So. . . you're interested in conversion optimization, eh? Well, today might be your lucky day. If you're like us, you've probably been racking your brain for the next great CRO marketing test to run on your site. Perhaps you're even considering hiring a conversion rate optimization agency. While this may ultimately help, why don't you press pause for a second and read on to see if our Free Google Review Widget could be a good website-engagement tool for your site? Our initial results suggest that one line of code could improve your conversion rate optimization by as much as 30 percent!
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We were working with MirrorTrip recently to brainstorm new ideas to help them improve their conversion funnel. Deferring to the usual suspects, the topic of brand reputation came up. Brand reputation is always important, but being a relatively new business, and in the B2C space, brand reputation is going to be especially important for a company like MirrorTrip.
So we got to thinking: Conventional wisdom suggests that customer testimonials are always a positive step towards enhancing your brand's reputation, and we like to (sometimes) think of ourselves as conventional folks. There are a number of ways, of course, these can be presented. A rotating carousel of quotes at the easy-to-execute end of the spectrum, and professionally shot customer-testimonial videos at the other end. The question, of course, is which approach is going to give you the most bang for your buck?
Written customer-testimonial quotes are easy to execute, but ultimately how trustworthy are they? Professionally shot customer testimonial videos provide a whole lot of authenticity, but how easy is it to get a (photogenic) customer to commit that much time and effort? Then we realized, MirrorTrip already has a five-star customer review rating on their Google Business Site; why not use that! Seems like a great idea, right? People trust Google Reviews more than anything that you could write on your own website, and there's no need to hassle your customers, as those who wanted to write a review for you already have.
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Okay! Next step: Search Google for 'Google Reviews Widget'. Cue the cartoon-style sad trombone sound effect. If you're not using Wordpress, you're not in much luck here. In fact, you might even notice that (at the time of writing this article) the third result down includes the protestations of many proclaiming the sheer insanity that Google doesn't have one of these already for general distribution. Fear not my friend, being an agency of good repute who loves a good A/B test as much as the rest of us, the folks at TBA Digital have taken it upon themselves to right this wrong.
TBA Digital Google Review Widget (Free Give-Away)
Our solution is a self-contained review widget that has no dependencies other than you have to have a Google Business page with reviews on it, and a Google Cloud account. Both can be obtained for free. After that, simply paste in our script-include code and you're off to the races. By default, it will stick to the bottom of your page. It's collapsible so your users can minimize it if it's in their way. However, beyond that, we've designed it to be configurable both in terms of visual aesthetics and behaviour.
So what was my audacious CRO marketing claim about improving engagement rates by 30 percent? Right. We ran an A/B test on MirrorTrip.com using Google Optimize. We found the Google Optimize interface a little limited to do this all within the inline editor. Even though our code is simple, in the end we had to run it as a redirect test splitting traffic between two separate HTML pages. In just a few weeks, Google Optimize picked the widget variant as the clear winner on desktop and mobile with a high degree of confidence. And as you can see from the charts below, at no stage was the widget variant below the original in terms of engagement.
The primary metric being measured here is 'engagement,' which is a default event category in Google Analytics. The way that MirrorTrip has its event tagged is that any meaningful engagement on the home page is tagged under the Google Analytics 'engagement' event category. These events include 'Log In', 'Signed Up', 'Watched Explainer Video', 'Searched for Trip'.
Sound like something that might work for your site? Okay, here's how you can get it: Cover your eyes if JavaScript disgusts you. Just send a link to this page to your web guy/gal, and then go log into Google Analytics and wait for your engagement bump!
Documentation
Requires
- Google API key
- PlaceID
To get the API key
- Go to https://console.developers.google.com/apis
- Create Project.
- Enable the Maps Javascript API.
- Enable the Places API.
- Create credentials for your project and note down Server Key.
To find your placeId
- Click on this link
- Enter your business address
- You will get PlaceId with popup showing on Map
- Note down your PlaceId.
Add the widget to your site
Place this in the head or body of your site:
<script src="https://cdn.tbadigital.com/myreviews/myreviews.min.js"></script><script>myreviews({key:YOURKEY, placeId:YOURID});</script>
Options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
key |
REQUIRED see above |
placeId |
REQUIRED see above |
reviews_url |
Your URL for the 'View on Google' link. The link will not be shown if you do not provide this. |
css_url |
Optional absolute URL of your CSS to style the widget, inside the widget iframe. The position or size of the iframe can be styled with your site CSS |
open |
Start with widget open. options('both','mobile','desktop','none') none is default |
