How to add Shopify Testimonials – Tips & Tools 10X Conversions

Adding reviews and testimonials to your Shopify store is one of the best ways to increase your conversion rate. According to Fera, 93% of customers read reviews before buying a product online. 

A fundamental issue with eCommerce is how difficult it is to establish trust with your customer. A testimonial page is a brilliant way to showcase to your customers that your products are great and that other people love using them. 

Here at UserLoop, we believe that any successful eCommerce store should be powered by customer feedback. That’s why we’ve developed a great suite of tools for collecting and analyzing customer feedback and satisfaction. 

What are testimonials? Why should you add them to your Shopify store? How do you add testimonials to your Shopify page? How do you gather customer feedback for testimonials?

In this article, we’ll give you all the tools and best practices you’ll need to successfully implement a Shopify testimonials page. 

Why should you add Testimonials to your Shopify store?

Testimonials are a form of social proof – the idea that the behavior and opinions of others can influence buying decisions. Zendesk found that 90% of customers would be more likely to buy a product if they read positive reviews. 

Intuitively, that’s clear. The primary barrier to shopping online is the lack of trust and safety.

1 - This is our testimonials panel!

It’s easier to establish trust in an in-person retail setting – as customers can handle products and know exactly what price they’re paying. Shopping online is inherently riskier – and it’s therefore up to online stores to demonstrate that their business is trustworthy. 

Testimonial Success in Numbers:

• A report from the Office of Fair Trading found that of the people who don’t yet shop online 30% cited a lack of trust as the driving factor. 
  
• WikiJob found that a store page with testimonials earned 34% more conversions than one without. 
  
• In fact, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from friends & family – according to Brightlocal. 
  

That’s exactly why real testimonials and reviews are so powerful. Establishing trust will dramatically increase your conversions. 

What’s the difference between Testimonials and Reviews?

Both reviews and testimonials show genuine opinions from real customers about your product and services. So, what’s the difference between them? 

2 - Testimonials Example

3 - Reviews Example

• Reviews are usually shorter, more direct statements about your product. Testimonials can be longer, if needed. Usually, quotes from a full testimonial are selected and then published on a store page or in promotional material. 
  
• Reviews are collected by a third-party source – such as plugins like Product Reviews by Shopify - whereas testimonials are commonly gathered by sellers directly.
  
• Companies shouldn’t be selective with the reviews that are visible on their Shopify product pages. However, stores can absolutely tailor-pick what testimonials to show. 
  
• The importance of reviews usually lies with the review score or star rating. Testimonials are instead useful for the keyword and statements. 
  
• Reviews are almost always found on product pages. Testimonials can also be on product pages, but are just as commonly placed on homepages or on their own dedicated page.
  
• A store may only select a few testimonials, but will prefer hundreds – if not thousands – of reviews.
  

Where should you place Testimonials? 

A testimonial section or slider is most useful in a place where customers are likely to see them. That’s why plenty of brands place them on: 

• Homepages
  
• Product pages
  
• Checkout pages
  
• Email marketing assets
  

Some stores prefer to make a testimonial page. This is particularly useful if a customer is likely to research the entire brand before making a purchase (for instance, a store with only a few products or a beauty brand). 

In how much detail should testimonials be published? That largely depends on how much information is required to convert a customer. For fashion & clothing brands, short testimonials are fine – customers don’t need to know more information that “the product is great”, and “it arrived quickly with no hassle”. 

Tech products might need more detail as customers are looking for a better insight into the overall product experience. For services, high-value B2B brands or highly specialized products like medical devices, brands may prefer to publish detailed case studies. 

For instance, Squatty Potty has published an entire page full of medical case studies for their product.

How to Add Testimonials to your Shopify Store

Unlike reviews, testimonials don’t need any plugins or special tools to implement. As testimonials are selected manually, we recommend adding them as text boxes to your page yourself. 

Let’s look at different ways you can do it:

As Text Boxes with Profile Images

The simplest way of implementing testimonials is to add them as text boxes on your site. For example, Signature Edits have added a simple three-column panel to showcase their testimonials. 

