12 min read
You have probably purchased a product or used a service by what your friends and family say about it. A significant percentage of people will trust word of mouth as a source of information. Statistically, word of mouth as a source of marketing in business is widespread. You may have met or used this form of marketing through recommendations about a product or service from family and friends, promotions on social influencers’ content, star ratings, customer reviews, and social media platform recommendations.
A typical example of word of mouth marketing is customer reviews. Since people tend to be persuaded by others’ views, customer reviews bear testimony of what one can expect while using your services or products. These customer reviews and other general word-of-mouth testimonies do not just appear on websites only. You can encounter customer reviews, ratings, and influencer promotions on television, newspapers, billboards ads, product packaging, etc.
The general term used to describe the above marketing in business is testimonials. Therefore, a testimonial is a sales pitch from ordinary citizens consisting of a spoken or written statement commending the quality of a product or service. For a website owner, testimonials are great for your site because it is your chance to show potential customers that they can trust your services not only through your word, but the words of other customers like them. Let us see the reason why you should use testimonials.
Benefits of using testimonials
- Social Proof: This is a powerful tool in marketing that you use every day to make decisions. Social proof helps people move from questioning whether your products are good enough to be persuaded that the advert will work for them. It is a catalyst on a chain of reactions that helps potential visitors decide whether to sign up for newsletters or buy a product.
- Conversions: Testimonials help reassure people that they can trust what you are sharing, and it will work for them too. This translates into more email signups, more clicks on your call to action button, and of course, more buyers and subscribers.
- Build trust: Happy customers will always pitch a positive review of your products if they have the opportunity. Some even go ahead to recommend your services to their circle of friends personally. These great reviews attract more visitors to your website.
- Source of product information: Testimonials are a great product information source, especially when reviews contain ‘how to use’ procedure. Some customers go ahead and explain how they use your products for excellent results and any tips or tricks around it. For new members who need additional information, this is valuable data at first glance that will win them over.
- Increase credibility: By building trust with your customers and writing a testimonial on your website, you tell potential customers that your website is credible, and your services are trustworthy. It means you are willing to listen and make changes whenever there are suggestions on the same. A credible business will get more visibility because you gain your clients’ trust with their money and time.
- Great sales-pitch: Some testimonials will explain the benefits of using your products and services. With a positive sales-pitch, other potential customers will get the necessary confidence that your work is the right choice.
The testimonial plugin wordpress uses comes in different forms; they can be images, videos, or quotes. With the benefits of testimonials in mind, displaying them in a presentable way is a process that requires some technical help. Hiding your testimonials on a separate page does not help achieve their purpose. It would help if you let them shine and speak for themselves.
WordPress testimonial plugins come in handy in this case by taking over the task of arranging your testimonials attractively and reducing the workload on your hands. These plugins simplify the process of adding social proof to your site once you have a collection.
There are several testimonial plugin WordPress free to use options on the web right now with different features. It is essential to choose which plugin is compatible with your site and fulfill your specific needs. In the same way, it is vital to understand what features to look out for to get the best plugins.
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Features to look for in a testimonial plugin
- Consider the kind of information the plugin allows you to collect. Can you add photos, names, or videos? Depending on your interest, the best free testimonial plugin WordPress offers should enable you to gather all the information you require.
- Find out if the WordPress plugin allows you to add titles to testimonials.
- Does the plugin provide a chance to add a star rating? This is perfect for customer reviews.
- Determine if the plugin allows you to customize your displays. Can you change layouts, colors, fonts, among others?
- Check if the plugins allow you to add additional information such as name tags and job functions.
- Look for testimonials with features that enable you to control spam testimonials. Do they allow you to preview a testimonial first before it is displayed? Or can you avoid spamming your email box with testimonials that do not present any significant point of view?
- Look out for plugins that give you pre-designed templates.
With the knowledge of which features you look out for in a testimonial plugin, you can turn to WordPress Plugins to sieve through a vast collection of choices. These WordPress plugins simplify the process of displaying customer testimonials on your website.
There are a variety of free and premium plugins you can choose from. As much as free plugins do not offer the vast array of features that premium plugins have, they still provide admirable features and customization capabilities that you need to have a beautiful display of testimonials. We have picked several free and premium WordPress plugins such as below.
