There is a wide selection of free testimonial apps available on the web, which give you simple tools to display text or photo-based testimonials in your Shopify store, eCommerce store, or on your website. The vast majority of testimonial widgets focus on ways to display static testimonials such as quotes, written testimonials, and case studies. They make it easy to add sections, sliders, and carousels of these static testimonials.
The problem is, despite being the most common testimonial format because they are easy to produce, static testimonials have serious limitations, namely:
- Credibility: It’s very easy to fake a written testimonial and simply add a name, location, and perhaps a photo. Savvy online shoppers know this and can find this type of testimonial less authentic and convincing. Given that testimonials are intended to build trust, avoiding any potential customer suspicion is paramount.
- Banner blindness: Prospective buyers come across so many of these types of testimonials across the internet that they often don’t even register them. Their eyes skip across this type of content because it’s absolutely everywhere.
In contrast, video testimonials are still a rarely used resource that’s seen as being more genuine, believable, and engaging. Potential buyers see a real person talking about your brand or product in a video and can easily assess how authentic they are — it’s not easy to fake a video testimonial.
In addition, customers can get into more detail and make the testimonial more substantive and engaging than a static sentence or two. As a result, video testimonials get better conversion rates than static testimonials and make your products and store immediately more authentic, helping it stand out from the crowd and combat banner blindness (stats below).
Vocal Video lets you collect and record testimonials easily, quickly, and inexpensively. You can create a free account, and upgrade to affordable subscriptions at any time for more features like watermark-free videos and white-labeled video collections. All Vocal Video users can take advantage of our tools to embed video testimonials and create stunning video galleries to display them.
In this article, we’ll guide you through:
To try our video testimonial collection and recording app for free, create an account here.
The Benefits of Video vs. Quote Testimonials
Online marketers and eCommerce teams have avoided using video testimonials in the past because video has traditionally been complex and expensive to create. At Vocal Video, we recognized this problem and created our video testimonial recording platform to solve this issue.
Our asynchronous video recording platform allows you to record and collect high-quality video testimonials quickly and affordably without struggling to shoot and edit them yourself, or having to hire expensive videographers or video editors.
According to a Vocal Video survey of 456 marketers on the impact of testimonial videos on digital marketing, 88% of marketing teams found that campaigns that used video reviews and video testimonials saw a 10%+ increase in conversions compared to campaigns that didn’t use video. Almost half saw a rise in conversions of more than 25%. So, it’s clear that video has a big impact on potential customers and leads them to buy more frequently.
How to Record and Collect Vocal Video Testimonials
Vocal Video’s video recording, collection, and editing process is designed to be as easy as possible for both you and your customers. Using our platform, you can easily record and collect professionally-styled video testimonials like this:
You can easily embed these video testimonials on your website. Like the rest of our platform, we’ve designed our Galleries tool so that anyone — even with no design, coding, or HTML skills — can intuitively use it and get great results in just a few minutes (more on this below).
Easily Create a Video Collector and Send Out a Link for Customers to Record a Video Testimonial
To get your customers to give you a video testimonial, you send them a link to a “Video Collector” which is the step-by-step process customers follow to record a testimonial on their own device.
Using our Video Collector Builder, it takes just a few minutes to get started. You’re simply asked to add the following elements:
- Your logo, colors, and branding.
- Three to five questions you want your customer to answer.
- An incentive for recording a testimonial video (discounts, gifts, contests, donations, or Vocal Video’s monthly prize drawing).
- A welcome message or video introduction.
To make it even easier, you can choose one of our 45+ video collector templates, which give you suggested questions, and an example 3-step testimonial request email sequence for a variety of use cases.
When you have a video collector built, you send out the automatically-generated collector link to your selected customers by email, SMS, messaging app, or by posting on social media. When they are ready, all the customers do is click on the link to be taken to your Vocal Video landing page and start recording.
The entire video recording process is completely remote and can be finished in just 5-10 minutes using just a smartphone, tablet, or computer.
Because we host the video recording and software on our platform, customers only have to follow a link — they don’t have to download any apps or software, or sign up for any service to record a video for you.
They can record from anywhere that’s convenient for them and they don’t need any special equipment (lights, video camera, mic, etc.). They just use the natural lighting at their chosen location and use the built-in camera on their device to film their testimonial.
Keeping the whole process simple and convenient makes customers more likely to record the high-quality testimonials you need.
