Both customer reviews and testimonials are powerful social proof as 72% of consumers say positive testimonials and reviews increase their trust in a business. While customer reviews are hard to control as they are from customers, testimonials are different; you have the privilege to design and display them at your will to make the best use of them.
Thus, in this article, we'll delve into the definition and the goals of testimonials and how to design them to elevate the credibility of your Shopify store to new heights.
What is testimonial?
First thing first, before you design a testimonial section, you must understand the testimonial definition.
Testimonials are statements or reviews provided by individuals or groups about their personal experiences with a product, service, or business.
Testimonials vs. Customer Reviews 
Although the testimonials definition is quite similar to the definition of customer reviews, they aren’t the same thing.
Testimonials are usually from fans or highly satisfied customers and are collected and displayed by the website owners. Thus, testimonials are always positive, and you have absolute control over them.
Customer reviews are usually submitted by website users to share their experiences or how they feel about your product or service. As the feelings can be good or bad, the reviews can also be positive or negative, and you have no control over them.
Therefore, testimonials should appear before customer reviews come into view to serve as the first endorsement for new customers.
What is the goal of a testimonial?
As you’ve learned about testimonials definition, now you need to know the goals of a testimonial to design it correctly to their purposes.
Build trust with potential customers
Testimonials serve as a form of social proof that can help build trust and credibility among potential customers who may be hesitant to make a purchase or engage with your business for the first time by offering a glimpse into the positive experience of real customers.
When seeing many customers satisfied with the service or products of your business, new customers will be convinced to believe in your store and enticed to browse more on your store, as 88% of consumers trust online testimonials and reviews as much as recommendations from friends or family.
Increase conversion rate
Testimonials can provide that extra push needed to convert visitors into customers. When potential customers see positive feedback from others who have used your offerings, they are more likely to take action, such as purchasing, signing up for a service, or contacting your business.
How great is the impact of testimonials on one business's conversion rate and revenue? These significant statistics can demonstrate this:
- 77% of customers say testimonials have played a part in convincing them to buy their product or service.
- 2 out of 3 people say they’d be more likely to make a purchase after watching a testimonial video demonstrating how a business, product, or service had helped someone like them.
- Testimonials can increase conversions on sales pages by 34%
Reduce marketing costs
Although this isn’t the primary goal of testimonials, you can skip this noteworthy benefit.
Testimonials can serve as a free promotion because customers can share their testimonials through social media or websites, which can reach a wider audience without paying extra.
Besides, testimonials can improve traffic and SEO for your website as Google aims to reward transparent and reliable websites and uses user-generated content as a tool to achieve that. Thus, reviews and testimonials are some of the most consistent channels marketers can use to improve these signals.
Statistics also show that testimonials can increase traffic to one website, as websites using testimonials saw a 45% increase in traffic compared to those who didn’t.
Best testimonial design templates to engage customers and build trust
1. Testimonial Carousel
The interactive element is always the best tool to engage visitors to your site, thus, adding an interactive element to testimonials will make it more standing out and convincing.
The easiest way to create an interactive testimonial template is using a carousel (or slider). Some prominent examples for this website testimonial design are great Shopify stores like SKIMS or Beefcake Swimwear.
What is in this testimonial template?
To design this template, you need at least 5 testimonials so that your slide won’t be too short and repeated. Besides, this testimonial design includes these elements:
- Slider element: As this template is a carousel, a slider element is a must-have for this template. This slider often comes along with navigation in the form of dots or arrows to imply that there’s still more content to explore and captivate customers to slide to the end.
Learn more about Interactive Carousel ⇒
Which website is this testimonial design best for?
- People-focused testimonials: People-focused testimonials often highlight the diverse range of customers or clients you serve. A carousel allows you to feature testimonials from various demographics, industries, or use cases, providing a comprehensive view of your business's positive impact
- Website with only a few key testimonials: When having a limited number of testimonials, instead of showing them all at once, a carousel enables you to rotate through them, adding a little surprise, keeping the content fresh and preventing it from becoming stale for returning visitors.
How to add this testimonial template to Shopify?
If you don’t know how to add testimonials to your Shopify store, you can check your theme first, as many Shopify themes have a predefined testimonial section. Take Minimog as an example, it has a testimonial section that displays testimonials in a slider, so you can create this section to design a testimonial carousel for your website with one click.
Moreover, Minimog also has 6 different layouts for this section, so you can choose the most suitable layout for this testimonial design to match your brand design.
If your theme doesn’t have this section, you can head to the Shopify App Store and search "Testimonial" for the best app to add testimonials to your Shopify store. Currently, the top 3 Shopify testimonials apps are Customer Testimonials Showcase (4.8/5 stars - 401 reviews), Reputon Testimonials Slider (4.7/5 stars - 179 reviews), Testimonials Master (5.0/5 stars - 93 reviews) and they all have the feature to create a testimonial carousel.
2. Testimonials in Masonry Grid
Slider elements are popular but grid layouts are useful for placing a higher amount of testimonials on a single page. If you’re fed up with the boring fixed grid in your website, masonry grid layout will spice up your testimonial section.
Masonry is a grid layout based on columns, but unlike other fixed grid layouts, the images do not have fixed height rows. You can refer to Phocas’ page of customer testimonials to see how testimonials in Masonry grid will look like on one website.
Source: wpmudev
The modern masonry layout is combined with the great use of their brand color throughout, and the strategic use of bolded text to call out important snippets from each testimonial. As a result, this template can display numerous testimonials at the same time and convey the most important message about the quality of their products without confusing customers with a wall of text.
What is in this testimonial template?
