There are several goal-crushing marketing strategies often on top of the Shopify tactic list. You might be familiar with Google ads campaigns, email automation campaigns, or influencer marketing. However, another Shopify strategy has thrived these recent years – using social proof and testimonials. According to BigCommerce’s report [1], 71% of shoppers will make their buying decision based on positive referrals on the site.
The following will define social proofs and testimonials, as well as instruct you how to create and use them to make influential impacts on customers’ purchase decisions!
Table of Contents
What is social proof? Are testimonials social proof?
Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon. People under the impact of it are likely to imitate the actions or hobbies of their surroundings. For example, if a shopper sees two stores, she tends to head for one that many people are visiting. This phenomenon occurs both online and offline.
Amongst different types of social proof, many online businesses have chosen testimonials to drive revenues. Testimonials show votes of confidence in a product’s value on a business website. They involve either a customer’s review, a third-party award, a star-based rating, or any in-depth case study.
Examples about testimonials
Now, let’s look at some examples of testimonials from notable companies:
When navigating to the Asana homepage, visitors will easily reach the customer stories section in the main menu. This page displays Asana’s customers by a list of logos from big companies like Google, Spotify or Slack,… If visitors want to read the details, they can scroll down and click on each brand’s logo. Every client’s story is highlighted with eye-catching visual images and a remarkable story about the client’s pain points. It ended with a quote that emphasizes Asana’s superior solution brought to users.
CodeAcademy inspires audiences by showing their customer success stories in the form of video testimonials. Below the video, visitors can find some short interviews with students. The stories behind their interviews are also showcased if visitors click on the links.
Instapage exhibited several case studies on their homepage page with a very elegant, reader-friendly, and professionally designed outline. They also highlighted profiles of notable clienteles like Hello Fresh and EuroSport to catch the audience’s attention.
How to ask for and collect Shopify testimonials?
So now you are aware of the huge benefits that Shopify testimonials bring to our businesses. Let’s learn to ask for and efficiently collect them.
Use automatically triggered email to gather testimonials
Just think about sending emails to your customers while you are in bed. Does that sound more interesting and less time-consuming than every time you babysit your email? With the help of an automated email system like Klaviyo or Mailchimp, your responsibilities will mainly focus on writing an alluring and compelling email. And the last easy step to complete is by setting up automation rules.
In your email, do not forget to add an attractive discount offer to their next purchases. Or consider adding a shoutout on social media to thank your customers. This encourages your customers’ willingness to give you more positive reviews.
Casper produced very appealing, highly visible, and mobile-friendly email content with very eye-catchy CTA at the end.
Send customer satisfaction survey to collect testimonials
A satisfaction survey is another way to go deep into customer insights by asking them several questions. With the help of Survey Monkey, your survey email is automatically sent out to customers.
What to pay attention to is the quality of your email content. Instead of containing methodologically sound questions, your email content should be clear and specific. Also, you should not mind asking your customer a lot of in-depth questions. Here are a few suggestions:
- How was it before you used our product/service?
- What types of issues were you trying to solve with our product or service?
- Where did you start looking for solutions?
- What made up your mind to purchase our product/service?
Furthermore, do not forget to leave your customers room to share their general thoughts. This will benefit you to improve your long-term customer journey.
Benefit from apps to gather testimonials
A last but not least ideal way to get your Shopify testimonials less time-consumingly is to install Shopify apps. You could consider using these apps to optimize your time. To name but a few:
- Okendo
- Yotpo
- Shopify Product Reviews
- Loox
How to use testimonials to increase your conversion rate?
How to promote Shopify testimonials on multiple channels
In the e-commerce industry, your customers not only interact with you via your online store but also via social media channels.
Facebook and Instagram are two prominent examples. They are no doubt where customers read reviews and engage with your business the most.
Facebook page
According to Review Tracker [6], 1-3 people visit Facebook to look for recommendations before making up their minds. Facebook also confirmed that 2-3 people visit local business Facebook pages more than once a week.
Asking for reviews on Facebook comes under the form of Star Ratings or Recommendations. Whenever customers visit a Facebook business page, they are asked to leave a review. Whether it is positive or negative, bear in mind to respond to all these reviews and interact frequently with reviewers. This way is to effectively impress them with your business.
This is an excellent example of how a restaurant benefits from a 5-star rating to highlight their high-standard quality of product and service.
Social media ads
Another way to turn social media into ROI is to maximize the functionality of social media ads, like Facebook ads or Instagram ads. Yotpo figured out that people on social media are on their social media to hear PEOPLE, not BRANDS. Hence, this user-generated content strategy is certain to improve brand reliability. If your business got 4-5 star rates, do not forget to share those reviews on your social media ads.
Life BEAM succeeded in the Facebook ads campaign by including their previous testimonials in their ads. Their strategy truly tightens their interactions with future customers and enhances their brand loyalty.
Video Testimonials – Instagram TV
The future of marketing is Video Content. Undeniably, video has dominated social media channels, as an influential social strategy. Hubspot showed in their State of Inbound report that half of the marketers put video content on the top of their marketing tactic list. Another research from Hubspot also demonstrated that half of the consumers are looking for video from brands, than other forms of content.
That is why Instagram introduced IGTV, to help marketers to create popular content. What is special about it? IGTV links to Instagram accounts that allow marketers to enhance user engagement in just one platform. Plus, it has excellent and user-friendly functionality to upload a video for up to 1 hour.
Consider embedding your previous customer success story and customer reviews on IGTV. Just contact your loyal customers and kindly ask them to record a video to share their thoughts. And do not forget to give them a discount on your next purchase, as a reward for their contributions.
