The proverbial carrot dangling on a stick above an online marketer’s head is the ever-elusive conversion rate improvement.
We always need to raise our ratio; endlessly yearn to achieve the goal. And when we finally do, then we increase the goal and need to improve even more.
The secret weapon to improving conversions (as “secret” as an industry-wide best practice can be) is of course, to utilize landing pages. Landing pages work because they can focus on a specific buyer persona with a specific need, as opposed to a home page that caters to all traffic.
For example, let’s say your company sells photos and images like Dreamstime or 123RF. if your ad targets online bloggers who need new images for their blog post, you can create a landing page especially for that purpose. And, if a different ad targets teachers who need images for classroom presentations, you can create a landing page for them.
You will definitely increase your conversion rate simply by using landing pages. In fact, Ion Interactive reported that Dell saw conversion rate increases of over 300% when testing landing pages against website pages and that Avis saw a 603% ROI with dynamically targeted landing page optimization. (Source: http://www.ioninteractive.com/post-click-marketing-blog/2013/11/20/18-mind-blowing-landing-page-stats-infographic)
So, it comes as no surprise that a critical first step to raising conversion rate is to use landing pages. But once you use them and increase your ratio, and find you need to improve further, the second step is to use customer testimonials on your landing page.
Customer Testimonials Examples on Landing Pages: Great Tips for Higher Conversion Rate
Customer testimonials add credibility, reliability, and trustworthiness. Use them correctly on your landing pages and your conversion rate WILL keep on rising. Here are five great tips for customer testimonials that actual work:
- Get customer testimonials from your target audience
In the example we discussed above, if your landing page caters to bloggers, use testimonials from well-known bloggers. For example, writer Jeff Goins targets bloggers and uses these testimonials on his site:
A blogger visiting Jeff’s site and seeing that these big-name bloggers are happy with his work will most likely be happy to working with him as well.
- Use visual customer testimonials with photos or video
Another way to make customer testimonials more powerful is by making them more visual. In the case of Jeff Goins, he capitalized on both of our top 2 testimonials examples by getting bloggers within his target audience to give testimonials about his work and by adding photos, like this one:
Others add videos of customers (within their target audience) discussing their product. For example, Unbounce, when targeting online marketers uses a video from KISSmetrics’ Director of Customer Acquisition. Using the same online marketing tools that KISSmetrics uses is a huge selling point.
- Add social proof to your testimonials
If you are targeting SMEs and Seth Godin or KISSmetrics are not yet raving about your product, you can still get a lot of value from adding customer testimonials to your key landing pages. A great way to do this is through social proof. Again, you want to select testimonials from within your target audience and connect them to the reviewer’s social profile.
For example, KeyScouts, an online marketing agency that targets SMEs use a socially proven customer testimonial widget that links to authentic LinkedIn profiles.
Although most visitors don’t know the people behind the testimonials, the fact that they can verify their identity on LinkedIn makes a big difference, and serves as a fantastic testament to a credible and trustworthy company.
- Place customer testimonials properly on your landing page
Where testimonials are placed on your page has an important effect on how they are received. You want to place them prominently to benefit from the credibility and trustworthiness they project, while the key focus of your landing page remains your Call to Action (CTA) buttons.
A customer testimonial that overshadows a CTA may actually work against you.
Here are a couple of examples of landing pages that place their testimonials without demoting other important page elements.
- Know which testimonials are working best
If you’re using several testimonials on your page, surely you understand that some testimonials will most likely work better than others. If you could tell which testimonials perform better, you could further improve your conversion rate by removing the not-so-effective testimonials and highlighting the best ones. Problem is, that’s actually easier said than done. Luckily, there are tools that can help you figure this out. Whether you’re using Google Analytics or a dedicated testimonials platform such as Spectoos with built-in reporting capabilities — don’t give up measuring and optimizing your testimonials, it will pay off big time.
Customer Testimonials on Landing Pages: The Bottom Line?
Implement customer testimonials on your landing pages that are:
- Targeted to your specific audience.
- Visual with photos or video.
- Socially proven and linked to social profiles that can be easily verified.
- Placed properly on your landing page.
- Measured to know which testimonials are working best.
Once you do, you WILL see your conversion rate rising up. Have you tried using testimonials on your site? Any lessons learned? You are welcome to share your thoughts with us.
Originally published at Spectoos.
