How Does Testimonial Tree Compare to VocalReferences
According to some estimates, close to 98% of your site’s visitors are lost forever.
When you consider how expensive and time-consuming attracting visitors can be, losing customers can be frustrating.
Luckily, there are ways you can increase your conversions and convince more of your site’s visitors to opt-in or buy your products.
Why You Need Testimonials For Your Business
With the help of social proof, such as testimonials, you can dramatically increase your conversion rate and ensure that you don’t lose good prospects who are not committing simply because they don’t trust your company.
Here are just a few reasons why testimonials are so effective:
- They serve as social proof, showing to your site’s visitors that your company has had plenty of positive experiences with past customers and that your product delivers on its promises.
- They help establish your company as an authority. Testimonials show that you have the experience necessary to deal with different types of clients. This positions your brand as an industry leader and your company as a trusted merchant.
- By having testimonials from different types of customers you can showcase success stories that match up with different segments of your audience. This reassures your visitors that the specific problem they are facing can be solved with the help of your products or services.
Adding Testimonials To Your Website
Testimonials on your site is essential for ensuring that you stay ahead of your competition.
When it comes to adding testimonials many companies run into issues.
Inserting rigid testimonial templates into your website’s design can be a challenge. Spending hundreds of dollars on a new design may not be a practical option.
With the help of the right testimonial software any company can enhance their sites via testimonials without the need for any coding knowledge.
To help you choose the best solution for your needs we’ll be exploring two of the leading solutions on the market – VocalReferences and Testimonial Tree.
Both solutions offer a wide range of features, including:
- A convenient process for collecting testimonials on your site or the platform.
- Displaying testimonials on the website
- A free trial
- Customizable forms and surveys.
There Are Differences
Beyond the core features of the two products there are significant differences between them.
Let’s compare the two tools based on a range of important criteria to see which one comes out on top.
Hands-On Support
Figuring out how to use a testimonial tool can take some time, especially if you haven’t used a similar solution in the past.
VocalReferences takes pride in offering top-quality support to all its customers.
Choose the Pro Plus plan and you will receive hands-on support that will guide you every step of the way and ensure that you take advantage of everything that the tool has to offer.
For instance, the VocalReferences team will review your landing page and give you useful suggestions about how you best to use the testimonials on your site for maximum impact.
Their site displays testimonial examples from companies like yours who have achieved success with testimonials.
Testimonial Tree also offers support to its paid users, but if you’re opting for the basic plan you can only use online support and you need to fill out a form each time you need help.
Higher-tier users that pay $100, $300, or even more per month, get more personal support, including phone assistance, a white glove set up, and even a success manager.
Text and Video Testimonials
Testimonials in general has proven to be a game-changer for digital marketing.
Testimonial software will help you to organize the vital process of collecting and displaying testimonials.
Even though text testimonials can be incredibly useful, they are so widely used today that they may be suspect to some of your audience.
Some have simply stopped reading testimonials on websites.
That is why having video testimonials is so crucial.
Video Testimonials provide a different way to showcase your customer experiences.
With video testimonials you offer people who like to consume content through video a chance to learn more about your customers’ experiences with your business.
Furthermore, video testimonials not only communicate the message but also allow you to get to know the person behind the testimonial. They accentuate his or her emotions and reactions.
Therefore, video testimonials provide a much more authentic and persuasive experience for your site visitors.
VocalReferences recognizes that video is a high converting tool to place on your site and has therefore integrated video as a central part of their testimonial software.
They make it very easy to collect and display video testimonials on your site.
This will help you increase conversions and significantly increase the impact that your social proof will have on their conversion rates.
You gain all the benefits without the complexity and cost of dealing with video.
Users can record a video testimonial in a matter of seconds on their computer or mobile phone.
This simple process enables you to quickly accumulate a useful collection of video testimonials that you can use in your digital marketing.
Testimonial Tree does not offer video testimonial functionality. This is a major drawback for those businesses wanting to stand out from their competitors.
Import Reviews from Third-Party Review Sites
Protecting your reputation online is essential. Therefore you need to keep track of reviews that get posted on third-party review sites like Google, Yelp and Facebook.
However, even though you can’t fully control the reviews that get posted there, you can at least leverage the good ones by displaying them on your site.
VocalReferences offers you the ability to import reviews from third-party review sites like Google, Yelp and Facebook.
You can display them on your website, enabling you to position your brand and your offer in a way that maximizes conversions and tells a story about what your brand is all about.
This type of functionality makes VocalReferences not only a reviews management solution, but a marketing tool as well.
VocalReferences gives you access to third-party reviews to convey powerful messages about your brand through the words of your best customers.
Testimonial Tree also offers the ability to import testimonials, but the feature is only available starting with the Professional level which start at $100 per month.
Web Platform Integrations
When it comes to integrations, VocalReferences and Testimonial Tree take entirely different approaches.