Testimonials Widget
Testimonials Widget is both a free and premium plugin that packs a load of features for adding testimonials in WordPress. This popular plugin lets you display testimonials using widgets anywhere on your website. It is preferred by technical users who know their way around the shortcodes. Although it does not come with any built-in themes, you can customize your testimonials’ appearance using CSS if you know how to code.
Testimonials widget allows you different options of displaying your testimonials. For instance, you can use video slideshows, single-view pages, or carousel sliders. The plugin also lets you filter testimonials by post identifications, tags, or categories. You get to add an actual testimonial through a custom post type and include pictures, company, name of the reviewer, titles, and other customizable data.
If you are looking for a plugin that allows you to display testimonials on a sidebar, the Testimonials Widget is a great choice. The shortcodes are there to guide you into inserting your testimonials into posts and pages. You can show or hide the authors’ names, email, and image as you like. The plugin also enables you to allow comments on testimonials, enable scrolling on hover, and set speed rotations on testimonials.
The free version gives you all these features, but if you are looking for a more significant experience and more offers, you can upgrade to the premium options. The premium packages start at an annual $29.99 for a single site license. This price range goes up, and you increase the number of supported sites up to $239.99 for unlimited sites. The premium packages unlock other features like access to five-star ratings, control spam testimonials, and access to the testimonial submission form, RSS feeds, caching, read more links, and more. For example:
(Image Credit: WinningWP)
Testimonial Slider
Testimonials slider is a freemium easy-to-use plugin with numerous features that help you create beautiful testimonial displays. It is the best free testimonial slider plugin WordPress addition, which you can upgrade to a premium version for more features.
Testimonial sliders offer different display options such as slider, rotator, cards, list, grid, and carousel. The plugin lets you create a testimonial and manipulate the position you want to display by simply dragging and dropping. Also, you can easily adjust the layout style using your custom CSS. For instance:
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(Image Credit: WinningWP)
This WordPress plugin’s other features include choosing navigation buttons, choosing background color and text, setting slide speeds, enabling paginations, and adding testimonial categories. Testimonial Slider also lets you display the authors’ photos, links to their social media profiles, a logo of their company, and star ratings.
The premium version includes additional features such as front-end submission forms, display of testimonials in a list view, and an unlimited number of testimonials. You also get 24/7 customer support from their technical support team to help you resolve any arising issues. The pricing is much cheaper than the other premium plugins in this list, making it the best free testimonial slider plugin WordPress offers.
Thrive Ovation
Thrive ovation is a popular WordPress plugin that lets you collect testimonials from your customers and automatically displays them on your website after approvals. Once you have testimonials from your customers, you can easily input them into your website by adding the individual’s details and comments. You can also include social media URLs to pull testimonials from these platforms automatically.
(Image Credit: Thrive Themes)
Thrive Ovation themes includes built-in testimonial collections forms that label responses for review as they come in. This gives you a chance to go through them and decide if you can have them in your pool of testimonials. Another helpful theme in this plugin is the tags. This allows you to label your testimonials according to different parts of your site.
For instance, if you have testimonials that refer to product support, documentation, or testimonials that refer to different products under your catalog, you can easily tag your testimonial and add them to the correct pages. You can add tags by topic or tags by product, whichever suits your website.
Other features included in the Thrive Ovation plugin are subcategories that organize testimonials and make it easy for you to sort through them. These categories are:
- Approved
- Awaiting Approval
- Awaiting Review
- Rejected
- Untagged
- No Picture
This plugin comes with various templates that you can pick from to display testimonials on your website. It also allows you to customize these templates by color, size, and display options to suit your preferences. Thrive Ovation can give you a constant flow of fresh and current testimonials, impacting your conversion rates positively. You can also turn WordPress comments into testimonials in just a single click; all the vital information such as the authors’ names and images will be captured.
The only challenge with Thrive Ovation is that there is no free option. But when you look at the powerful features, it makes the pricing sensible. There are different payment options depending on the number of sites starting with $39 for a single site license to $97 for a 15-site license.
Strong Testimonials
Strong Testimonials is a WordPress free and premium plugin that enjoys significant popularity with many downloads. It has a selection of templates you can choose from to display your testimonials. This plugin is flexible so that although it is easy to use for beginners and non-technical users, it also offers some advanced functionality for users looking to explore shortcodes. The Strong Testimonials Pro version includes professional templates, custom submission form fields, schema markup, among other powerful features. Here is an example of one template from a user:
(Image Credit: Philip Gledhill)
Strong Testimonials come with multiple display options, including slider, grid layout, single-column layout, and masonry. You can create a new testimonial as easy as creating a new post and add details like name, company, email addresses, images, and website. Other features include the following:
- You can decide how many testimonials you want to display and order of appearance.
