When it comes to running an e-tail or e-commerce site via the WordPress platform, there are a host of elements that can help boost the chances for success and, ideally, increased profit. And while many admins fret over picking the right theme, layout, navigation options and the like, there’s one simple add-on that can really help a for-profit concern: a customer review page.
Chances are, if you’ve been running an e-commerce site for a while, customer reviews are already a part of your marketing strategy. After all, having positive responses for your products or services available and front and center shows potential new clients that you have a proven track record for quality, responsiveness to problems etc. So it only makes sense to highlight such information and show proof in the form of testimonials that help you gain trust.
Thankfully, like with so many things WordPress, it’s relatively easy and painless to add a customer review section to your site. And here’s how.
To begin, install and activate the Easy Testimonials plugin and, after you’ve done so, enable your desired configurations on the “Settings” page. Here you’ll see lots of options for customizing your review settings; tweak them to match your needs, and after you’ve tinkered around with them save your changes and visit “Testimonials, Add New Testimonial.” Here you’ll enter a title for the review and then enter the text of said review in the post editor. You can create certain categories, or select default ones, as well as add featured images to accompany the review. You’ll also want to enter the customer name and other information before publishing the review.
From here on out you can manually add as many customer reviews and testimonials as you like and add them to your website. First create a new page on your WordPress site where you’ll want the reviews to appear, then click on the button “new testimonials” at the top of the post editor. Several options will appear, such as the ability to display them is a list or grid pattern, a cool slider format etc. Then click on the “Insert Now” button and the plugin will generate a shortcode right into the post editor. Save and publish your page and then visit your site to make sure the reviews are appearing in the form and format you wish.
Of course taking this route will require you to manually enter each customer review onto the specific page. But if you want to collect reviews directly on your site and take the email component out of the equation, update to the professional version of the “Easy Testimonials” plugin and add the shortcode “submit testimonial” inside a WordPress page to display a “Submit Your Review” form that clients and customers can fill out themselves. After a user has completed a testimonial you’ll be able to proofread and review it before it goes live. Just look for them as “pending” in the testimonials section of your admin area and edit it as desired before publishing.
Don’t want to add another plugin just for customer reviews? No problem. You can also use the preloaded WPForms that conveniently comes with a “Post Submissions Addon.” This allows you to collect content, guest posts and the like from your users and have it publish directly to your page, a nice feature if you’re really interested in making your site thrive on back and forth dialogue and conversation.
