Did you know that 90% of online consumers say they’ve had their buying decision influenced by positive reviews? Online reviews are a key form of social proof for businesses, helping to build trust and credibility across platforms like Google, Facebook, and Yelp.
If you’re not yet taking advantage of customer reviews on your site, you could be losing out on valuable traffic and conversions. Displaying reviews on your site can boost customer confidence and lead to more sales by reassuring potential customers about your business quality.
One easy way to add customer reviews to your WordPress site is by using a widget. A WP Google review slider allows you to display your Google Business reviews on your website in an attractive, consumable way.
What are Google reviews?
Google reviews are customer testimonials that appear in search results and on Google Maps listings. They’re a valuable way to build trust with potential customers and improve your SEO.
Positive reviews can improve your click-through rate (CTR) and organic search ranking. One study found that a 1-star increase in Google reviews can lead to a 35% increase in CTR. Displaying Google reviews directly on your website not only builds trust with visitors but also provides SEO benefits by increasing social proof and engagement.
If you’re now interested in adding this option to your website, you’ll need to create a Google My Business profile to get started. Then you can encourage your customers to leave reviews on your Google Business listing. Once you have a few reviews, you should add them to your website.
Why should you use a WP Google review slider on your WooCommerce store?
Reviews are essential for eCommerce because they help build trust with potential customers. Someone who hasn’t purchased from your online store will likely look for social influence like reviews and testimonials to validate your product or service. WooCommerce reviews are another valuable source of customer feedback for online stores, and displaying them alongside Google reviews can further enhance credibility.
One place reviews are visible is on Google’s search engine results page (SERP). However, if customers find you through other mediums such as advertising, social media, or newsletters, they won’t have seen them. You can solve this by embedding a Google review slider into your site.
Adding a review slider directly to your website has the added benefit of displaying it at key stages of a shopper’s experience. If you find many potential customers are abandoning carts at checkout, you can add a review widget at this stage to provide further validation.
Though you have many ways to display reviews, a reviews plugin is the tool that enables the slider functionality. Because of the widget’s efficient use of space while displaying key information, it’s considered best practice to place a review on your home page or after clicking your call to action.
How do I set up a WP Google review slider?
Adding a Google review slider to your site is easy with a plugin. A WordPress Google review plugin makes it simple to embed and manage Google reviews directly on your website. These no-code solutions are big-time savers and allow you to easily place them anywhere on your site.
There are many WordPress Google review plugins available, and each Google reviews plugin offers different features for displaying and managing reviews:
- WooCommerce Google Customer Reviews
- Everest Google Places
- Google Reviews Widget
- WP Review Slider Pro
In this article, we’ll use WP Review Slider Pro as it’s the most intuitive and effective alternative. WP Review Slider Pro is a versatile review plugin that can import reviews from multiple sources. The plugin can import reviews and pull reviews from platforms like Google, Facebook, and Yelp, making it easy to showcase authentic customer feedback. Importing reviews is a key feature for showcasing customer feedback.
The plugin is also very customizable with floating badges, slideouts, and the ability to order your reviews or create new ones based on customer feedback received in person or by email.
You can quickly get started using out-of-the-box templates professional user experience (UX) designers have put together for the best conversions.
Step by Step, adding WP Review Slider Pro
Follow along with this step-by-step guide on adding Google reviews to your website using the WordPress plugin WP Review Slider Pro, including how to create a dedicated reviews page to showcase all your customer feedback. Let’s get started.
1. Create a Google My Business Profile
To allow reviews on your business, you need to register your business with Google. Do this by going to Google Business and clicking “Manage now.” If your business exists and you want to claim it, you can search by location or name; otherwise, click “Create profile.”
If your business has multiple locations, you can register or claim each one to collect reviews for all your branches.
Once you’ve followed the prompts, you’ll have a Google Business under your management. Go to the business profile portal, where you’ll see your Reviews on the left sidebar.
2. Purchase WP Review Slider Pro
To access this plugin’s amazing features, you need to purchase a license. The pro version unlocks advanced features for managing and displaying reviews, such as enhanced customization options and superior review management capabilities. Pricing starts at $29 a year, which is relatively cheap for WordPress Plugins.
Suppose you’re a larger entity or intend on having your website for more than five years. In that case, you can look at some of their other packages, including Business and Agency tiers with the option for a lifetime license.
3. Installing the plugin
Next, we’re going to install the plugin on your WordPress site. To do this, go to the WordPress backend, select Plugins, and click “Add New.”
