Testimonials on e-commerce site - Can they increase sales?

I know they're pretty much needed on those 1 page websites selling things like e-books... but what about a large ecommerce site? Our site sells over 1,500 products in a specific nich and there is a lot of competition for the products we sell. They can be bought in retail stores and online on hundreds of stores. My point being... we don't want testimonials to ensure the products we sell our legit... but we may want testimonials if it increases consumer confidence.

Have there been any studies done to prove their effectiveness? To me, I only see smaller sites using them. Bigger sites (like walmart.com, target.com, amazon.com) don't use them. Some big sites do though (newegg.com uses them). I guess it can't hurt to add them... but I don't want to spend the time customizing or paying someone to develop some automated testimonial software if testimonials don't do squat .

Anyone have any opinions or have you done any testing yourself?

 

I don't know about any specific studies done, but when I see sites with testimonials in 80% of the cases those testimonials will sound extremely fake. They'll definitely not persuade me to buy or not to buy.

What I do take notice of is real user experiences. Perhaps you can add a review/remarks section for your products (take a page out of Amazon's book) where people can comment on the product and service.

 

I feel the same way about testimonials. I only think they're valid if they have negative reviews too... but of course you won't find that on their site... maybe only a third party site. But we don't always think like the average consumer. We're in the web business and we definately think differently then most people when we buy online. I always like to see what backend software they're running... how the order process works... how they follow up on orders... ect.

But if 2% of online shoppers see testimonials as a good thing and only buy from sites that have them (or are more likely to buy from those sites), then it's definately worth having them.

Our store already has reviews per product so that end is taken care of.

 

Well in that case adding one or two actual testimonials couldn't hurt. Just make sure that the people giving the testiomonials actually exist!

 

I'll look up a few testimonials on copyscape.com every so often. You wil see the exact same testimonial posted across scores of web sites.

If they give a domain name, I have sometimes gone so far as to contact the owner of that domain name to verify the testimonial if I am truly interested

 

It's hard to measure effects on ROI but people do read our testimonials. Whatever you can offer to aid in the buying decision is a good thing IMO. And it's more content for you to be indexed as well.

 

I would venture to say that they do help.

For most of us discussing this, we notice that testimonials are all the same, or always positive, or just look fake. Looking at it from an average Joe consumer point of view. Many people don't even understand that there are different search engines or even different companies on the internet. We get Visa and Paypal customers asking us to send them their account statement, or asking how to log back into their paypal account because they forgot their password, all the time.

My point is that, although there is a great deal of intelligent customers, there are also a great deal of ignorant completely lost customers, and these are the ones that would believe a testimonial. You obviously don't want to fake testimonials or over hype them, but it seems to me that some will ignore them and others will believe them, so if you have the time, a compatible product layout, and the resources than I would try out the testimonials. If they dont work, you can always remove them.

On a second note, check out blue nile's testimonials for each product they offer. It is completely professional, and while probably filtered a bit, the reviews are completely believable. I think they have the best example I have seen that could fit many potential types of websites.

 

You may find some interesting information from MarketingSherpa.com (http://www.marketingsherpa.com/), I've always found similar types of information from the site. Note, they have free content for a limited amount of time but they do sell reports etc for reasonable prices. Note, I'm not affiliated with the site, but am a customer/reader.

 

I really agree on this. Usually I will do a simple Google search to find out are they real experience. You'll be surprise how many hosting companies are sharing the same testimonials.

However, real user experience published on any e-commerce website will definitely be on of the factors I consider buying.

 

Well, I've started random rotation of select portions of truthful testimonials from previous clients & students at the top of my blog.

I've also linked (and been linked) to a 3rd party repository of reviews in my field.

Any suggestions on improving it?

 

A very catch twenty-two. I would say only use them if you can maybe provide a link to somehow verify them for the consumer.

 

Another thing - I think is quantity. We actually have a few on one of our sites and I never thought twice about it.