Finding new leads is one of the biggest challenges faced by eCommerce businesses. Several big brands have enormous credibility in the market, and if that was not enough, the fake ones have taught people the hard way to not trust just everyone other than the brands with at least some reputation. The challenge is big, and so has to be your solution. Everything, right from your website to your marketing strategy, must involve points that allow your customers to trust you.

Talking of marketing tactics, using customer testimonials can help you drive more leads and increase your conversion rate. According to AC Nielson Poll, 88% of people make their buying decision based on customer testimonials. 66% of people valued the information available on social media by customers to develop trust in a brand. To increase conversion on your website, it is a must to work on getting testimonials. And for that, you need tools that can help you collect testimonials easily.

Why are Testimonials important for business?

Testimonials can help you grow your business in several ways:

1. It helps improve business reputation

It is of high importance that your customers believe in your products. And just putting a catchy line on your ads or banners is not going to help you achieve that. Meanwhile, reassurances that you give, such as 100% cash back or 99.9% proven results can make people believe in your products and services.

Using testimonials from the current customer base can help you gain their trust. It works as social proof that your business is about providing value to the customers, and people have loved what you are doing for them. People would rely on the words of your customers. And it has to be from regular people like them and not the paid testimonials of the influencers.

2. Connecting with customers on an emotional level

Besides having marketing benefits, testimonials also create an emotional connection with your audience. Emotions play an important role when it comes to making buying decisions. Studies done on the human brain suggest that people with damages to the parts of the brain find no difficulty while responding to emotions or generating emotions. Logically, they might know what they want, but that would not drive them to come to a decision.

Businesses thus rely on the craft of marketing messages that drive emotions such as happiness, anger, concern, surprise, sadness, and more. In the same way, testimonials excite your audience and would help them connect to your business emotionally.

3. Storytelling

Just like any other way of generating emotions, storytelling too can help you gain an emotional connection with your customers. We are attracted to things that help us gain insights into people’s experiences, and thus, testimonials give them that. A story that ends with a happy customer can help your customers to trust your brand and look out for the right solutions for their problems.

4. Build a loyal customer base

As a consumer yourself, you might have purchased and used products or services that might have awed you beyond your expectations. You are probably so happy with the product that you might have written a testimonial yourself or a mail appreciating their product or services. And they might have used it as a marketing tool. This makes you feel valued, and it is what you want your customers to feel too.

This kind of engagement and appreciation helps you create a loyal customer base. Loyal customers based would repeatedly come to you for solutions and new products available on your site.

5. Connecting through Natural Language

Content on your site is very professionally crafted, and thus, not many people can connect with it well. The complicated jargon that is not easily comprehended can make you lose several potential leads. It was the first reason that big brands today are making communication as direct as possible and as simple as possible.

Your every attempt should be to use everyday language to inform, educating, or pitching a product or service. Testimonials can give that personal touch to your website by breaking away from the formality presented by all other content.

6. Improve and Grow

Not every review you get from your users would be positive. And you must not dread negative reviews or ignore them or suppress them. Use them to bring improvement in your services and turn it into an advantage.

Regularly replying to positive and negative reviews can help you develop a strong connection with your users. While replying, you must follow a few things such as always using “I” instead of words that represent the company or the customer executive team, sign off by using a person’s name rather than “from the customer care team. These few things make your customers feel someone individually is attending to their problems.

7. Shareability

Social media is an amazing tool to garner publicity for your brand. Social media is one of the best ways to find new leads and turn them into loyal customers. You can make your sales pitch specifically for social media, testimonials and make it as shareable as possible for people to share it and bring more people to your site.

8. Influencer Reviews

Third-party analysts are online trusted-authorities. Their opinion matters to people, and it is thus important for you to impress them with your products and services. Your brand must impress them to the extent that they recommend your product to people that look up to them.

These influencers have a large online following; getting third party analysts to review your products or services can help you gain a lot of publicity and higher conversion rates.

9. Purchase Decision

Customer testimonials improve sales in B2B and B2C enterprises. With the increasing popularity of eCommerce businesses, researchers have shown that 95% of online shoppers read reviews before making any purchase decision, especially for products and services that are a bit on the higher side of their budget. Spiegel Research Center shares an interesting study where reviews were found to increase 190% more sales for low priced products and 380% more sales for higher-priced products.

10. Higher CTR

BrightLocal conducted a study that revealed that enterprises with excellent reviews tend to attract more leads. The study was done over 6,283 consumers to find out how reviews can affect clicks through rates. They found out that listings with 5-star ratings attracted higher clicks than 4 or 3 star ratings. On the other hand, low and negative reviews can tarnish your online reputation and potentially impact your lead generation.

Also Read: How To Increase Click Through Rate? [10x Your CTR]

11. Review gains your trust

Businesses have widely used case studies as a content marketing tool. Yet, in the 2018 B2B Buyer Disconnect report by TrustRadius, customer reviews have been rated more authentic and unbiased from customers’ information sources. They are informative, trustworthy, and are real experiences of people. Testimonials help capture the pros and cons of the product and validate or dispel a vendor’s claims.

12. Advantages of Video Testimonials

Video testimonials rank higher than written testimonials. They are easy to consume, entertaining, and help boost customer trust, as they can actually see the person who is reviewing products and services.

When people video themselves talking about the products and services, they become your business’s face, and there would be multiple people testifying the results of your products and services. It can drive about 82% more internet traffic to your site.

Useful Read: Powerful Video Marketing Strategy To Boost Your Sales

13. Improved Search Rankings

Higher ratings can attract a higher number of clicks. For that to happen, you first have to show up on the search engines. When visitors search for a particular product or service online, your business must appear in the top results.

Technically, testimonials can help you in ranking up on search engines. You need to collect testimonials from your clients and keep the testimonials updated. Most businesses fail to update testimonials because asking customers for a testimonial seems awkward to them. But to have the upper hand in the competition, you have to ask for testimonials frequently and update them.

Since it is not easily implementable, you can choose to have an advanced testimonial Magento 2 extension by Solwin to enable users to submit reviews and allow admin to showcase those reviews on a separate page to increase store credibility. It allows your current customers to leave a review for your product and services with images, videos, and more. You can use this to make attractive marketing content for your brand and set testimonial links in the top and bottom menu. The tool is compatible with CE 2.1.x – 2.2.x – 2.3.x – 2.4.x | EE 2.1.x – 2.2.x – 2.3.x

Wrapping Up

In hopes you find our blog helpful, we would conclude by saying customers trust people that are your active customer base. Ask for reviews from your customers with product images, personal details such as names, company, designation, and more. Use trust-worthy tools to allow consumers to leave a review on your site.