The Importance of Customer Testimonials to Inspire Future Customers

Persuading someone to open their wallet for an unknown website or a new product can be hard.

So, how do you go about it?

While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to it, customer testimonials can do the job.

Using customer testimonials on your website is a wise way of persuading visitors and converting them into customers.

After all, 95% of the buyers say that reviews, whether negative or positive, influence their buying decisions.

Wouldn’t you want to grab the slice of that action - perhaps see some customer testimonial page examples?

But, you might be asking:

Why are Customer Testimonials Important?

Customer testimonials can be a great marketing asset, if only you learn how to use them properly. A lot of e-commerce businesses have made them an essential part of scaling their online presence.

Still not convinced? Let’s get into specifics:

1. Customer Testimonials Build Trust and Credibility

These testimonials have an impact on your future customers because they add legitimacy to your products or website and make people more willing to buy from you. Put simply, they have the potential to improve the conversion rate of visitors into paying customers.

What we’re trying to say is - customer testimonials make people more comfortable and nudge them towards making a purchase - because they learn that other people have been happy with the website and have made the same purchase for similar reasons.

2. Customer Testimonials Provide Social Proof

Have you ever eaten at a restaurant because your friend mentioned the great food? Have you ever bought a product because your favorite actor endorsed it? That’s social proof. Social proof simply develops the case of ‘if it’s good for them, it’s good for me as well.’

Used correctly, customer testimonials can be a very efficient sales ploy. A great testimonial taps into a prospective buyer’s head and persuades them to think that ‘I also need that product because everyone else cannot be wrong.’

3. They Boost Conversions

According to a BigCommerce study, customers who interact with a review are 58% more likely to convert. The same study also pointed that 50+ reviews can generate a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.

These numbers show that the more genuine and positive testimonials you can gain from your customers, the more chances there will be of conversions.

4. They Humanise Your Brand

People love a good story. Their empathy and curiosity towards other humans are ingrained in their psyches. And that’s another reason why you should leverage customer testimonials. The testimonials on your website or product page can provide a human interest angle to your offerings- enabling customers to connect with, relate to, and better understand the services and products before them.

You must have come across big brands that spend millions on advertising campaigns - just to reveal the human side of their business. So, as marketers, you too can achieve the same outcome by sourcing great testimonials.

5. They Tell Users About Your USP

One of the reasons testimonials are a great marketing asset is testimonials can show how a product or service can solve the pain points of the customers. In other words, it informs them about the unique selling point (USP) of your product or service and helps illustrate how you solved a recurring challenge for your existing customer.

How to use Customer Testimonials Efficiently?

By this stage, you must have understood the importance of customer testimonials. I am sure you’d want to leverage it as a marketing strategy and review customer testimonial page examples. So, we got you some interesting hacks on using testimonials more efficiently.

1. Consider Adding Testimonial in a Video

Written testimonials are indeed effective. However, videos can convey more meaning and leave a great impact on viewers in a shorter space of time. One of the studies revealed that 79% of people have watched a video testimonial to learn about a product or service.

I too am a big fan of using testimonials in a video - with faces of real people and their experiences. Just think about it - you got the audio, text, and visual - all elements in one neat package.

Hearing and seeing an existing customer's genuine appreciation for your business is more appealing than you think. So, make sure to incorporate this type of testimonials.

2. Create a Dedicated Testimonials Page

How about creating a dedicated page that only highlights your success stories with previous customers? A lot of online businesses are doing this by amassing a good number of positive testimonials. They are providing a hub for customers to find out what existing and previous customers have to say about the product.

You can make this page as low-key or flashy as your budget and design skills allow. A great thing, these pages aren’t tough to set up. You can use plugins and theme pages that will pull through reviews to your testimonial page automatically.

Even software like HubSpot CRM has created testimonial pages that oozes social proof and turn visitors into paying customers.

3. Use Testimonials in Email Campaign

One super-effective strategy for encouraging prospective buyers to take action is to create a small email campaign where you show them your testimonials. This strategy has helped businesses encourage customer engagement and others gather meaningful feedback.

And this one is pretty inexpensive too. You only need to churn a compelling subject line, some thought-provoking questions, and then paste the testimonials from your past customers.

4. Testimonials on Social Media

Social media is indeed a great palace to add your testimonials and some social proof. The key here is to share your social channels which tap into the audience’s pain points.

We recommend using social sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn for discovering user’s pain points. You can easily do this by monitoring topical discussion threads and monitoring hashtags. LinkedIn is indeed a great tool for gauging the opinions of people who’re in the same industry.

5. Add Testimonials to Home Page

If you want to create a good first impression for your website visitors, you must consider adding a testimonial section to your website’s home page. Adding testimonials on the website homepage ensures that you gain your visitor’s trust from the very beginning.

Considering how visitors spend a very limited time on a website, you should make that time count by displaying something that can inspire a conversion. Some glowing testimonials with verifiable details like photos, links, full names can maximize credibility.

