Leverage reviews on third-party review sites like Google, Yelp, and Facebook to create the ultimate testimonials page on your own website. Here's how.
Imagine, if you will, a website. It belongs to local burger joint Pete's Burger Barn. Pete wants your opinion about a few different web page options. He's got one page that includes a high-quality video of himself leading a tour of the Barn and introducing the smiling, visor-wearing high-schoolers who work the register.
Then Pete shows you a second website page. It's loaded with excerpts of customer reviews, which say things like:
- "My wife, the picky eater, always tells me that she wants to leave me for Pete because his burgers are that good." - Jim, Westview
- "I've been eating at Pete's once a week since I was a kid. I dream about the Western burger with extra pickles all week." - Kelly, Fairmount
- "Pete's is the best! Everything on the menu is delicious, the food is always fresh and the waitresses are super attentive. I love Pete's!" -Dave, East Hill
Imagine, too, that each customer's name has a link that leads you to the exact Yelp or Google review from which the quote was taken.
Now, Pete wants your opinion: Which website page is more likely to convince you to visit his restaurant?
Although the video may be more impressive-looking, it doesn't actually tell you what you want to know: what it's like to be a customer at Pete's. The second page, the one that's loaded with customer testimonials, however? That's really convincing.
That's the power of social proof.
What the Heck Is Social Proof?
Social proof is an important tool for business owners, but many don't know about it. Basically, social proof is a way of using your current customers to "sell" your business to potential new customers.
Humans are social creatures interested in what their peers are doing - partly because they're nosy, but also because they don't want to waste their time and money going to movies that are bad or eating at lousy restaurants.
People want to hear what others think about the businesses they've tried so they can decide whether they want to try them too.
That's why it's so helpful to read what your current customers have to say about you. By sorting through online reviews, you can find tons of great quotes from them, just like Pete did.
It's not just as simple as finding quotes, though. Remember the links on Pete's page of customer testimonials, that led the viewer back to the original review? It may seem simple, but those links are the whole reason those quotes will be effective.
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Pete seems like a nice guy. But you've never eaten at his Burger Barn, so you don't trust him yet. If those quotes didn't link back to those real reviews, you would probably wonder whether they were real. After all, without proof, you would have no way of knowing if Pete had made them all up.
But Pete's not that kind of guy! He really and truly did earn those rave reviews. And you can tell, because he provided links that lead back to Jim's Yelp review, Kelly's Facebook review and Dave's Google review. You can confirm that those are real people who really live in the area and don't work for Pete, just by looking at their profiles on those review sites.
Showing the (Social) Proof
Before getting into making social proof work for you, let's back up a bit. You can't reap the benefits that come from getting lots of positive online reviews until you actually get the reviews.
Great - all you have to do is remember to ask each and every one of your customers to write you online reviews. Oh, and you should carve out an extra 10 hours a week to scour your online review sites, find great quotes about you, and carefully post each individual review and hyperlink on your website.
Sorry, what? You have a family, friends, a goldfish to feed and a business to run?
It's crazy time-consuming to track down individual reviews and then manually find and post customer testimonials on your website in a way that's visually pleasing.
Luckily, there's an easy way for you to automate both parts of the process.
The Easier Way
Getting more positive online reviews on a consistent basis can be a game-changer for your business, which is exactly why we built ReputationStacker.
All you have to do is input an email address or phone number for your customers into the system. Then ReputationStacker reaches out to your customers with a one-question survey, identifying the satisfied ones and directing them to the review sites of your choice.
We also designed ReputationStacker to automate the way you put your best reviews on your website. This service is actually included as part of the automated tools that come with ReputationStacker's Standard, Plus and Premium plans.
The system automatically tracks all of your reviews, and with a one-time copy-and-paste of a short snippet of code on your website, all of your best reviews will automatically appear on your site and update every time a new one comes in.
And just like that, with a few clicks you've built the ultimate testimonials page for your website.
Testify!
Your current customers can be one of your most effective marketing tools if you use their real reviews as testimonials on your website.
To make it work for you, you have to both a) get a steady stream of positive reviews and b) post the best reviews on your website, with links leading back to the originals.
ReputationStacker makes both processes easy by automating the way you get customers to write reviews and by automatically updating your site with the best ones.