Testimonial Tree has a long list of integrations.
It not only seamlessly integrates with traditional platforms like Zapier and InfusionSoft, but also offers integrations with dozens of tools in a range of specialized industries like real estate, veterinary, orthopedics, healthcare, and many others.
VocalReferences takes a different approach.
VocalReferences focuses on making the process of adding and managing testimonials simple on any platform that you might be using.
You start by copying and pasting a unique code onto your site. Once on your site you can use the intuitive widget-based system to design and customize your testimonial templates exactly the way you want.
As a result, VocalReferences can be integrated with almost every web design or platform.
VocalReferences is platform neutral, so you don’t have to worry about integrations and can focus on getting the most out of the testimonials that you have and on as many platforms as you want.
SEO Enhancements
The main reason why you should have testimonials on your site is straightforward. Social proof helps to position your brand as an authority, alleviates skepticism and fears, and drives conversions through compelling stories of your best customers.
However, there is a less-known benefit to having testimonials on your website and that is SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
VocalReferences automatically marks up each testimonial with the Review Markup standard and submits the testimonials to Google.
Google indexes the testimonials with the markup. The result is an attention-drawing STAR reviews SERP in the Google search results which will boost your SEO and traffic.
With the Pro and Pro Plus plans VocalReferences will even provide you with a Recommended Merchant Badge which adds more credibility for your site to ensure that every visitor feels comfortable buying from you.
Testimonial Tree at the time of writing of this blog, does not provide rich snippet functionality, but it does create an SEO-optimized micro-site on their directory which ranks for relevant keywords and helps local businesses attract visitors.
Recognition Badges for Online Reputation
Having badges that showcase your achievements and enhance your reputation are essential, especially when trying to make sales online.
VocalReferences offers the Recommended Merchant Badge to all Pro and Pro Plus users that changes colors from bronze to gold depending on the number of reviews that the site has received.
Another cool badge offered by VocalReferences is the Social Ratings Badge. This badge displays a summary of reviews on various social review sites.
The results are updated automatically, so once you place the badge on your site you won’t have to touch it again. It will always display the latest data of your reviews.
Testimonial Tree, on the other hand, does not offer any badges or certifications for their customers.
Price
No matter how you look at it, price is a crucial factor when choosing a testimonial software solution.
As you may have noticed earlier in this review, we’ve already mentioned the high prices of Testimonial Tree.
Testimonial Tree pricing is expensive for most small or medium size businesses.
In terms of price, VocalReferences has the clear upper hand.
VocalReferences offers a Free plan which allows businesses to get started and familiarize themselves with the solution.
Testimonial Tree doesn’t have a free plan and starts their pricing at $30 per month for the most basic features.
The paid options of VocalReferences are also much more affordable.
The Pro Plan, which offers advanced features such as unlimited testimonials, unlimited displays, as well as Google Optimization, is priced at $20.99, while the Pro Plus plan which comes with premium and personal support, is priced at only $29.99 per month.
Meanwhile, if you want to use the more advanced features of Testimonial Tree, you will have to opt for the Professional plan which costs $100 per month, with the more personalized and powerful features costing upwards of $300 per month.
The huge price difference is very noticeable. VocalReferences offers a lot of the similar features to Testimonial Tree for a fraction of the cost.
Furthermore, VocalReferences has more advanced features such as the certification badges and the intuitive video testimonial functionality.
Ease of Use
When it comes to ease of use, both solutions are designed to be intuitive and straightforward.
Since VocalReferences doesn’t use integrations, you can get started with it in minutes by simply pasting the code to your site and importing your testimonials from third-party websites or your own site.
The developers at VocalReferences have made the process of requesting, adding, and managing testimonials as simple as possible to ensure that you can focus on obtaining more social proof instead of having to worry about how to put everything together.
Testimonial Tree is also relatively easy to use, although you will have to integrate it with your platforms and figure out how it fits in, which could take some time.
SMB Fit
Most people reading this review likely don’t come from multi-national corporations, as those types of companies have their own processes for using testimonials in their business.
If you are a small or medium business (SMB), you need a solution that is designed with these types of companies in mind.
VocalReferences really stands out as the best option for smaller and medium companies.
It’s very easy to use, has a ton of features that are designed for companies that have a more personal relationship with their customers, and is very affordable.
While it may seem that Testimonial Tree offers a lot of similar features, the mere fact that it is so expensive can mean that it’s out of the price range for a lot of smaller companies.
Final Verdict
If you’ve read through this entire review, you’ve probably already reached a definite conclusion about which option is better and why.
VocalReferences delivers a wide range of powerful features as well as top-notch customer support, at prices that are up to ten times less than their competitors.
When you consider the financial differences, as well as the game-changing features such as video testimonials and reputation badges, there’s simply no valid reason to go with the an alternative.