If you’re a B2B company, we’d recommend adding logos and quotes from your impressive clients. You can include their testimonials in an e carousel banner or slider at the top of your home page to increase visibility and impact. This way, the visitors will not need to scroll below to find the testimonials.

Similarly, if your company has won an award or gained a decent press review, you should consider adding feature snippets from these testimonials to your homepage.

6. Testimonials on a Product Page

One of the important touchpoints in your customer journey is your product or service page. While on the product page, visitors are checking out the goods, it’s great to reinforce your testimonials - and how brilliant your product is and how previous customers have been happy with the purchase.

This type of customer testimonials is considered to be well-placed and well-timed testimonials. It sends a reminder to prospective customers that real people have already used your product.

All in all, it’s a neat trick to reassure your customers that your product or service is legit. So, every bit of positive reassurance you give to your users will coax them to the finish line.

7. In Crowdfunding Campaigns

If you’re planning to start a crowdfunding campaign for raising funds for your business, it’s a smart idea to add some testimonials from existing users or early adopters of your service.

When you’re asking investors and sponsors to put their hand in the waller, you need to establish a belief, trust, and confidence in your business - and testimonials are a great way of doing that.

By including real testimonials from enthusiastic customers, you’ll be able to provide extra legitimacy for backing up your funding request. You can do this by presenting a case study, a video testimonial, or its pull-out quotes.

Inspiring Customer Testimonial Page Examples to Boost Conversions

Slack’s Testimonial Page

Slack is nailing credibility with its ‘customer stories’ page. This testimonial page highlights success stories of slack’s previous users. As you can see, they’ve used big names and company logos like trivago, influx, airwallex, and more.

The testimonial page has success stories of multiple companies, and as you scroll down, you’ll also see pull quotes of what users are saying. Furthermore, what we love about this page is how it ends with the well-placed CTA button - encouraging users to take action.

Key highlights of Slack’s testimonial page:

Success stories of existing partners
Logos and names of big companies
Pull quotes of existing customers
A featured customer
Neatly organized design
Call to action at the bottom

Zoom’s Testimonial Page

Zoom’s testimonial page is one of the most well-organized customer testimonial pages we’ve come across. Apart from all the use cases, Zoom ensures to bring out specific testimonials from different industries - making a strong case that their product has helped businesses from multiple sectors.

Much like Slack, Zoom has also used all the big names from different industries. On their customer testimonial pages, you’ll come across names like Uber, HubSpot, Zendesk, Slack, Go Daddy, and Zapier.

Key highlights of Zoom’s testimonial page:

Testimonials for multiple industries
Testimonials from industry leaders
Well-placed case studies
Logos from all major customers
Impactful quotes from existing customers
CTA at the bottom

Zoho CRM’s Testimonial Page

We found Zoho’s testimonial page to be effective at inspiring future customers. You’ll see well-placed customer success stories written in short glowing copies.

Zoho further uses links to each testifying customer’s business - giving existing customers an external link, which is not just a free advertisement for their clients but also supports their SEO. Each customer testimonial is fairly short so that visitors can easily read each snippet without wasting too much time.

Key highlights of Zoho CRM’s testimonial page:

Incredibly simple design - single-column layout
Testimonials grouped under categories (depending on the industry, company size, region, and employee numbers)
Link to each testifying customer’s business
Logos and names of big clients
CTA - requesting visitors to get a demo

Buffer Testimonial Page

I loved buffer’s testimonial page - it’s probably the simplest and coolest customer testimonial page out there. Buffer - which is known to be the most useful social media management company - has an inspiring customer stories page. Each case study takes visitors to its dedicated page. The main page only features a one-sentence review from the client.

Here also, you’ll come across industry-specific use cases that are efficiently featured on the page, making sure that the prospect is getting relevant information based on the industry they’re in.

Key highlights of Buffer testimonial page:

Expertly editors testimonial videos
Written case study
Mention of industry leaders
Snippets from each case study and a link to the full case study
Clutter-free interface

FreshDesk Testimonial Page

You’ll find Freshdesk’s success story page to be one of the best customer testimonial page examples. Since the company focuses on customer relations, it makes sense that they nail this page with smart use-cases, quote snippets, and neat designs.

When you first look at Freshdesk’s testimonial page, you’ll come across featured brands that are placed at the top of their pages. That story is of industry leaders, which helps Freshdesk immediately build trust in new visitor’s eyes. We see some high-profile customers - legit companies - and immediately the credibility increases.

Furthermore, Freshdesk organized the rest of the testimonials into multiple categories including industry, location, company size, and more. This helps Freshdesk pinpoint relevant information and makes for easy browsing.

Key highlights of Freshdesk testimonial page:

Neatly organized
Multiple categories to pinpoint only relevant information
Featured story of industry leader
Case studies
Lots of white space to reduce content overwhelm

Final Thoughts

By this stage, you must have understood why customer testimonials are important. Since we also walked you through customer testimonial page examples, you should have a fair understanding of how to ace use testimonials to full potential.