Adjustable rows & columns: As masonry layout is based on rows with flexible height, we need to have rows and columns with adjustable height and width to design these layouts.
Which website is this template best for?
This layout is suitable for websites with a large number of testimonials and reviews as it can maximize space on the page and use images and other elements of different shapes and proportions. Thus, this layout can display as many as testimonials above the fold for your customers.
How to add this testimonial template to Shopify?
This testimonial template can be added with custom code, you can read the instruction here. However, this method is for developers and people with IT knowledge so if you aren't tech-savvy, you need to use Shopify testimonials apps to create this template.
Here are some Shopify testimonials apps on Shopify app store that have masonry layout for testimonials:
- Testimonials Master (5.0/5 stars - 93 reviews): This app allows you to display testimonials in masonry layout. Besides, you can add star rating and a small image to each testimonial card to make it more appealing. However, masonry layout is only available for paid plans..
- Kooee Reviews (5.0/5 stars - 7 reviews): This app also has a masonry grid layout for testimonials which can handle a mix of image and text reviews. Moreover, the masonry layout of this app is completely free.
- Louvor ‑ Customer Testimonials (0 review): Louvor makes it easy to showcase Shopify testimonials with a masonry-style wall with no fee.
3. Before/After Product Testimonials
This testimonial template aims to show the significant effectiveness of your product/service to demystify your product to discerning customers, convince them to believe in your product, and attract them to purchase.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so the most effective way to showcase your product is by using before/after testimonial pictures. Hence, this template will focus on testimonial images.
A successful testimonial design example for this template is Proactiv. Previously, along with the complement of customers about their product, they used a slider to showcase before and after images of customers and their results from using the skin care from the brand. This testimonial template brings about an impressive visual effect that makes testimonials more trustworthy.
Recently, they’ve updated this template to the next level by showing the images of how the skin of customers improved in some milestones when using their products. This design template not only visualizes the effectiveness of their skin care products on customers but also provides visitors with some information about usage time and routine.
What is in this testimonial template?
Normally, the main elements of this website testimonial design are:
- Before/After Testimonial Images: This template, as it name implies, focuses on before and after visual effects so you need to prepare before and after images that can describe the effectiveness of your product the best.
- Before/After Image Slider (Optional): This design element showcases 2 photos side-by-side in one frame and enables customers to slide to see and compare the results. Thus it not only allows you to create compelling visual stories and showcase the brilliant results of your product, but also encourages interaction from customers with a sliding effect.
Which website is this template best for?
This template is suitable for testimonials which focus on results of the products and transformation of customers after using their products. Thus, this website testimonial design will work best for Beauty store, Yoga and fitness, and Home decoration service.
How to add this testimonial template to Shopify?
If you want to add a simple Before/After testimonial section to your Shopify store, you just need 2 image blocks from your theme and simply upload your testimonial images to these blocks. However, if you want to add an interactive element like a slider to this template, it will require more effort.
First, check your theme to see whether it has a Before/After image slider or not. Some premium themes like Minimog or Zest include Before/After image slider or Image comparison slider so you just need to customize this section to create this testimonial template.
If you can’t find this section in your theme, here are some Shopify testimonials apps that can help you create an interactive Before & After testimonial slider:
- AOD Before & After Widget: This app provides you the option for adding the images for comparison, showing the before/after images for the products or services they provide.
- Foxify Smart Page Builder: This “built for Shopify” app comes with a Before/ After slider which enables you to create a vertical slider for comparing 2 images. You can also add text to this section to make it an eye catching and compelling testimonial.
4. Testimonials with Video background
This testimonial design is the ingenious combination of quote and video. If the quote is enough to attain visitors, you may still click the video button to view the whole story of the customer. If the quotes are attractive to the visitor, they can click through to see a whole video by that customer. Thus, this multi-layered design can effectively catch the attention of customers.
In addition, as 77% of people who have watched a brand's testimonial video say it has played a part in convincing them to buy their product or service, cooperating video with quotes will help increase trust and influence purchase decisions of customers.
One example of this testimonial design template is Marie Forleo B-School. They've put a video background with testimonial quotes overlayed. You can then click through to watch the video that compiles all their stories and testimonials into one place.
Source: wpmudev
What is in this testimonial template?
This testimonial template is composed of some main elements:
- Video background:This is the main component of this design. You need to prepare a testimonial video with an impressive thumbnail so that your customers will want to click to play
- Testimonial quote: The quote of the customer will be the layer above video testimonial. This quote should be short but informative and compelling because you won’t have much space for this quote on the video background.
Which website is this template best for?
This testimonial template is the most suitable for websites focusing on 1 or 2 testimonials only as this template is compelling yet takes up a lot of space in your pages.
How to add this testimonial template to Shopify?
Some Shopify themes have a video background section with text overlay so you will just need one click to create this testimonial template for your store. For example, Minimog has a section called Video hero which enables you to add a background video.
If this type of section isn’t available in your theme, you can refer to this guideline to customize a section by yourself.
In conclusion
Testimonials are the bedrock of trust in e-commerce. To make them shine, you should choose the right design templates for your store.
This article not only provides you with testimonial definition and its goals but also curates the best testimonial templates and testimonial design examples and guideline on how to add testimonials to Shopify.to help you create the best one for your store.
However, just knowledge is not enough, you need a helpful assistant to design all these wonderful Shopify testimonials templates and it is when Minimog joins the game. It’s your secret weapon for effortlessly creating stunning testimonials on Shopify. With its user-friendly features and customization options, Minimog got you covered from dynamic carousels to engaging multimedia displays.
Try Minimog now to design stunning testimonials section for your store!
