Enhance your E-commerce Store by Utilising Customer Testimonials

Introduction: Leveraging Customer testimonials for your store

Customer testimonials are one of the greatest user-generated tools that a business can implement to build an effective relationship with its future customers. In simple terms, consumer testimonials are reviews made by your past customers. In other words, they are an assessment made by existing clients that want to share their experience with your product or service.
Nowadays, these reviews can be created in the form of videos, pictures, and in written text. The most common form of reviews has so far been text reviews, yet we are currently witnessing the rise of video reviews as a highly valuable tool for ecommerce stores. 

Customers typically share their feedback, viewpoints, experiences, and overall contentment received from using products offered by a company. Consumer reviews, especially in a video testimonial format, are an outstanding method to display past customers' positive experiences on all your social platforms, including your website. While we are on the topic of where we can effectively use client testimonials, let's take a closer look below.

Effectively using Customer Testimonials Online

There are various approaches you can effectively leverage to harness the power of client testimonials. By doing these 5 important steps below, you will be able to utilise consumer testimonials to their full potential.

1. Placing it strategically on your website

The first place customer testimonials need to be placed on is your website. It is the most crucial spot, seeing as potential consumers come to your website looking to make a purchase. When your viewers see positive feedback and experiences from past clients, it will prevent any purchase hesitation that your potential consumers may face. Regarding where your store can apply consumer testimonials on your website to enhance its credibility, there are a few strategic placements you need to consider.

Landing Pages:

Landing pages are one of the first impressions your potential consumers get of your business. It is vital that you strike your audience with a strong first impression. In order to do so, you can put testimonials on this page to get your viewer's attention. If prospective clientele visit your landing page and the first thing they come across are testimonials, it will surely have a positive influence on their purchasing decision and shopping experience. You can even lower your website’s bounce rate by making these customer testimonial videos a call-to-action (CTA) link.
Consequently, this will further engage your prospective consumers by persuading them to start browsing your website, which could result in more conversions.

Product Pages:

Product pages are an ideal area to use testimonials. In fact, it is a pretty common spot to find video testimonials as well as written testimonials. Online stores utilise testimonials on this page as it is a great tool to influence potential consumer purchasing decisions. As potential clientele sees positive past clients' feedback, they will get a sense of what to expect as well from the company. This thereby will make them confident to make purchases from your business.

2. Utilise Social Media

A common trend with customer testimonials is uploading them onto your social media. Social media is the perfect bridge to connect ecommerce stores with their target audiences. Social Media platforms also have different methods of attracting consumers. Including hashtags, UGC, interactive posts, and influencer marketing. You can leverage all of these features to increase brand awareness and website traffic. Once your brand’s social media profile receives more attention, sharing customer testimonials can prove to be highly beneficial for enhancing trust. Posting consumer testimonials on social media is a strategic approach to showing viewers the positive user experience of past customers.
For example, on Instagram, you can create a highlight made up of testimonials posted on your stories. These client testimonials serve as genuine and trustworthy endorsements of your products or services, and posting them on social media, may have a big impact on the reputation and credibility of your company.

3. Create a Customer Testimonial section on your website

A fantastic method to bring your traffic's attention to testimonials is by having them on a stand-alone page on your website. In doing so, your ecommerce business will be able to leverage all the positive feedback from satisfied customers, which can help build relationships with new clients. Having a designated page for all your consumer testimonials is a great strategy to make yourself stand out from your competitors.
Additionally, your traffic will find it easier to believe in the reliability of your services and will, therefore, be more willing to make a purchase when compared to a brand that has no testimonials.

4. Use Customer Testimonials to tackle common queries

Customer testimonials can be used as an effective tool for common everyday queries about your business. Stores are now even able to answer frequently asked questions with the use of customer reviews! For example, if a customer video review is more so focused on a product, businesses can show this review to clear up any doubt about the product.

Customer reviews are an excellent approach to giving an authentic, in-depth perspective that potential customers can see and trust. It is the most powerful tool to address your client's questions since customer reviews are third-party generated, hence making your traffic trust it more than a basic answer provided by your brand.

5. Use different forms of Customer testimonials

The last step to note when it comes to maximising the potential of consumer reviews is the different forms you can display reviews in. These testimonials can come in different styles such as audio format, videos, written text, and images. You can use various forms of testimonials on your website and even social platforms, this way you can effectively target different audiences and offer a comprehensive perspective of your business's value.
Moreover, on places like social media, it is more effective to use visual forms of customer reviews like pictures or videos as they are more intriguing and encourage viewer engagement. Whereas, on your website, it is ideal to use a combination of all types, such as combining written text and short clips. Having real-time, unfiltered feedback in diversified formats only reinforces the trustworthiness of your brand. 

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How to Collect Customer Testimonials on Your Online Store

Whether it is to build a better relationship with your customers or help with improving sales, collecting customer testimonials for firms is essential to its success. To better understand this, we need to explore different techniques your store can apply to collect these reviews.

Incentivize your customers

When it comes to incentivizing your customers to give reviews, it is important that you have something intriguing to offer them. For example, an enterprise can offer rewards or discounts for giving testimonials! Additionally, a business can entice customers by sending them a small gift bag or even a free trial of an upgraded plan.
You can even incentivize customers to give reviews by giving them exclusive access to new features, early releases, or special events. All of this will lead to making your customer feel more valued and appreciated, which can increase the chances of them giving your brand a testimonial.

