Testimonials or Reviews are what we call “social proof”.
They are a powerful element and every site should have them inside the site itself.
Besides the obvious cheese factor, no matter how you say “I’m the best, you should use me“, we trust what others say about you so much more. Having someone else say “Mike Mueller is the best, you should use him” is so very much more powerful.
I’m going to show you how to better show testimonials on your site (and more importantly where).
Let’s look at a few of the inherent problems first…
THE OUTSIDE REVIEW
Reviews on outside sites (think Yelp, Zillow, and even Google) are great. How many times have you searched the internet for something, found a few stores with the same thing, and decide to go with the one with the most reviews? I do it all the time. If you have more reviews than your competition, and your next potential client sees that, hopefully they’ll click to visit your site. Hopefully.
Reviews help potential clients pick the right path. Good reviews will drive more people to you. That’s plain and simple.
Should a past client decide to leave a review (I like the word ‘testimonial’) it’s very hard to control where that is going to be. If they are a regular Yelp user, they’ll probably use that. Might they do it on Google? Linkedin? Zillow? Facebook? Yes, yes, yes and yes! The fact is that while you might hope they’ll do it where you want it to happen, they’ll generally leave it where they feel most comfortable.
Problem #1: We have an issue with the review existing on a site that we don’t have control over. We don’t own it. If that site changes, goes out of business we’ve lost it.
Did you know that if you are not a regular Yelp’r that review you just left won’t likely show? Yelp has an algorithm that determines what shows and what doesn’t to the public. They are trying to reduce the outliers.
Problem #2: Outside Reviews don’t show up on our website.
Yes, there’s a plugin for that. Something that’ll pull in snippets of your latest reviews and put them on your sidebar. You can have one for Yelp, one for Google, one for Zillow, one for Real Satisfied and so on and so on. Which one(s) are you going to use? All of them? That’s a lot of widgets and plugins. That’s a lot of sidebar.
Speaking of sidebar, there’s also the issue that since most of your traffic is mobile, the sidebar isn’t visible (unless they scroll past the content).
But we know that we need reviews on our site. Done right, they’ll be seen just when the next client is ready to make that critical decision.
THE INSIDE REVIEW
What if you had a form on your site that allowed people to submit testimonials or reviews on your site? That seems like a good idea, right? Yes and no.
Problem #1: People are good for 1 shot. If they fill out your form you pretty much can guarantee that they’re not going to then go do the same at Yelp or Google. Those super fantastic, uber cheerleaders (outliers) aside, they are only good for one good review.
Problem #2: If it happens on your site, your not adding to the reviews you need on all of those outside places.
THE SOLUTION
There’s no perfect solution.
You want reviews and you need them both outside as well as inside your site.
Here’s what I do. I suggest you help people leave reviews where they want to leave them, when they do, you can cut and paste the review over to your site and have the best of both worlds. I do this on my “Add Your Testimonial” Page. There’s 5 different options; Yelp, Google, Linkedin, Facebook and of course my own form.
They can click on any one (you can do that right now) and they’ll be magically whisked to that site. When that happens, I’ll be notified that someone left a review.
I’ll then cut and paste that outside review and put it on my site. Plagiarism? I guess you could call it that but I’ve never heard anyone complain about this.
DISPLAYING YOUR REVIEWS
Like I mentioned before, we want the reviews to show up on our site. There’s a couple of ways to do that.
Option 1: The Single Page
You could create a single page for reviews and just add a new one to the page when you get them. I do that on my “Mike Is…” page.
One problem is that ALL of the reviews are there. If you are in real estate this would be both BUYER and SELLER reviews. This can be a source of confusion if a BUYER is looking at the testimonials and most all of them are coming from SELLERS – “Well, which one do you excel at? Am I going to be the focus of your business or not?” – right? The fix for this is to create a single page for Buyers Reviews and another for Seller Reviews
Another problem with this is that they (your site visitor) needs to migrate to that page to see those reviews. If you have a page with a call to action (like a SELLERs Page that contains your unique selling proposition) you don’t want them clicking away from that. You want to keep them on the page.
And yet another problem I see is that sidebar issue. When the site is in mobile mode, the sidebar is still there, it’s just at the bottom of the page under the content. Nobody is going to a review on your sidebar when it’s down there.
Option 2: The Custom Post Type
In a standard WordPress website you can create a Page or a Post. That’s it. Pages are meant for permanent items, while posts are meant for timely things. (this is a post).
I started creating the ability for site owners to create a 3rd item, what is called a Custom Post Type. It’s like a post. It can have categories, a title, subject matter, images and everything a normal post would but the magic part is I can then embed this CPT into Pages and Posts. I can do fancy things like showing them as a slideshow. If I apply a categories to them (like BUYERS or SELLERS) I can also just show a single category.
This means that you can have a page like your page describing everything you’ll do for a Seller, have just the seller reviews show up inside that page, and still have your call to action. Everything where they need it, all on one page, with the correct social proof right there when they need it most! We’ve just helped that potential client take that leap of faith.
You can still have that single page of reviews as well.
Want to see that in action?
Here’s a few of the latest people to leave me a review after my building their site. I’ve embedded the custom post type into this post.
Let's be real. Everybody likes a pretty website. It also needs to be easy to navigate, easy to use (for non-geeks like me) and attractive to Google. Yeah. SEO.
