User testimonials are a powerful form of social proof that will help to foster trust in your business by demonstrating the value of your service or product, and in turn improve conversion rates and generate more leads. They offer a genuine, independent indication of the quality of your service.
To have the most impact, a good testimonial should be real, relevant to your user, and in the right place. Today I’m looking at how to make best use of the SaaS user testimonials on your website in order to provide the most value to your website visitors.
1) Keep it Real
It goes without saying that your user testimonials should be honest - real quotes from real customers. It shows that you've got users who are ready and willing to say great things about your service, rather than needing to falsify testimony from imaginary customers.
But once you've got your quote, it's very easy to undermine its efficacy with some poor choices about how you share it on your website. Using stock photos to represent your user will make the testimonial look fake and undermine any trust you've built up in your business - likewise, just using first names, or including very vague details about the user will detract from its credibility.
The most trustworthy written testimonials will include a short quote from the user, along with a real photo of them, their full name, job role and company. This information will serve to boost the credibility of your testimonials and make them more valuable to your organisation.
2) Remember Your Audience
Testimonials are most effective when a visitor can empathise with the person who provided it. Testimonials from people dissimilar to the visitor can have a negative impact by implying that your service is only relevant to the type of person featured in the testimonial - not the visitor.
Therefore it is vital to understand your buyer personas. These semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer - based on interviews and research you've done with your real customers - will help you ensure that the testimonials on your website are relevant to the visitors who are the best fit for your service, and therefore most likely to convert into leads.
The closer you can align your testimonials with your ideal users, the better. Not only will it affirm the value of your offer, it will also emphasise that the offer is relevant to them. It helps visitors to think: 'Hey, that person has the same role/interests as me. If this free trial/eBook has helped them, it should be helpful for me too.'
3) Placement is Key
"Avoid bundling your social proof into a separate testimonials page: instead, incorporate it into crucial areas of your sales funnel."
5 Essential Types of Social Proof (and the Psychology Behind Them)
Use your testimonials to provide reassurance to your website visitors at the point they need it most: when they are faced with a call to action (CTA). This is the moment where you are directly appealing to the visitor and asking them to take a specific course of action in return for a specified reward. Most often this will be filling out a form - and parting with their precious contact details - in exchange for a downloadable content offer.
A well-placed testimonial alongside your CTA, or positioned unobtrusively on your landing page, will serve to remind visitors of the value of your service and how it can benefit them, encouraging them to complete the form and convert into a lead, rather than hit the back button.
