Credibility is essential for eCommerce success. Testimonials establish your credibility and make customers feel secure and comfortable during their shopping experience on your site.
Considering how much of an impact solid testimonials could have on your sales, it’s important to be smart about how to get them and then use them on your site.
Here are a few quick tips:
Never Fake a Testimonial
You risk damaging your credibility if your testimonials are too good to be true.
Shoppers are rightly skeptical about too-lofty claims. Not only is it unfair to your customers to misrepresent your products or services, testimonials are your opportunity to connect with potential buyers on a more personal level. Take advantage of that; don’t try to pull one over on them and risk damaging your reputation and credibility.
You need REAL customers to write honestly about you in order to genuinely connect with future customers.
Solicit Testimonials from your Customers
It’s perfectly fine to ask your previous buyers to comment on their experience purchasing from your site. The shoppers who take the time to comment will very often provide you with something meaningful.
Even negative comments can be valuable – maybe not as published testimonials, but you’ll at least gain some insight into how your customers feel about your brand and what changes you can make to create a better shopping experience.
Specifics, not Surveys
Descriptive testimonials that are specific to a certain area of customer service or product quality are obviously more effective than the general “Love your store, thanks”.
You should ask your buyers to include any comments they have about their experiences with things such as shipping time, packaging quality, returns, etc.
But remember that you’re not just compiling data for graphs and charts– you’re trying to get real-person verbal feedback about how your customers feel about you – so don’t send them a series of yes-or-no questions. That kind of data is of course valuable, but not as a testimonial.
Be Smart About Where You put Them
Now that you’ve got a few good testimonials, where do you put them?
It’s important that testimonials are strategically distributed across the site and not all lumped together on a single page.
Separate out your testimonials by topic and think about which areas of your site each topic is most relevant to.
Try easing buyer anxiety by placing the comment about your quick shipping on the Shipping Info page, and the one about an easy return transaction next to the Add to Cart button or the Shopping Cart page.
Put the more general comments in the footer or at the bottom of your vertical navigation so that on every page, visitors will be reminded that you have happy customers.
Have one glowing testimonial that you want everyone to see as soon as they arrive? Highlight it on the homepage or on the landing page for a targeted campaign.
Did one of your happier customers send you a 5 paragraph testimonial that’s just too long fit anywhere? No problem, just create “sound bites” out of the longer comments and place them through the site.
Have you asked your customers for testimonials? If so, what worked, what didn’t? Has it improved your sales? Share your tips with other curious eCommerce professionals below.
Written by Tammy W.
Tags: AspDotNetStoreFront, customer reviews, e-commerce, ecommerce marketing, testimonials
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