Customer testimonials are a widely used technique among firms in an attempt to build trust online. So, should you embed customer testimonials into your newly developed e-commerce site? If so, what do you need to consider?
What is trust?
First, it is important to understand what we mean by trust. Trust is an area that has been studied in various disciplines, therefore producing numerous definitions. One common definition is Mayer et al. (1995, p. 712, cited in Xiao et al, 2014) define trust as “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party”. It is widely recognised that consumer trust is more important in electronic, “cyber” transactions than it is in traditional, “real world” transactions (Kim et al.,2008). This highlights the importance of trust in an e-commerce context. Hence, I am writing this blog!
Why use customer testimonials?
Source: (Kim et al, 2008)
Based on the model above by Kim et al (2008), positive reputation contributes to building trust in a consumer. One way a firm might look to enforce positive reputation is through customer testimonials, which demonstrate obligations have been filled to previous consumers. This is based on the psychological phenomenon known as ‘social proof’. Lim et al (2006) found that customer endorsement by similar peers was found to increase consumer’s trusting beliefs about the store. This, in turn, increased the consumer’s willingness to buy. The study was based on relatively new online stores, thereby demonstrating the implications for newly developed e-commerce sites. Another positive of customer testimonials, is they are relatively low cost to embed into your website.
Source: (Lim et al, 2006)
Critics?
Early research by Peszynski & Thanasanki (2002) suggested that customer testimonials were not particularly useful in building consumer trust via e-commerce. It is worth recognising, however, that this research was carried out in New Zealand and a larger sample size might be required to attribute the validity of these findings. Another viewpoint is that although customer testimonials can build trust, there is an argument that independent sources are more influential than company controlled Ewom i.e. customer testimonials on a website (Meuter, McCabe & Curran 2013). These are considerations to think about, but overall customer testimonials appear to show positive effects on trust. That said, it might be useful to use them alongside other trust-building initiatives. Also, ensure your products and services are so great that independent sources equally sing your praises!
So what makes a great customer testimonial?
Okay, so you’ve weighed up the pros and cons of customer testimonials and think they are useful to embed on your e-commerce site. Here is a quick overview of some of the important factors to consider:
Be authentic
Macdonald (2014) suggests that the most important aspect of any testimonial is its authenticity. This is useful to bear in mind as humans are intuitive and will soon know if you are being ‘over promotional’. Think about those questionable websites with examples of ‘customers’ who lost 5 stone in two weeks with a ‘magic’ diet pill. Did you purchase? Probably not, because it lacked authenticity, and therefore you likely didn’t trust them.
Be personal
Using customer faces on pages can also be useful to add authenticity and create a personal feel. Ciotti (2016) suggests that using photos can increase perceived trust. The theory behind this is that photos make facts and statements more believable. Research by Riegelsberger, Sasse & McCarthy (2003) found that photos could make untrustworthy sites more trustworthy. However, they did also find that on sites that already had high trustworthiness, photos reduced trust. This is an area where more research might be useful, for now maybe you could use A/B testing on your target customers to find out what works for you?
Use facts and figures
Utilising facts and figures in your testimonials can help create an impact on your customers. However, it is important to be specific with these numbers and do not round up according to your agenda. Ciotti (2016) suggests that customers favour exactness due to a concept known as ‘precision bias’. More information on this, along with some other useful trust factors with customer testimonials can be found via https://www.helpscout.net/blog/customer-testimonials/
Some examples…
The example below by Decadent cakes shows a number of quote testimonials. These are effective as they appear authentic and provide a profile of the customer below the quote. Could they have gone further and added photos?
The screenshot below is from Codecademy, this is a great example of a video testimonial. The video takes you on the customer journey and really makes the benefit of the service explicit. You can watch it here https://www.codecademy.com/stories
Wix demonstrate a mixture of video testimonials, social media testimonials and quote testimonials. This creates a powerful blend of ‘social proof’.
Takeaway
The psychology behind ‘social proof’ is an important consideration to build trust around your e-commerce website. Testimonials can be an effective, low-cost way to achieve this. Your business could choose a number of ways to embed testimonials such as quotes or videos and even use more than one. However, don’t forget to keep it personal, authentic and remember to use specific figures!
Further reading
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/83752
https://sumo.com/stories/testimonial-examples
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/testimonial-page-examples#sm.0001dn00mi2dld1rw8919oz7mn958
Note: this blog is written by a student for a final year business management module.
References
Cicero, N. (2014) 2014 Marketing Statistics Every CMO Should Know [Online] https://www.socialfresh.com/marketing-statistics-every-cmo-should-know-in-2014/?utm_medium=Webbiquity.com [Accessed 12 April 2017]
Ciotti, G. (2016) How to Make the Most of Your Customer Testimonials. [Online] https://www.helpscout.net/blog/customer-testimonials/ [Accessed 12 April 2017]
Hayes, M. (2012) 5 Strategies to Get Customers to Trust Your Ecommerce Store. 25th July 2012. Shopify [Online] https://www.shopify.co.uk/blog/6327946-5-strategies-to-get-customers-to-trust-your-ecommerce-store [Accessed 07 April
Kim, D.J., Ferrin, D.L. and Rao, H.R. (2008) A trust-based consumer decision-making model in electronic commerce: The role of trust, perceived risk, and their antecedents. Decision support systems, Vol.44, No., pp.544-564.
Lim, K.H., Sia, C.L., Lee, M.K. and Benbasat, I. (2006) Do I trust you online, and if so, will I buy? An empirical study of two trust-building strategies. Journal of management information systems, Vol. 23, No. 2 pp.233-266
Macdonald, M. (2014) How to Generate Powerful Testimonials for Your Ecommerce Business. 3rd March 2014 [Online] https://www.shopify.com/blog/12621097-how-to-generate-powerful-testimonials-for-your-ecommerce-business [Accessed 07 April 2017]
Meuter, M, McCabe, D & Curran, J. (2013) Electronic word-of-mouth versus interpersonal word-of-mouth: are all forms of word-of-mouth equally influential? Services Marketing Quarterly, Vol 34, No. 3, pp.240-256.
Peszynski, K.J. and Thanasankit, T. (2002) Exploring trust in B2C ecommerce-an exploratory study of Maori culture in New Zealand. ECIS 2002 Proceedings, p.99.
Riegelsberger, J., Sasse, M.A. and McCarthy, J.D., (2003) April. Shiny happy people building trust?: photos on e-commerce websites and consumer trust. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 121-128). ACM.
Xiao, L., Zixiu, G., D’Ambra, J., Bin, F. (2016). “Building loyalty in e-commerce: Towards a multidimensional trust-based framework for the case of China”, Program, Vol. 50 Issue: 4, pp. 431-461