What good are your reviews if nobody sees them?
Whenever possible, you should show them off on your site by using a review “widget” or badge. Many review sites offer them for the taking.
But review widgets and badges are more than flashy “trust” symbols. They can also:
- Encourage any current / past customers who visit your site to leave reviews
- Help with your barnacle SEO (because you’re linking to your listings)
- Add a little extra color and je ne sais quoi to your site
For the record, here’s what I’m talking about:
For the third part of my recent unofficial trilogy on more-advanced review strategy (see this and this), I’ve rounded up every piece of review bling I could find.
How many widgets / badges you can put on your site depends mostly on your industry and on where you already have reviews.
See which ones you can add to your site. Here are the links:
Angie’s List
Widget: https://www.angieslist.com/angie-badge/
Industry: Any
Avvo
Widget: https://www.avvo.com/partner_with_us/syndication
Industry: Legal
Cylex
Widget: https://bit.ly/1tYUsBR
Industry: Any
HomeStars
Widget: https://bit.ly/1ERKE4Y
Industry: Home-improvement
Houzz
Widget: https://www.houzz.com/buttonsAndBadges
Industry: Home-improvement
Note: You’ll need to have reviews on Houzz and be signed-in to get your widget. Thanks to Ben Bowen of Ross NW Watergardens for pointing this out in his comment.
Martindale
Widget: https://bit.ly/1D6bPY2
Industry: Legal
Kudzu
Widget: https://www.kudzubizsuccess.com/?p=599
Industry: Any
SuperPages
Widget: https://www.superpages.com/ratings_badges/search_page.html
Industry: Any
TripAdvisor
Widget: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Widgets
Industry: Tourism and dining
Trulia
Widget: https://www.trulia.com/tools/ambassador/
Industry: Real estate
WeddingWire
Widget: https://www.weddingwire.com/shared/Widgets
Industry: Wedding-related
Wellness
Widget: https://www.wellness.com/docs/12761/wellness-provider-program
Industry: Health
Yelp
Widget: https://biz.yelp.com/bling/
Industry: Any
Zagat
Widget: https://www.zagat.com/business-owners/badge
Industry: Dining
Zillow
Widget: https://www.zillow.com/webtools/widgets/review-widget/
Industry: Real estate and home-improvement
A few notes:
You’ll notice I didn’t include paid review-encouragement systems – like CustomerLobby, DemandForce, or SmileReminder – although they do give you ways to showcase your reviews.
Didn’t see the site you wanted represented among the above widgets / badges? You can always create your own badges, which you link out to places where you’ve got reviews. That’s the only good way to show off your Google+ reviews, for instance. (If you do this, I suggest you have the links open into new browser tabs, so that you’re not making people leave your site.)
Use CrazyEgg or a similar tool to see how many people click on your review badges – or even see them in the first place. You may conclude that you should show off your reviews in the sidebar, or only on specific pages, or on this or that part of the page. Tinker around until your plan comes together.
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Am I missing any review widgets that you know of?
Do you use any widgets on your site? If so, which one(s) do you like?
Leave a comment!
Hi Phil,
Useful list, thank you for sharing!
We at Cylex just added this feature https://admin.cylex-usa.com/firma_page.aspx?action=reviewswidget&d=cylex-usa.com (available for logged in users only)
See an example here: https://goo.gl/jnMFQp
Added. Thanks!
What a great idea!! and your right, not enough clients do this!!. What a great way to establish trust by third party reviews showing right on your site. Saves a customer trying to find them and inadvertently going elsewhere.
Thanks, Neil.
Hey Phil, In my humble opinion, you keep hitting it out of the park in the game of practical solutions.
🙂
Hey Johnny, thanks!
Great nudge to do some testing. Up until now we do highlight some of the reviews but for mitigation reasons have not included the badges. This year we added some new features to our strategy and so this post is so timely…thanks.
Sure thing, Diana!
Hi, great post, Phil. I did this a while ago; I put about 7 badges that link to my profiles on the bottom of my Home page, in a little cluster. I didn’t think about putting them on my Reviews page …. would they make more sense there? I have reviews on some of the sites I have there, but not all of them. I have Angie’s List, Manta, LinkedIn (I have 2 glowing reviews on LinkedIn), and others. Manta has nice member badges.
I’d have ’em on both pages, if possible. Maybe see what CrazyEgg tells you (in terms of click and scroll behavior)?
I like the Best of the Web Trusted Site seal (https://bestoftheweb.com). It does cost $14.98/month, but they have a 60 day free trial special going on now.
Thanks, David.
Phil, do you think it would be beneficial to add rel=no follow to these badges/links?
“Beneficial,” no. But I’d say there’s no harm in slapping nofollow on them.
Hi Phil. Nice post – very useful for SMBs & consultants.
I know that you purposely didn’t mention paid-for badges but i thought i might slip in ReviewBiz as it’a available as part of our free trial & once the trial is over the badges still work so it is kinda free forever.
I haven’t put links or features about ReviewBiz on this comment – i didn’t want to over promote without your permission. If you don’t mind me doing so i can give a short list of key features and a link to more info.
Let me know if this is ok or not. Thanks Phil.
Myles
Thanks, Myles. I do like ReviewBiz. Anyone reading this: it’s worth checking out on BrightLocal.com.
Thanks Phil. We’re always happy to answer questions about our tools so please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Great list Phil! Houzz has very nice widgets for reviews as well.
Thanks, Ben. Any chance you could send me the link to the Houzz widget? I agree that it’s a nice widget (seen a couple examples), but I can’t find where to get it.
I think this works, even if you aren’t signed in: https://www.houzz.com/buttonsAndBadges/
Saw that – thanks, Ben. But I must be missing something, because I’m not seeing the reviews widget anywhere
I just signed out of Houzz- I guess the review widget option only shows if you are signed in and have reviews. Oops.
Eureka! Thanks, Ben.
Great list Phil! I used the Trustbadge reviews widget on my online shop https://www.litespot.co.uk/ to collect and show customer reviews. It’s fairly easy to use. They have many integrations in different shop systems. And it comes with 7 languages and is mobile-optimized. There’s a freemium version available at at https://www.trustbadge.com.
Hey Phil!
Do you still consider this 2014 post to be pretty up-to-date, or would it be one you’d want to update if someone was reading it fresh in 2016?
Hey Miriam,
Yes, I still consider it up-to-date, though I’m sure somewhat more sites offer badges or widgets now. (Please let me know of any!)
Thanks, Phil!
2017 update: I’ve tried to use review biz by Bright Local a couple days ago, and it does not work at all – does not generate the appropriately coded badge. I talked to Bright Local and they said it’s not a very well used piece of functionality and they aren’t fixing it, focusing on a rollout of a replacement product sometime this year.