Hey, y’all, I’m so glad you’re joining me today. And I can’t wait to talk about the latest update on TPT – the featured testimonials on our resources. I’ve been playing with these for several weeks now since I was part of the beta. And I definitely have some thoughts about them. So let’s dive right in.
Now, in case you’ve been living under a rock, or you just haven’t looked at your TPT store lately, TPT is now displaying up to two product reviews on each product listing. These show up at the top of your product listing in between the thumbnails and the description. And for products that are either a bundle or part of a bundle, it is above the section that lists the bundled products as well.
There is some criteria that TPT uses in order to pull good reviews to put in that featured testimonials section. So here are the rules, the feedback has to have five stars, it has to be between 100 and 200 words, and it has to be less than two years old.
Now, within the all of the feedback you have that meet that criteria, it looks like the automated system is just choosing the most recent two that meet the criteria that they’ve selected.
Now the good news is if you don’t love the ones they automatically pulled for you, you can change them out. And to do that, you’ll want to click Edit on the product page itself right below the testimonials. And you’ll see other options that meet that criteria there. And you can choose the two that you want.
Now, if you feel like you are missing some, I’ve had a couple of situations where there are only two or three showing up, but I know there are more reviews that should meet the criteria, send a help ticket into TPT and let them know. Hopefully they’ll be able to fix that kind of thing. This is a brand new feature. And even though it is rolled out to everyone now, there are definitely still bugs that they will need to work out.
So anytime you see something kind of buggy, make sure you’re letting TPT know so that they can hopefully hop on and fix those errors for us.
Now, I have to say I absolutely love this. I was excited about the possibilities from the very first time they hinted that they were working on adding testimonials higher up on the product page. And here is why.
First of all, I’m a words of affirmation kind of girl. So I love seeing all these positive reviews being surfaced on our products. But from a business standpoint, social proof is one of the best ways that you can improve conversions on the product listing itself. People really want to see that someone else has used this product and that they liked it or they got good results from it.
Think about your own behavior when you’re shopping on Amazon. I almost always check out the reviews before I hit Add to Cart unless I have purchased the exact same thing before and I’m just coming back for more of it. Or I am really positive that I like this brand, something like that. And our TPT buyers are going to be the same way.
If they’re coming back for the second part of a year long bundle that they’ve purchased and they’ve used, then feedback is not that important on that product for that buyer.
If they know and love your brand, and so they know they can trust products from you, feedback might not be as important to them. But for anyone who is new to our products new to a certain product line, they are going to want to see some proof that other teachers like them have used your resource. They’ve gotten good results, their students enjoyed it all of those kinds of things.
So for that reason, I’ve been recommending adding social proof to your product listings for years, but having them higher up on the page is even better. Now like I said, I’ve been playing around with this for several weeks. So I wanted to share some recommendations with you for how you can best use these testimonials.
And I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how to shift your strategy with the testimonials that you’re putting in your product description now that we have these at the top as well.
So let’s dive into my recommendations. First of all, I definitely still recommend putting testimonials near the end of your product description. And the reason for that is that when we talk about a conversion funnel as far as how to write your product description, testimonials really belong near the bottom. So I wouldn’t remove them from that area just because they are showing up higher on the page now as well.
Plus, I really like being able to bold some key parts that I want to draw attention to. Now my recommendation would be that you make sure you’re choosing different reviews to feature at the top, from the ones that you’ve put in your description. You want to make sure that people are seeing a variety of different reviews on your page and not seeing the same ones over and over.
I also recommend that when you choose the ones for the top, you don’t pick ones that are in that first five that are displayed on the product page right below your description. It shows five before they click on show more reviews. So you want to make sure that you’re choosing some that aren’t already right there.
And I know at some point, those will get pushed down lower. But especially for products that don’t get a ton of very frequent reviews, you’ll want to make sure you’re choosing ones that aren’t right at the top.
Now, if your product is newer and doesn’t have as many reviews, then do the best that you can for now, and come back and revisit later once you get more reviews on that product.
Another recommendation for you is, since we know that there is a limit to the length of the reviews that TPT will feature in that top featured testimonial section, choose those longer ones that are really, really good to put down in your description.
I say that with a caveat because people tend to kind of skip over big chunks of text. So if it’s too long, you might need to remove some parts of it. Or you might need to put in some line breaks or something to make it easier for people to read.
But some of those that are too long for the top testimonial section might still be really good testimonials to put into your description itself. Because people do skim over giant chunks of text, I recommend that you bold some things. And if it’s super long, don’t be afraid to put some brackets in with a dot dot dot and remove some of the feedback, just leaving the most important parts for people to read that is okay to do as well. As long as you aren’t changing the content of the feedback, it is perfectly okay to remove a section.
Now some things I would suggest that you look at when you’re choosing the reviews that you feature. And this applies to the reviews you put in the featured testimonials at the top but also the ones you’re putting in your product description. You want to look for very specific comments.
Reviews that just say thank you this was great, I loved it, aren’t nearly as good as reviews that have specific comments about ways that a teacher use this in their classroom. Some features they especially liked, benefits they got out of it, like the amount of time it saved them, or how much their students loved it. And my very favorite is anytime a teacher mentioned results that they got.
If you get a teacher who tells you our scores on whatever went up this percent after using your resource, or I got one that says, “my students are now in the top 10% of our district in vocabulary after using your units.”
Those are the reviews that really speak to teachers because they know that they are going to get concrete results because they see other teachers getting concrete results. So those are gold. Anytime you can show off those very specific comments, those will go a lot longer, a lot further, toward improving your conversions, than reviews that just say “this was great”
Even reviews that just say “my students thought this was super fun”. If you can find ones that are very specific, pick those instead. Bonus points if you can find reviews that include the search terms or the keywords that you would like to target for SEO purposes.
That is super helpful as well. But for me even as the SEO girl, I am ultimately choosing these reviews for conversion first and search secondary.
Now one thing you might want to think about is making note of the date that these are started. I am tracking that for sure and I will be checking the data later on to see how these are affecting my sales and my conversion rate. And as I go in and change them I’ll be making note of those dates as well so I can come back and check.
Now if you were not part of the beta these started on July 25 2022. Those of us in the beta may have started at some different times. But if you’re not in the beta July 25 Is your date.
If you have not played with the featured testimonials yet in your store, then your action step for this episode is to go to your store and update the featured testimonials for your featured products, plus the top eight in your storefront.
And if you have more time, maybe do the whole first page. It It is quick and easy, not to mention you get a little ego boost from reading through all of the positive feedback. Since when you pull these up TPT is only showing you ones with five stars. It’s really nice to look through feedback and see nothing but positive reviews for a change.
So it will give you a little ego boost. It’s kind of fun, to be honest, and it’s a quick, easy way to make some updates in your store.
Thank you so much for checking out today’s episode. I love seeing the updates that you’re making in your store. So when you update those featured testimonials, send me a DM on Instagram and share your very favorite review that you found so we can all celebrate with you.
Be sure to come back for the next episode where I will explain some big changes that are coming to Google Analytics, and I’ll tell you what you need to do about it. Talk to you then.
