While trying to improve conversion rates for an online store, you often hear about A/B testing, speeding up the checkout, or displaying customer reviews.
But what about testimonials? They’re like online reviews, except your business has more control over them, and they come from real customers, providing an extraordinary look into what customers can expect from your products and company.
In this article, you’ll learn how to add testimonials to your Shopify store, while also diving into why you should include testimonials, and the best locations to put them on your Shopify website.
What’s a Shopify Testimonial?
A testimonial is:
- A written or recorded statement explaining your brand’s expertise and credibility, or anything positive about the business, like its exceptional customer support or high-quality products.
- From a previous or current customer, allowing you to boost the effectiveness of the message and show the value and quality of your products. Depending on the message, a testimonial can also come from another company you do business with, or a reputable name in the industry.
- Something meant to strengthen the reputation (social proof) of your business upon first glance. It shows that other people trust your brand and its products, giving potential customers the confidence to proceed with a purchase.
The great thing about testimonials is that you have the flexibility to customize where they’re presented on your website.
You can also play with the testimonial formatting (video, written text, including a picture of the testimonial giver, etc.) for a more effective message.
How to Add Testimonials to Your Shopify Store
It’s possible to add testimonials to a Shopify store using several methods. The simplest way is to find a Shopify template that already has a section for testimonials on its homepage, then swap out the demo content for your own.
Another way is to simply add a text section in the Shopify builder and paste the testimonials in there. Other formatting options include adding pictures, videos, and headlines, all of which are available as building blocks in Shopify.
Another way to go about it is to utilize an app to add testimonials to your Shopify store. This way, you open up other customization opportunities, and a simplified design process for displaying your testimonials.
Shopify testimonial apps also bring about the potential for quickly adding video testimonials, or more advanced formats like those with pictures and icons and headlines ready to go, all without formatting and designing them yourself.
In this tutorial, we’ll guide you through two options:
- Adding testimonials to Shopify from scratch (using the Shopify Editor)
- Using an app to add testimonials to Shopify
Let’s get started.
Manually Adding Testimonials Using the Shopify Editor
In your Shopify Admin, go to Sales Channels > Online Store > Themes. Click on the Customize button to proceed. This brings you to the Shopify visual editor, which presents the frontend of your online store on the right side, along with building block tools and customization options to the left.
With your desired theme in place, click the Add Section button near the area in which you’d like to place the testimonials. Although there are many other ways to design testimonials, this is by far the most familiar format. Choose to insert the Multicolumn section. This provides three columns to write in multiple testimonials. And you can add more if needed.
Thereafter, click the multicolumn section to the right in the visual editor. This reveals the settings for each column available. You can add a Heading, and Description. There are various ways to display your testimonials, but a good starting point is to have the name of the person as the Heading, then the actual written testimonial as the Description.
To offer more visual testimonials, the Multicolumn section also offers an Image field to upload a picture of each person who gave the testimonials.
And that's how you add a testimonial! We recommend exploring other section types, or using widgets, pricing modules, HTML, or product review blocks for suitable formatting for testimonials. You might even find that some Shopify themes already have a testimonial page or testimonial section to showcase customer feedback from happy customers.
Using an App to Add Testimonials to Shopify
One route to take to add testimonials to Shopify is by installing an app. There are pros and cons to this approach: like how apps may cost money, but they often provide more advanced functionality for showing things like video testimonials and testimonial slideshows.
The Shopify page builder is usually enough for making beautiful testimonials, there’s just more customization involved. For instance, you can still make a video testimonial without an app, but you have to build it from scratch in Shopify. Apps, on the other hand, may provide templates for a more plug and play solution.
Here are the best Shopify apps for testimonials:
- Customer Testimonials Showcase: offers premade designs and user-friendly layouts for showing testimonials in a grid or photo slider
- Testimonials Master: has various styles to quickly add testimonials to Shopify, along with options to collect testimonials from customers on the frontend of your website
- Reputon Testimonials Slider: show testimonials in a carousel, as video reviews, photo testimonials, sliders, or feedback modules; this is one of the best testimonial slider apps
- Vidial UGC Video Testimonial: this is a way to prompt people to make user-generated content in the form of testimonials; ask them to send in visual testimonials, then automatically approve or decline them for display online
- TestimonialHub: this, along with some other apps from Reputon, allow you to automatically pull reviews about your company from all around the internet; you can grab reviews from social media and directory sites like Google, Yelp, and Facebook then display them as testimonials on your ecommerce site
We encourage you to try the free trials from some of these plugins, then consider upgrading if you like one with a premium version. This way, you have the perfect testimonials solution instead of having to design something from scratch.
Not to mention, many of the apps listed above pull from external sources, keeping your list of testimonials fresh. Having a stagnant page you made 2 years ago through the regular Shopify page builder requires more maintenance.
Why It’s Essential to Add Shopify Testimonials to Increase Sales
Testimonials, along with customer reviews, deliver an extraordinary amount of power when communicating with potential customers. The stats show that displaying testimonials and reviews can increase business conversions by 270%.
Not only that, but you’re actively hurting your potential for sales if you neglect to include testimonials and reviews on your website, because 80% of consumers are less likely to purchase an item if it doesn’t have any testimonials or reviews. And the percentages go even higher when we’re talking about younger consumers.
It’s also worth mentioning that, although text-based testimonials are rather effective, you should consider visual testimonials, like those that use video or are even complemented by a picture of the customer giving the testimonial.
The reason people like seeing visuals is that they know the customer actually had something to do with the testimonial being placed on your site. They had to give your company a picture, or provide a video read for the testimonial. In fact, 37% of consumers find video testimonials more effective since they appear more authentic than your business’ pitch.
With all the knowledge in mind, now it’s time to learn the best locations to place Shopify testimonials.
Best Locations to Add Shopify Testimonials
The idea behind a testimonial is to display it where potential customers are deciding whether to proceed onto the next step of the sales funnel. A testimonial drives them further down the sales funnel, so it’s essential to decide on the perfect places for testimonials.
In terms of ecommerce, the best locations to add Shopify testimonials are:
- The Home page
- Product pages
- On the Checkout page
It’s also optional to include testimonials after checkout, seeing as how it could restrengthen a customer’s confidence in their purchase and drive them to purchase more in the future. Another option is within follow-up email marketing campaigns like abandoned cart messages and defunct customer emails.
Conclusion
Testimonials are possible with the default features you receive from Shopify, but you can up your game with many Shopify apps. That’s particularly true if you want simplicity in adding testimonials, the ability to pull reviews from elsewhere online, or unique functionality, like for adding and managing video testimonials.
With that said, any testimonial is better than no testimonial! Do you use testimonials on your Shopify store? If so, share how you do it in the comments section below!
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