Read our article for in-depth information about how to collect video testimonials from customers.
Automatic Editing and Additional Touch-ups
Using Vocal Video, you can record and edit great testimonial videos in a fraction of the time — without any video recording or post-production expertise. Editing in Vocal Video is done in two easy steps (the second of which is completely optional):
Automatic Editing
Each video testimonial gets sent to you with all the editing work already done. Vocal Video automatically applies your logo and brand colors across the testimonial video, along with text slides for names and questions, animated transitions between responses, default background music, a call to action, and computer-generated captions (which are great for readability and SEO).
Read this article to learn more about how easy Vocal Video makes testimonial video editing.
Additional Editing
If you’d like to add any additional editing to your video testimonials, you can use Vocal Video’s built-in suite of video editing tools. Our drag-and-drop tools are designed for complete beginners to start using right away to make changes to the following elements of your video reviews:
- Alter your default logo and brand colors.
- Trim irrelevant information or long pauses.
- Change background music (we give you a library of royalty-free options, or you can choose to add your own track).
- Add extra interstitial text slides.
- Create highlight reels by stitching together several of your best testimonials.
Easily Embed Vocal Video Testimonials in Beautiful Gallery Displays
As mentioned above, it’s easy to use Vocal Video to create stunning galleries to display all of the video testimonials you’ve collected. All you need to do is copy and paste a single block of code that Vocal Video automatically provides.
You can choose background color gradients, change fonts, and more, as well as get a preview of what your gallery will look like on your site or store before it goes live.
Every ‘wall of love’, slideshow, grid, and list you put together gets its own public page and link hosted on the Vocal Video platform, so you can easily share the link through your website, email, or on social media.
Read this article to learn more about how to create beautiful galleries of video testimonials on your website or eCommerce store.
Embedding Single Vocal Videos on Your Store or Website
If you prefer to add single testimonial videos to your eCommerce store or website, Vocal Video automatically generates embed codes so you can do so quickly and easily.
Vocal Video makes it straightforward to configure several aspects of your embed code in just a few clicks — autoplay, popover mode, max width, rounded corners, drop shadows, and alignment, so you can get your video testimonials looking exactly as you want them.
Read this article to learn more about adding video embed codes to your site.
Vocal Video generates automatic share codes for every video you create using our platform. These can be copied and pasted into messaging apps, SMS, or posted on social media — giving you a quick and easy way of sharing video testimonials with potential customers across the internet. We offer ad-free hosting on our platform for all of our users.
Read our guide to learn more about sharing Vocal Videos.
Examples of Testimonials Using Vocal Video
Below we show you 3 customer video reviews put together by Vocal Video customers and displayed on websites using our gallery tool:
Majk: Product Review of the 60-Day Breakfast Challenge
4 Testimonial Apps for Static Testimonials
If you’re still looking for the best testimonial apps for static testimonials, here’s our list of the top four offering free trials:
Pricing: Free plan available; free 7-day trial.
Testimonials Master lets you display static customer testimonials in a variety of layouts, using different color themes to match your Shopify theme as closely as possible.
The app allows you to make review requests using a testimonial submission form, and once you’ve collected them, it takes just a few minutes to customize testimonials.
Testimonials Master offers a free plan, which comes with their branding. Paid plans allow you to remove branding.
Pricing: Free plan available; free 7-day trial.
Social Testimonial Slider by LJ apps is a Shopify widget that allows users to display Facebook, Yelp, and Google Places reviews and manually input reviews in online stores as testimonials. You can choose where to place your testimonial slider within your store for the best effect.
Pricing: Free to install; additional charges may apply.
Etsy, Facebook, Amazon Reviews by Kudobuzz is a popular Shopify testimonial app with a review import plugin that gathers product reviews from Etsy, Facebook, Yelp, Google Reviews, Amazon, star ratings, and more.
Pricing: $5.99/month; free 7-day trial.
Testimonials slider designed by Elfsight allows you to add text-based and photo testimonials to your Shopify store. To build trust with potential customers, you can add specific details about the author of each testimonial including a name, a photograph, and social media profile link.
Testimonials slider provides six easy templates to display your testimonials and increase conversion rates.
Vocal Video gives you all the tools you need to record, collect, and creatively display video testimonials on your website or eCommerce store. Sign up for your free account to leverage the power of testimonial videos for your brand.