To my real estate pals, I wanted to give a BIG-High-Five and sincere thank you to Mike Mueller. Mike is the go-to-guy if you know your blog is sorta weak and needs a major upgrade and some modern day mojo. I've heard great things about Mike and his work for years. It's refreshing to work with someone who's the real deal. My only regret is that I bumbled along too long before calling on him. If you need some blog magic, an impressive Facebook Biz page or other online excellence, starting or amping-way-up, I recommend Mike.
Mike is great to work with. Our organization just went through a rebrand and Mike was able to process my non-web speak and make the changes we needed for our site, as well as suggest others to make it even better!
Mike is busy! And now I know why! What a great website developer, explained everything to me in detail, and was very patient with every question that I had for him. He must of thought he was talking to Fred Flintstone at some point in time when it came to website development and other related matters! He had some good ideas as well and we got on track with the direction I wanted to pursue. I look forward to continuing to work with him in the future and I would definitely recommend him!
This was not my first website build. I have other ones and have used other Designers. Mike offers creative ideas that solve problems, pre-design meetings that answered questions and the communication through the process was excellent. I would strongly recommend Mike and his team.
When I needed to upgrade and update my professional real estate website, I was referred to Mike at AreWeConnected.com. Mike met with me and listened to my overall website plan, wants and needs. After discussing what was possible, what might be possible and some of his own ideas, he worked off of a shared document to go one by one down a list and make the modifications needed. He was very responsive, often fixing or making adjustments often within moments of my request.
As the President & President Elect for the Arizona Chapter of the Women’s Council of REALTORS, we looked to Mike Mueller of AreWeConnected.com to help us create a website that would put us in a position to attract new members to our organization as well as give our present membership a place to go to get information they need. Our old website needed updating to create a new look and we worked with Mike to get the “look” and content to be what we thought would be esthetically pleasing as well as user friendly. Mike gave us some tips, listened to our “wish list” and together we created a wonderful website in a time frame needed. Changes were made with ease whenever requested and Mike has always been a great communicator whenever we had questions or concerns.
Mike was so easy to work with and answered all of my questions (no matter how silly they may have been)! He was able to create an awesome website for me and taught me how to maintain it! I am so glad I chose to have Mike create my site! 
I had a self-designed website for well over a decade, and I knew I needed upgrades in all areas.
I knew what I was looking for. After months of working in wordpress on my own and signing up then canceling a "boxed" website service, I came upon Mike. From the first conversation to my finished website, he is knowledgable, personable and has an up-to-date knowledge of his industry that I can rely on. I WILL recommend him to people who can benefit from his services.
If you're looking to work with someone who answers all your questions, responds to every email in record time, and actually does what he says he's going to do, then Mike Mueller is your guy. I'm an impatient girl from New Jersey and he has been fantastic to work with at every stage of this process and I would highly recommend him. Thanks Mike!
I found Mike through a Facebook group in which I belong. He has taken quite a burden off me. I started the process by trying to create my own website. I left IT about 15 years ago and never wanted to go back. Mike rescued me. With trying to be the best real estate sales person I had no time to be a IT person as well. He keeps it simple, yet the website he created checks all the boxes. I am sure that as I become more attuned to my client's needs it will be a much better website in the future with Mike's help. He always has time to answer questions and often will create short videos to help explain something. I look forward to a long relationship. Do yourself a favor, hire Mike. You will be many dollars ahead.
Mike did a great job designing my new website and I am very pleased with the results. It goes without saying that Mike is extremely knowledgeable in every aspect of this business and in addition he's a great guy to work with. He is very helpful and patient in answering every question or concern that I had and always in a very timely manner. Why would you pick someone else to design your website?
Mike came highly recommended as a creator of professional, lead generating web sites and that confidence was not misplaced. As a relative newbie to the different facets of web based marketing, social media, etc., I found his insights and suggestions to be invaluable. I would not hesitate to recommend him or to use him again on future projects.
Mike was a pleasure to work with. I had tried other developers previously but they did not implement my vision. He was thorough and took the time to provide me with what I was looking for. I am extremely happy with my site and look forward to continue to work with Mike. I would highly recommend him.
Mike did a great job setting up my web site while providing me with helpful coaching along the way in order to get the site up and running.
I am a REALTOR® by profession. My previous website looked beautiful; I loved it. However, as my business grew, I discovered its limitations. After serious research, it became clear WordPress provided the features and flexibility I needed most. After interviewing multiple real estate agents, I heard Mike's name mentioned several times. My husband, who handles all things social media, contacted Mr. Mueller. They hit it off superbly well. My husband can be quite exacting when it comes to design. I am so grateful for Mike's perseverance. The final website design and function surpassed our expectations. I highly recommend Mr. Mueller's services to anyone searching for website design.
Isn’t that cool?
CONCLUSION
Now know how to better use and place testimonials on your website now. Don’t just let reviews happen haphazardly and then do nothing about them. Used right, they can be your best sales tool.
The Custom Post Type thing is pretty cool and I would recommend that you incorporate that into your site. It’s a bit of coding for you to DIY but I build this feature into every one of my Managed Websites. 🙂
Photo by rawpixel.com, Jens Lelie, Dai KE and Matt Heaton on Unsplash
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and now,a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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