- There is an option for a dark versus light theme.
- You can create categories and group testimonials by product or service tags.
- The plugin allows you to turn on the comments feature for testimonials.
- It allows star ratings.
- You can include images and videos.
- Advanced Views to customize testimonials displayed on your site.
- Custom fields to tailor testimonials to suit your website.
- Visitors can submit testimonials from the front-end.
- The Pro version allows you to display customer reviews from external platforms such as Facebook, yelp, Google, etc.
Strong Testimonials is the best free testimonial plugin WordPress users enjoy using. The premium version has four annual payment plans, namely basic, plus, business and agency. The basic plan is $49 for a single site, the plus plan is $79 for three sites, $99 for 25 sites in the business plan, and for the agency plan, you pay $129 for unlimited sites. Each plan provides different additional features enhanced emails, spam control, external platform importers, and filters.
One of the reasons this is a plugin WordPress users love is its excellent 247 customer support. Their best star ratings stem from customer support experiences.
Testimonial Rotator
Testimonial Rotators is a free and simple plugin that lets you display customer reviews in beautiful transitioning effects. It is a perfect WooCommerce testimonials plugin because you get to pick which testimonials to rotate and show star ratings to increase your click-through rates. This plugin is one of the best free testimonial plugins WordPress has to offer, with over 60,000 active installations.
Once you create testimonials, you can assign them to rotators to display on the front end of your website. The plugin allows you to display testimonials via shortcodes or widgets; thus, you can have them anywhere on your pages and posts. As one of the best testimonial slider plugins WordPress boasts, a testimonial rotator enables you to choose transition effects and speeds at which the slides will move.
(Image Credit: WordPress)
You can also set image size for the authors of the testimonials, show or hide the image, authors titles or names, and set time limits to display the testimonials. The plugin provides you with several themes to choose from, giving you an upper hand on how these testimonials will look on your website.
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Testimonial Rotators do not collect testimonials, but with Gravity Forms, you can do this easily. It also doesn’t offer other display options like lists and grids. But if you are looking for a WooCommerce testimonials plugin with sliders display, this is a great option. The image below shows what Gravity Forms looks like, it is mobile friendly too:
(Image Credit: WinningWP)
The choice of a testimonial plugin for your website lies with you because you know your needs, goals, and the general outlook of your site. Sometimes, you may consider a budget, but this should not be a key factor. The testimonial plugin WordPress, free or premium, your site uses will work well if you actively collect customer reviews and testimonials.
You can agree that testimonial is significant to grow your website and increase those conversion rates. If you are looking for a simple free-to-use plugin, then Strong Testimonials will serve you well. There are other testimonial plugin WordPress free to use options on this list that are also not difficult to use. You can always try out more than one free plugin to see which ones work best for you.
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If you have a budget and are looking for high functioning testimonial plugins, then Thrive Ovation is a winner in this list. Its price tag is your social proof key to high conversion rates with its ability to transform comments into testimonials and transport them from social media. Diib offers integration with both your WordPress and Facebook accounts, giving you the most up-to-date metrics and statistics for the best campaigns possible. Here are some of the features of our user dashboard we’re sure to love:
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FAQ’s
Add a testimonial by going to Testimonials then click Add New Page in the WordPress Admin area. Next, add the person’s name in the title box and that person’s testimonial in the box labeled post editor. Then, scroll to the Testimonial Options section.
1. Create a view and then select the Display mode.
2. Add the view using its shortcode or the Strong Testimonials widget.
1. Log into your WordPress Dashboard.
2. Go to Plugins and click Add New.
3. Search Testimonial Rotator in the search bar.
4. Install Testimonial Rotator and then when installation is complete click Activate.
A testimonial is a written declaration certifying to a person’s character, conduct, or qualifications, or to the value, excellence of a thing. It can also be a letter or written statement of recommendation. something given or done as an expression of esteem, admiration, or gratitude.
When trying to figure out how long a website testimonial should be remember that shorter is better. You want to get your point across in no more than a few paragraphs or 200 words. It is better if people read your testimonial rather than skim through.
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