We recommend adding the names of your customers and a profile image. This makes each testimonial seem far more personal. Whilst it’s great to use a real image here, many stores choose to stock images for their customers. It’s entirely up to you. 
How do you add testimonials as text boxes?

First, open the Shopify Dashboard and hit your Online Store under sales channels in the left-hand sidebar. Select Themes and look at the Current Theme section. Go ahead and hit Customize. 

This will open the theme editor. Here, we can edit any static elements on your Shopify store. 

Scroll down to find the section of your homepage you’d like to add the testimonials panel to. Hover over the boundary of the sections and hit “Add Section”. We’re going to select “Multicolumn”.

From here, you can edit the information in each column to add testimonials as you please. Here’s what we created in a few minutes: 

Add a testimonial page

The second way to do it is to create a dedicated testimonial page. How do you do this? 

From the Shopify dashboard, hit your Online Store under sales channels in the left-hand sidebar. Select Pages to see your website’s current pages. Click Add Page to start composing a new page. 

Here, we’re setting the page’s title and SEO information. For now, let’s call the page “Testimonials” and add a short meta description.

Then, hit save. 

From here, let’s add the page to the store navigation by clicking the popup:

Hit main menu to adjust your site’s navigation. 

Click add a new menu item and select Testimonials from the list of pages. 

Now, let’s return to the theme editor. Go back to the dashboard, and find Themes under your online store. Hit customize once again. 
At the top of the theme editor, you can select which page to view.


 

With the right page selected, we can go ahead and create a new section like normal. For a testimonial page, we recommend including a short introduction and showcasing testimonials in their own sections. 

Adding a Testimonial Slider
A great way to showcase multiple testimonials without taking too much space up on your homepage is to use a testimonial slider plugin. 

Tools like Reputon’s Testimonials app are custom-made widgets for showcasing testimonials. They allow you to add Sliders, video reviews, review star counts and more. 

An alternative to Reputon is Elfsight’s embedded Testimonials Slider Shopify app. While Reputon offers a free plan with up to four testimonials, Elfsight’s tool is entirely paid at $5.99 a month. 

How to collect customer feedback for Testimonials
Publishing testimonials is the easy part. What’s more difficult is gathering genuine opinions and feedback from customers. Consumers increasingly are getting savvy with spotting fake reviews and testimonials. To guarantee effectiveness, we recommend using genuine, honest reviews from real customers. 

But, how do you find the right customers to ask for testimonials?

UserLoop is a brilliant customer feedback tool that makes it easy to gather relevant feedback and reviews to turn into great testimonials sections. 

Our user feedback platform allows you to automate surveys to reach real customers. Where can UserLoop place surveys? 

• Checkout Surveys: This is great for getting initial, first-party opinions of the checkout experience and overall views on browsing your website. 
  
• Email Surveys: To get responses from customers after they’ve finished their customer journey with you, automated email surveys are a great option. UserLoop can target customers of products you’re looking for feedback on – and helps you build a customer data profile.
  
• Landing Page Surveys: To get some initial feedback from customers, a landing page survey may be useful. 
  

Where do these automated surveys fit into the testimonial processes? Customers that are particularly happy with your product or have a high net referral score (i.e. are likely to recommend you to their personal contacts) are likely to be great advocates for a testimonial. 

Sending out a satisfaction and referral survey via email or at the checkout page will help you find the right people to contact for a testimonial. UserLoop links customer responses to your Shopify data to view orders linked to survey responses. If you’re looking for a testimonial for a specific product, Shopify data integration can help you out here!
Gain valuable customer feedback with UserLoop

UserLoop is an eCommerce survey platform that collects your customers’ data & their feedback at every stage of the funnel. It’s a great tool for supercharging your marketing strategy and helps you develop a deep understanding of your customers.

We provide a Shopify API that allows you to integrate survey questions into your eCommerce store while providing personal branding options, insightful analytics, and easy-to-access data results. It’s the best way to gather customer feedback for great, insightful testimonials.