Streamline the Shopping Experience

Before your business asks its customers for any form of feedback, it is essential to make sure your customers are left satisfied. The most crucial part of a business is to have a happy customer. This is where streamlining the shopping experience comes in. By making the purchase process short and swift, customers will be able to discover and buy the products they are looking for in a quick and effective way. A good method to streamline a shopping experience is by converting a video testimonial of a product into a shoppable video.

With the transition of a testimonial into a shoppable video, potential customers will be able to click the link embedded in the video and make a direct purchase without being redirected to a check-out page. Using a shoppable video is the best way to facilitate the procedure. Thereby, with the implementation of this format, it will lead to your enterprise having happier customers.
Moreover, now that your firm has a satisfied customer, they may feel more inclined to give you a testimonial. If they do so, this new review will increase the positive feedback on your website, hence influencing other prospective customers. 

Promote User-generated Content

Promoting user-generated content is a critical step in the process of gaining access to testimonials. If your customer sees that your page has a lot of testimonials, they may want to participate and will most likely feel more comfortable sharing their own feedback as well. In regard to a store with no testimonials, customers usually tend to be a bit more hesitant when it comes to willingly giving feedback. With the simultaneous promotion of user-generated content, there will be an increase in customers wanting to give you testimonials.

Moreover, going back to having a testimonial page, if you allow a submission space on that page, it will make the method of giving testimonials a lot easier. It is quintessential to make the process of providing testimonials as simple as possible to encourage more customers to offer their feedback. Other than having a submission space on a testimonial page, brands can also create links that will redirect customers to a submission section. When promoting UGC on social platforms, brands can attach the testimonials link to the caption or as a CTA link, depending on the platform, so that it signals to customers that they are asking for their feedback.

Leverage Purchase Confirmation Emails

Sending purchase confirmation emails can be utilised to also, obtain customer testimonials. How can this be done? Firstly, brand’s have to make the client feel deeply valued and appreciated for shopping with their store. The purchase confirmation email needs to be personalised, and an exceptional way to do this is to include a self-pre-recorded thank-you video. This tool drastically humanises the checkout process and helps to connect with a customer on a personal.

As for the content of the clip, it is important to ask your clients very kindly, in the end, to leave a review of the enterprise in any format they would prefer. Give your customers the option of choosing where to send it to you. Let them know that they can send it by replying to the email, sending it on social media, and or uploading it on the submission section of the testimonial page. It is essential to let your customers know that you want what is most convenient for them. These actions will further prove to your clients that you value them, hence they will be more inclined to write affirmative feedback.

Use Multiple Social Platforms

When it comes to collecting customer testimonials, social media is a company's best friend. Before attempting to obtain testimonials, you must be extremely active and establish a very strong brand presence throughout all of your social channels. You will be able to attain some level of interaction once you have established a strong digital presence.

It is vital to determine which social account your store is getting most of its interactions from. To find out, all you will need to do is compare and analyse the number of shares, likes, and comments on every post from the different platforms. Your store should focus mainly on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube as these are the best digital platforms to get testimonials. After your ecommerce store has figured out which social media most of your target audience uses, you will try to get video testimonials from there.

The last step in this process is to actually collect testimonials. On the platform that most of your customers are on, upload a video or picture post asking for testimonials! It is imperative to let your customer know how they can send you testimonials. You can ask your customers to leave a link to their review in your comment section, or even tag your company in their posts on social platforms. This strategy will only succeed if your ecommerce business has a very strong brand presence.
Lastly, when other customers see testimonials being reposted, they will feel compelled to provide reviews in the hopes that your company will repost them as well. This is a great way for UGC creators to also gain followers. 

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Benefits Brands Can Receive from Customer Testimonials

Testimonials are an effective way to unlock a lot of beneficial opportunities for brands. I have briefly mentioned some benefits throughout the article, but now we will take an even closer look below.

Boost in Trust and Credibility

Testimonials that portray good experiences from customers are one of the greatest ways to showcase social proof. When new potential customers come across these favourable interactions, it builds credibility for your online store and enables your traffic to trust your brand even more. Customer testimonials are a fantastic way to gain trust as it is always produced by past customers and the company has no influence when it comes to creating them. Moreover, this is an excellent way for a brand to show its potential customers that they are completely transparent with its audience, which further helps prospective clients in forming a trustworthy relationship with the brand.

Differentiating your Online Store

Leveraging testimonials is a great way to stand out amongst competitors. By displaying all the good reviews that your company receives from numerous customers, your new viewers will be more intrigued by your services. Furthermore, going back to the first advantage, it will give your brand the ability to help create a trustworthy relationship with customers and most likely give your online store a loyal audience. Therefore, the utilisation of testimonials will help your online store differentiate itself from any other online stores.

Boosts Conversion rates

The last benefit that we will be discussing today is how testimonials lead to a drastic increase in conversion rates. Once your online store has gained the trust and credibility of potential customers, they are more likely to make a purchase. This occurs as a result of prospective clients coming across others sharing positive feedback about your brand, which further increases the chances of them buying your products. Testimonials help to clarify any uncertainties and encourage hesitant consumers to take action.

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