In the top right corner of the marketplace, type WP Review Slider Pro in the search bar. When it appears, click Install Now.
If you prefer, you can also manually input reviews into the plugin to supplement or customize your review display.
4. Set up your first review slider
You’ve installed the plugin, so you should now see WP Reviews Pro in the sidebar. Clicking this will give you an in-depth dashboard of all the features available to you and how to use them.
You’ll need to activate your plugin by inputting your license key from step 2. This is how your site is authenticated with the service. The plugin also offers a slide-out feature, allowing you to display reviews in an interactive panel that slides out from the side of your webpage. Additionally, you can use review badges to quickly showcase positive feedback and build credibility.
5. Integrating your Google reviews
You’ll notice on the dashboard that many options are available for review sources. We’re going to start with adding your Google ones.
WP Review Slider Pro finds reviews of your business by scanning public resources on Google. To connect the plugin to your Google Business profile, you need to enter your Google API key. Using your own API key helps avoid rate limits and ensures reliable operation. After entering your API key, you can use the ‘Test API Key’ button to verify your connection—watch for any error message that may appear, such as issues with billing or exceeding call limits.
Go to the Business Profile Dashboard from step 1 and press “View on Search.” The SERP should contain everything you need to complete the identification step. If you’re still having trouble, check out this article on Finding your Google Place ID
Now go to the “Get Reviews” tab, where you can input your business information and your API key. If your business has more than one location, you can change the total locations from one to add more. The plugin can import new Google reviews as they are posted.
Another cool feature allows you to set a minimum rating on reviews so that only positive reviews are displayed on your site, effectively hiding negative reviews.
To verify that your reviews have been uploaded to WordPress, go to the Review List. You can see the review content, who wrote it, and edit it if necessary.
6. Review format and display
You’ve integrated your Google reviews, but now you want an appealing way to display them. You’re going to do this with the prebuilt templates feature. You can select or create a review template to control the appearance and layout of your reviews.
Go to the Templates tab where you’ll see 11 layout options for getting started quickly. You can create multiple templates to display reviews in different styles across your site. After selecting a reviews template, you can further customize it by adjusting settings like date format and border radius for a consistent and attractive look. Advanced users can use custom CSS for complete control over the review display.
7. Set up your site to capture reviews
You’re displaying reviews on your site, but don’t you want a way for customers to leave reviews directly on your site? With this plugin, you can collect reviews directly from customers using on-site submission forms. A feature called Review Submission Forms lets you create a form page to capture more new reviews.
Go to the “Forms” tab. You’ll be able to customize questions and input types. You should try and keep your form brief but ask questions about their experience, how you did, and how you could improve. You’re able to feed specific fields back to your reviews for display.
Prompting customers to leave a review on Google or running a Facebook reviews campaign is another great way to increase credibility on other platforms. Reviews on other sites will lead to higher traffic going to your website.
Other notable features
This review slider plugin has a lot to it that we can’t get through right now, but here are some of the other features you should explore. You can play around with them until you’re happy with your website and the user experience for reviews is to your liking.
- Summary Badges: These are groupings of ratings in an easy-to-consume format. The badge might contain a Google logo, your overall rating, and the number of reviews.
- Review Badges: Quickly display positive customer feedback and build credibility by adding review badges to your site.
- Google Rich Snippets: Display star ratings and the number of reviews on the Google SERP under your website description. This can seriously increase CTR by increasing social proof.
- Review Sliders: Have your reviews slide over page content to increase customer attention to them. You can embed review sliders on specific WordPress pages for targeted display.
- Review Analytics: Built-in review analytics allow you to dive deeper into the data for reviews. Explore the review distributions and dates, and whether the reviews are good or bad.
You can display different reviews from various sources, including Yelp reviews, Google, and Facebook, giving you flexibility in how you showcase customer feedback.
Wasn’t that easy? You should now have a beautiful Google review slider on your WordPress site that’s fully integrated and easy to use, like the one below. The plugin gives you complete control over the appearance and placement of your reviews.
Conclusion
People often look to reviews before making a purchase. They do this because they want an idea of the product and service and whether it’s worth their money.
Displaying reviews on your website is a great way to improve social proof and increase conversion rates. WP Review Slider Pro makes it easy to do this with a few clicks. Using this Google reviews WordPress plugin, you can add reviews to your site in a matter of clicks and effectively showcase a WP Google Review slider. Check out their pricing page and take the first steps to get a license.
