Recommendations from other people are one of the most powerful ways of gaining new customers. And testimonials are one of the forms of recommendation.

A powerful form. Really powerful.

According to Thijs de Valk:

“Testimonials are mostly said to work on the basis of social proof. Social proof is a psychological process in which people copy the behavior of others, in an attempt to reflect correct behavior.”

Testimonials build trust

If you see that other people use some service, especially well-known influencers, people you know in person or at least those you can identify with, you are more willing to give this service a try. It’s like in real life. If you ask someone you trust for a recommendation and that person is able to recommend something – it builds trust.

Try to imagine that you are looking for a nanny for your kid. You ask your friends if they know anyone who’s really great at taking care of kids. One of your friends says: “Oh man, I know one girl. She’s great! She was a nanny of my nephew. You need to call her.” Won’t you call? Of course you will.

It’s nothing more than a social proof. It works the same with testimonials.

Testimonials show who your customers are

I highly recommend to display not only the text of the review/recommendation, but also the name of the reviewer, company name, link to their website and even their photo. Give your users a chance to see who your customer is, what company they’re working for, in what industry, what’s their position in these companies etc.

If you are from a SaaS company and you can see testimonials from people who are from other SaaS companies, will you be more willing to try a service? Of course you will. If you can see CTO, CEO, CMO of well-known global companies, won’t you sign up to try? Of course you will. If you can see that all of your competitors recommend some online tool, won’t you check why? Of course you will.

Testimonials show how your customers use your product

The best testimonials are these which are more like stories, not typical reviews.

“I use PayLane to all my recurring payments. It’s simple and easy!”

Isn’t that great? It shows not only that a customer loves PayLane‘s services, but also how they use it. It’s like an ad of a company/product/service as well as the specific service/product the company offers. Double win.

Testimonials show benefits of using your service

There are dozens of similar services around the web. How to choose the best one (the best for us)? Simply by measuring the benefits (like in case of setting the best prices for your online products).

“Thanks to XYZ I don’t need to log in to my social media accounts to contact all of my friends, fans and followers”

This testimonial shows not only how your customer uses your product, but also shows the benefits of using it.

Or even better…

“This product tripled our profits in 2 months. Incredible!”

Can you imagine?

That’s a great testimonial. That’s a phenomenal recommendation.

How the best online businesses use testimonials to build trust on their websites

That’s the next post of Build a great global SaaS business series – the brand new blog post series on Across the Board. Want to know more? We will publish much much more in the near future. Subscribe to our newsletter or hashtag #GlobalSaaS on Twitter and be first to know.

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