FitTransform did a great job of featuring customer testimonials on IGTV to give customers an honest view of their product. Their creative content illustrates practically how their product users benefit from their fitness program.
Where and how to display Shopify testimonials on your website?
After gathering testimonials, we will spotlight them on our website to make sure to maximize their benefits.
There are several places to include Shopify testimonials, including:
- Home page
- Product page
- Testimonial page
- In-depth case studies
Home page
People only spend a few seconds on the homepage to get an impression. Therefore, it’s necessary to have an eye-catching but informative homepage to introduce your brand. What’s a better way to attract new visitors than a compliment from your previous happy customer?
You would have different formatting options to showcase your testimonials. You can either create a list of customer photos and reviews as Signature Edits; or highlight your testimonials by adding a slider at the end of your homepage.
Product pages (for product-specification testimonials)
Including Shopify testimonials on product pages offer customers more detailed feedback than on the homepage. Testimonials, in this case, make customers feel more encouraged to make their purchase right after seeing positive reviews.
Let’s look at one clear example. Zappos provides a drop-down option with customer reviews and star-based ratings on every single product page.
A beautiful and user-generated content testimonial page undeniably showcases customer success stories. It is truly a killing marketing tactic. Instead of displaying reviews on every page, you could consider gathering and including them on a separate page for testimonials.
Another thing to bear in mind is that you need to get rid of the old-school layout, design, and structures of traditional testimonial pages by starting to create a custom-tailored approach.
Testimonial page
Look at Zendesk. It is a symbolic example of creating a super-functional Customer Stories page. Via a drop-down navigation menu, visitors can easily reach their testimonial page with a convincing forward “See what success with Zendesk looks like”.
When you scroll down, you can get access to several success stories from several top companies with Zendesk. With every customer, Zendesk uses video content to share their thoughts, leading to a CTA joining their program at the end of the page.
In-depth case studies
Case studies are another form of social proof. It points out customer pain points and how a company helps them to solve problems. This convincing way smoothly leads readers to the true stories of previous customers. Then step by step, it strengthens their trustworthiness via a true adventure.
In fact, case studies should be compelling and tightly related to what audiences are looking for. An ideal flow of a robust case study should begin with an impressive title, then presenting your client’s situation and pain points. From that, it should make a list of your solutions to that issue. And do not forget to remind your audiences by a strong call-to-action to click on your CTA to accomplish the same result. Also keep in mind that illustrating visual images, quotes, charts, bars, and graphs is an effective tool to persuade your readers.
HOURLY showed one visual-appealing case study from a successful customer – Izzy’s Brooklyn Bagels. This bagel shop’s manager Maria got frustrated with managing her employee’s working hours for a long time. But finally, she found Hourly. Hourly – a full-time integrated mobile time tracking helped Maria get rid of her management issues. Starting by presenting Izzy’s Bagels pain points, audiences are led to several beneficial functionalities that Hourly offers the shop. The case study ends by highlighting a quote from the customer, affirming once again the product’s advantages.
How to add Shopify testimonials with less time consumption?
Adding Shopify testimonials means you are editing your Shopify theme. There are two easiest ways to integrate Shopify testimonials into your business. You can choose either to use several Shopify apps or to outsource your works to a third party.
Leverage testimonials app
There are thousands of apps for you to look for in the Shopify app store. But I just picked up 2 apps that help you at least collect and display your testimonials. In addition, this integrates with your store without affecting your speed, design, or user interface.
Okendo
Okendo is a highly mobile-friendly marketing platform that combines several functionalities to showcase social proofs such as product ratings, product reviews, etc. It also offers an extra feature to keep track of customer analytics and insights. On top of it, it provides excellent review performance dashboards to keep track of customer reviews.
Yotpo
Yotpo provides a wide range of functionality to display your customer reviews and ratings or easily link those reviews to social accounts. Furthermore, it also leverages an official partnership with Google to improve brand awareness and increase traffic.
Outsource your works
It has never been easy for a merchant to handle both their online stores’ marketing and operation, as well as look after works requiring high-technological capabilities.
Therefore, there are thousands of high-technological outsourcing services out there for you to choose from. But before picking up your most trusted Shopify partner, learn about why outsourcing services have become a favorite amongst the e-commerce industry:
- Help you to optimize your work process in terms of time, thanks to a dedicated team of high-tech experts.
- Let you focus mainly on your testimonial-gathering expertise, such as designing a customer satisfaction survey or outlining compelling email content.
- Lend you a hand in sharing testimonials more quickly.
That is one part of choosing an outsourcing partner. Next step, you should consider how to pick up your most trusted one amongst thousands out there. Just a few tips here:
- Do your research on what services on testimonials that you want to implement.
- Do your research on the pricing. Of course, you always want to choose a reasonable one!
- Pay attention to the quality of customer service. You never want to experience a poor communication channel as well as a late delivery.
Final thought
No one can deny the persuasive power of testimonials. As an owner of a Shopify online store, you could consider adding testimonials to either your homepage, product page, or testimonial page. Those are the easiest places to display your testimonials effectively to build your brand trustworthiness. If you do have more time, conduct in-depth research. Also, do not forget to showcase it on your social media channels!
To put your plan into action at ease, decide either to use apps or outsource your work. If you are not high-tech savvy and don’t have time to search for your trusted partner, don’t look far! If you would like to integrate your Shopify testimonials at ease with high-quality customer service, seek help from an expert. As a Shopify Partner, we provide two tweak services, to either add a Shopify testimonials slider to your homepage or to add social proof to your website. Let’s check it out!
If you have more concerns, do not hesitate to contact us!
