Reviews that Matter: Grow your Business with Reviews

The Right Reviews

There are differences between the reviews you get.

Some of them are more reliable, trustworthy, and effective than others. We have learned a great deal about this topic through case studies and A/B testing.

When you use Trustmary to showcase reviews, the software will make sure your best reviews are highlighted first.

So, what makes some reviews better than others?

Rating

You don’t need to be a genius to realize that 5-star reviews are more likely to impress prospective customers than 1-star reviews.

Review statistics show that only 9% of customers would be willing to engage with a business that has an average star rating of 1 or 2 stars, and 94% of consumers have avoided a company because of its negative reviews.

On the other hand, having a full 5-star rating is not the best-case scenario. It can easily come across as biased or faked – no one is perfect.

Research actually shows that it’s best to be in between a 4.2 and 4.5 average star rating.

Length

Longer reviews include more information than short ones, thus they create a better image of the business and are more trustworthy.

Longer reviews can generate as much as 14% more conversions compared to short reviews.

Details

When your customer reviews include details about the product or service, or about the reviewer, they are much more reliable!

Insider information about the customer experience adds a personal touch to the reviews and is more likely to convey a warm image of the company.

Additionally, including the reviewer’s name, image, location, and other info adds credibility and social proof effect.

After all, people are more likely to follow the lead of their peers. 

Imagine this: you are a 15-year-old boy looking for a new video game and reading reviews. Would you be more affected by a review from someone closer to your age, or someone who resembles your grandma?

Recency

Recent reviews are essential. 73% of consumers don’t even consider reviews that are more than one month old.

To keep up a flow of fresh reviews, you need to be active in collecting new reviews. That’s where Trustmary can help you and do it automatically.

Medium

Finally, there is a difference between text reviews and video reviews.

Reviews in a video form can generate 20% more sales than text reviews.

There are many reasons behind this: 

• Video affects our emotions much more than text, 
• video is harder to fake than text, and 
• we are used to consuming video content (and becoming lazier and lazier with reading).

How to get the right reviews?

The key to collecting the right reviews lies in these factors:

• timing
• consistency
• how you ask

It’s best to build a review gathering process around an automatic feedback loop that is triggered by certain events or repeated at regular intervals.

This enables you to target the moments where you can capture the positive feelings of a success, and generate glowing reviews.

Correct timing also enables you to collect reviews on different aspects of the customer experience. You might want to have reviews about the product itself, the customer service, or perhaps the expertise of your staff.

And lastly, how you formulate the request has an effect on the outcome. The question might lead the reviewer to a certain direction, or allow very free expression.

Here’s more content about how to collect reviews and testimonials:

• Foolproof Way to Generate Reviews
• 15 Important Questions to Ask For a Testimonial
• Automate Your Review Gathering Flows with Trustmary
• How to Get Testimonials From Customers (With 7 Examples)

In the Right Place

Does it matter where you place reviews on your website?

For sure! You should consider things like:

• How to make as many visitors as possible to see the reviews?
• Where would the reviews have the greatest impact?
• What is the conversion goal and where does it happen?

Here are some placements you should consider.

1. Homepage

If we were to name the most important and universal option to place reviews, it would be the homepage.

Most website visitors pass your homepage at some point, at least if they are seriously considering doing business with you.

Thus, it’s the perfect place for reviews.

Lots of people place the review widget at the bottom of the page. But what percentage of the visitors scroll all the way down? Is it the best option if you want to impress as many visitors as possible?

Be brave and showcase your reviews further up on your homepage!

Here’s an example from our client who added the review widget as the very first element of their homepage.

2. Landing Page

Landing pages are also important places for reviews. It’s likely that a certain percentage of the landing page visitors will move on to your home page at some point, but not all of them.

You need to be able to build trust on the landing page if you wish to convert visitors quickly.

Reviews on the landing page can give a nice extra push for your campaign and increase the ROI of the paid advertising you use to drive traffic to the page.

3. Product or service page

When the visitor has progressed to a product (or service) page, they might be close to a purchase decision.

Help them make up their mind about the purchase by displaying reviews from happy customers who have bought the product previously.

Pro tip: use an exit-intent popup to persuade visitors who are already about to leave the page. You might even include an extra incentive like a small discount. That’s how Ruokaboksi increased subscriptions by 37%.

4. Checkout page

In an online store, the checkout page is the last obstacle before a purchase. Glowing reviews from satisfied customers can make a big difference for your sales. 

If possible, choose reviews that speak about a good return policy and fast shipping. It can lower the threshold of making the final purchase decision.

Körkortskolan found that adding a video testimonial to the checkout page increased sales by 32%. 

5. Dedicated Testimonials Page

Some businesses opt for a separate testimonial/review page that is included in the navigation and easy to find.

