically, but that may give you less control over which reviews you want to appear next to one another to have the maximum impact.
Diversify Your Testimonials
The primary purpose of having a testimonial page is to show prospective customers that your product delivers on its promises.
But a secondary, yet perhaps even more powerful purpose is telling a story about your company and products in the words of your very best customers.
You see, no matter how well you can describe the benefits and advantages of your products, there will always be a layer of skepticism from the reader because he won’t expect you to paint a completely honest picture about what you can offer.
What’s more, when you describe your products, you are doing so from your own perspective and may not always be able to pinpoint the best way to crystalize your strongest selling points.
Meanwhile, your customers are in the same group of people that you want to attract.
That means that their language, as well as their points of emphasis, are much more likely to line up perfectly with what’s most important to your audience, so when they tell why they enjoyed your product in their own words, it will have a much stronger impact.
One thing to consider if you want to maximize the power of your testimonials is to make sure that you line up testimonials in a way that makes the most sense.
Namely, you should look for testimonials that cover different aspects of your products and then put them together so that the reader gets a full picture of all the reasons why your product is the best choice.
You can also use testimonials from different segments of your audience to highlight the specific benefits that are the most relevant to them individually.
Analyze Data to Improve Testimonial Placement
When working on your testimonial page design, you will inevitably have to do a lot of guessing in terms of how to structure the page and which testimonials to emphasize.
However, as you gain more insights about how your audience responds, you should make sure to start making data-based decisions to maximize the impact that your testimonials page will have.
You can use heatmap behavior analysis tools and scroll mapping tools to figure out which parts of your testimonial page get the most or the least attention, and make adjustments that make more sense.
For instance, you may find that a particular testimonial that was at the bottom of the page is getting a lot of attention from readers, so it would make sense to place it higher on the page and make it easier to see.
You may also discover insights about which parts of the page get the most attention – based on the design that you choose, it’s likely that some areas will be more pleasing to the eye than the others, so it’s important to place your best testimonials in a place that will provide the most visibility.
Show Customized Testimonials to Different Visitors
To make sure that your testimonials page delivers the best possible results, it’s essential to make the content as relevant to each individual visitor as possible.
We already talked about the option of linking to case studies or segmented landing pages depending on the behaviors of each visitor, but you can actually take it a step further and customize the experience of every lead from the very start.
Using data such as what traffic source the user is coming from and which pages he has visited, you could develop a dynamic testimonial page design that adapts to each user and displays testimonials that are the most relevant to him.
Now, this may seem complicated, but the truth is that there are plenty of tools that allow displaying dynamic content on pages based on user behaviors, and it isn’t even that difficult to set up.
The result?
Each visitor seeing only those testimonials that matter to him the most, which can increase the impact that your testimonials have and help to significantly increase conversions in the process.
By analyzing user behavior data and making timely adjustments, you can continue tweaking your dynamic testimonial page and make it one of the most powerful tools for getting customers to commit to buying from you.
Encourage People to Leave Testimonials
Finally, in order to have a successful and results-driven testimonial page, you must have plenty of testimonials to work with.
Without a diverse range of testimonials covering different aspects of your products and services, as well as coming from different segments of your audience, you won’t be able to establish sufficient social proof and tell a compelling story through the words of your best customers.
But how can you get more testimonials?
Well, that’s a question that many companies are asking – it can be hard to ask your customers to vouch for you, even if you know they’re happy with your service.
Any request, not to mention one that requires them to put their face and reputation behind your product, is difficult, as you don’t want to disturb or burden the people that your business success depends on.
However, if you’re going to succeed, having plenty of testimonials is essential, so whether it’s easy or not, you must find a way to get testimonials from a significant percentage of your ideal customers.
And luckily, there are ways how you can make that process easier.
For one thing, you should simply ask people for testimonials. The best time to do so is right after you deliver the results that they were hoping for – this is when they are likely to be more enthusiastic and much more likely to agree.
What’s more, since their experience with your company is so fresh, they will be able to give a much more detailed description of your services and products.
You could also consider incentivizing the request.
Now, paying for a testimonial may not be the best idea, but giving a coupon or a voucher is a great way to reward your customers for their time and get a much higher percentage to take the time to write compelling website testimonials.
Whichever path you end up choosing, remember to be clear of what you’re looking for in a testimonial.
Provide guided questions such as what they liked the most about your product, why it worked so well for them specifically, and why they chose your company over others, as the answers to these questions will naturally provide the foundations for a great testimonial.
