Did You Know Those Testimonials Are Hurting Your Conversion Rates?

Could your landing page testimonials be what’s holding you back?

Does your landing page have trust issues? Maybe your offer sounds too good to be true (“eat this genetically-engineered mutant strawberry and never forget anything ever again!”) or you have a brand new e-commerce product that needs some customer reviews. Whatever the service or focus of your business, testimonials are a sure-fire way to build trust with your page visitors.

By showing reviews or comments made by other fellow customers, it gives a relatable aspect to your landing page that may be all it takes to get those conversions. And while testimonials are an extremely powerful asset to include on any landing page, there are quite a few other elements that will help build immediate trust and credibility to potential customers. We’ll “dive” into these shortly, so let’s get started!

No matter how great your product or service is, it can’t hurt to include to some glowing testimonials that attest to your greatness. With that being said, it’s important to pick the right ones and avoid those that are overly praising or sound fake (especially if they actually ARE fake).

For example, if you were making a landing page for a substance addiction recovery program, it would be wise to display testimonials that include why they liked your process over your competitors, and not just “they changed my life; best program ever!” If not, you could be losing credibility real quick, and have been better off not including landing page testimonials at all.

Don’t lose credibility like this gentleman.

When people read your testimonials, they are typically looking for further validation aside from the features and benefits you’ve hopefully already included on your landing page. If you want some further information on some guidelines created by the FTC about testimonials, look here.

If you’re a little short on amazing testimonials (let’s be honest, most aren’t that great) but you know of extremely satisfied customers or clients, don’t hesitate to reach out and ask for their help! Beforehand, make sure you compile a list of questions that will help point their testimonial in the right direction and make the biggest impact on your page. Some great questions could include:

1. What concerns did you have about my product/service, and what did we do to resolve that and gain your trust?
2. What has been your favorite aspect of working with us?
3. What would you specifically recommend about our product/service?

While there are endless possibilities to the kind of questions you can ask your clients, only you will know what’s best to build trust for your particular industry. When in doubt, browse your competitor’s websites and landing pages and see what’s working for them.

Once you’ve got some stellar testimonials picked out and ready to showcase, think about how you want to present them on your page.

Make them visually interesting and eye-catching to your visitors, either with a splash of color in the headline or a great portrait image to go along with the quote. When possible, try to give a face, name and company title to each and every quote you include with your testimonials.

The more you show who these people are and that they’re real, living humans, the easier you will build trust and credibility with those potential conversions. Here are some examples:

Notice the specifics and anti-vagueness.

Here’s an example of our own landing page.

However, testimonials aren’t the only thing that can dramatically boost street cred for your landing pages. In fact, some of the simplest changes might be the most overlooked!

One particular area here that is crucial is spelling and grammar. Yes, it sounds obvious, but it really can make or break a conversion, even if it’s not a huge deal. While one or two errors probably won’t have any negative effect on your pages, it’s when it becomes more noticeable that there’s a problem.

I know for me, if I ever catch more than a few spelling or grammatical errors, it immediately makes my spider sense tingle, and can completely change my feeling towards the page, and the business.

This is especially troublesome if you’re an e-commerce site or someone that relies on their site 100% for getting your business. The bottom line here is: triple check your landing page and have at least one (preferably more) person look at it too. Leaving some small mistakes in your copy isn’t worth risking the trust with a potential customer!

Keeping your landing page testimonials as clean and professional as possible will also help ensure trust is kept from the moment they arrive to the second they click on your call to action (CTA).

Don’t clutter your page with tiny blocks of text that can potentially confuse a visitor and keep it as simple as possible. Also never forget to include a privacy policy somewhere on your page (typically at the bottom). While most of your visitors won’t actually click on this link, just seeing it is typically enough to relieve any worries someone might have about sharing their email address.

[Tweet “Are you testimonials as good as you think they are? Probs not.”]

So time for a quick recap: Trust isn’t something that comes automatically with your landing page, but can be achieved by designing and writing your pages in a way that makes your visitor comfortable.

The more credible your page is, the higher of a chance you have for a visitor to send you their information in a return for something that will benefit them. Just saying that your product or service is great with listed benefits isn’t always enough; look for ways to prove it to your visitors by showing them how fellow customers felt about it.

Reviews or testimonials that offer superfluous vague praise aren’t going to get you anywhere; instead, use them to show specifics that may answer potential customers’ questions and concerns.

Keep your pages free of all spelling and grammatical errors, especially if you’re making your product/service available in a foreign country.

As always, these aren’t 100% guarantees that your page is going to go from Corey Brewer

No street cred for Corey Brewer (image source)

to LeBron James status:

Basket made. Game over. (image source)

But hey, it never hurts to try! Go out there and re-evaluate those struggling landing pages and give them a trust make-over! Let me know in the comments if you think I missed anything, or if there’s something else you do to build credibility on your pages!