It can be a good tactic, but depending on the business model, you might have difficulty driving specific conversion events. What do you want the website visitors to do?

If you are, let’s say, an agency that offers a specific service, it’s not a problem. You can add your main CTA to your testimonials page.

But if you have several customer journey models inside your business, it might be much more difficult to determine which role the testimonial page has in the customer journey. 

In this case, we would recommend using testimonials and reviews on the abovementioned pages.

Read more about placing reviews:

• Where to Showcase Customer Reviews on Your Website
• Your Guide to Using Testimonials for Marketing
• How to Add Testimonials to Website in WordPress?

In the Right Way

In addition to the right place, the right way to showcase reviews depends on your business model, customer journey, your conversion goal, and type of reviews you use.

Showcasing product reviews is different from overall company reviews, and so on.

Sometimes, you want to capture leads, and other times you just want to establish trust and credibility with customer stories.

Trustmary has a review widget for all kinds of use cases. They can also be fully customized to your website’s style.

On-page widgets

The classic evergreen review widgets like carousels and walls are a great way to add a wow-factor to your website.

They put your happy customers into the spotlight and build trust effectively.

Pop-ups

Pop-ups can be used for capturing leads, promoting special offers, and highlighting CTAs. When it comes with a powerful review, the effect is guaranteed!

For example, this case showed that a well-timed review pop-up can increase contact requests by over 60%.

Forms

When you want to capture leads on your website, use lead generation forms supercharged with social proof.

There’s also a difference between how you decide to present the forms. They can be static on-page forms, included in pop-ups, or made conversational with chatbots.

CTAs

It’s always good to place CTAs near your reviews, regardless of what type of widget you use.

There are also widgets specifically designed for CTAs that you can place in your blog, for example.

At the Right Time

Some points in the customer journey are more critical than others. 

The timing is intertwined with the placing: it’s likely that customers who visit e.g. pricing pages are further down the sales funnel compared to visitors on a random blog post, for example.

Each moment in the customer journey benefits from social proof, so don’t overthink it. If you are wondering whether to show reviews to someone or not, you should show them!

What you should pay attention to is what kind of reviews you showcase at each point.

1. When they first land on your website

First impressions matter.

Thus, you should show reviews to visitors right when they land on your website.

As discussed earlier, don’t save your reviews at the very bottom of the page. The chances are that visitors won’t scroll all the way down.

The bravest people might even add reviews above the fold if they want to create a “wow” effect. This kind of approach works best for businesses with a quite straightforward business idea.

However, if the visitor needs some time to realize what you offer, you should show them reviews…

2. After they learn the basic information about your business

Sometimes your “what, where, and why” might take some more space on your website. In this case, save the customer reviews for later.

Place them around the middle of your homepage or other landing pages.

You could even implement a review pop-up that is triggered after the visitor scrolls down enough.

3. When they are about to leave your website

Exit intent pop-ups are one of the most effective ways to utilize reviews.

When the visitor is already leaving the page, you have one last chance to change their mind.

That’s when a glowing review and a persuasive call to action can save the day.

To the Right Visitor

Finally, showing the right review at the right time in the right place has the biggest impact for the right visitor.

As previously mentioned, people are more likely to trust the opinions of those who resemble them and belong to the same reference group.

You can try to form different funnels for different types of customers, and boost each with fitting reviews. 

Take in consideration what your prospective customers might have in common with the people who reviewed you before: maybe they work in the same field, in a similar position, or maybe they have similar interests.

Furthermore, showing reviews to the right visitor means considering the personal customer journey.

From which source did the visitor end up on your website? What do they already know about you? And finally, how can you use that information in choosing the right reviews?

Let’s say that someone is a first time visitor who knows nothing about your business. It makes sense to feature reviews that shed light on what kind of service the customers received and what they liked about it.

On the other hand, when you have a warm lead who is about to book a demo with your company, they might be interested in knowing what other customers thought about their demo meetings.

Likewise, a customer who is about to purchase a product from your online store could get the extra confidence from reviews that speak about how fast the shipping was and how well the product matched previous customers’ expectations.

The Takeaway on Reviews That Matter

Reviews are the most effective way to establish trust and boost digital customer acquisition.

This has become essential for all businesses in all industries.

When you successfully show the right reviews in the right place, in the right way, at the right time, and to the right visitor, you are on your way to greatness.

To succeed, you need to have an effective review collection process and a tool to utilize them in various ways.

Trustmary does that: automatically.

Book a meeting with us to set up your review marketing process, or sign up below.

Further Reading

• 14 Best Tools for Showcasing Reviews on A Website
• How to Add Google Reviews to Website (for Dummies)
• 20 Tips on How to Get More Reviews from Customers

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