Excited! Testimonials Showcase for WordPress Review

If you want to sell a product or a service on your WordPress website, testimonials from customers can be a huge asset. You can sell yourself all you want, but unbiased opinions can make a difference. Testimonials are key because they can prompt people to buy. By using testimonials with photos, text and ratings on your site, you are getting free endorsements. This adds social proof as well as insight as to what it’s like to be your customer.

Excited! Testimonials Showcase is a plugin that enables you to post a variety of testimonials on your WordPress website using shortcodes. Easily manage, edit, create and delete testimonials without coding. Use it to showcase your services or products. It’s an add-on for Visual Composer and works with shortcodes. There are many options to style and configure the display. You can add random testimonials to any page or in any widget area. Display testimonials in many formats and add ratings.

Benefits of Testimonials

Aside from free promotion, adding testimonials to your website is hands down one of the easiest ways to upgrade your website. A good testimonial can boost your selling power much more than other forms of promotional content. Why are testimonials so effective?

1. Testimonials help build social proof. It’s the same principle as if you see a long line for a food stand. Many times others will jump in line to see what the fuss is all about.
2. Testimonials build trust. Customers that have good things to say about you are letting your visitors know that you have provided them with a positive experience. How many times have you tried a product after you’ve heard great things about it?
3. Testimonials don’t sound “canned.” This means they don’t sound like contrived sales pitches that go in one ear and out the other.
4. A good testimonial can convert a skeptic that is less likely to buy right away. I know I’ve gone through hundreds of testimonials to decide on products I was on the fence about.

Excited Testimonials Features

Excited is simple, yet it has many features to help you get a unique testimonials showcase to fit into your WordPress website. First off you can integrate this plugin with Visual Composer to make page building easy or paste it in as a shortcode. Add rich snippits to get attention from search engines and human beings alike.

There are multiple options for displaying and styling. Add your own icons, play with colors and choose from a number of fx. Choose between a one or two column layout for the submission form. With these two basic options, you have the chance to add your own variations when it comes to the submission form.

Features

• Intuitive UI
• Average score shortcode
• 100% Responsive
• Completely customizable
• Unlimited design possibilities
• Drag and Drop Editor
• Rich snippets support
• Submission form
• Integrates with Visual Composer
• Multiple ratings systems
• Multiple layout options
• Choose styles for each layout
• Social Icon bar
• Filter by date, random or order
• WPML Ready
• Sliding Panels
• Sliding scroll option

Following is a rundown on some of the types of testimonials you can publish with this versatile plugin. The demo content from the developers shows just a little bit of what you can do with Excited! Testimonials. These are just demos, there are unlimited design possibilities available.

Grid – The grid offers the most information of all the layouts. There are many ways to build a nice testimonial grid. Below is a grid with tabs that categorize testimonials in various ways based on tags that you choose when adding a single testimonial.

Single – You can let the testimonials display one at a time with single testimonials. Use a slider to allow visitors to scroll through testimonials and choose between two templates.

Widget – Add testimonials to any area via a widget. Use a slider to allow people to scroll through testimonials. Here’s what the developers at Looks-Awesome had to say about widgets:

“Basically widgets are simplified version of Grid layouts. It is automatically supply with slider and show one testimonial at the same time. There are more widget features on the way.”

Ratings Summary – There are options to add ratings in different ways. Choose from a scale of 1 to 5, 1 to 10, 1 to 100 or 5 stars/icons. Give your visitors a visual summary of all the ratings to show an average score with a shortcode. Also display a submission button underneath so they can add their own rating.

Sliding Panels – The sliding panel testimonials are pretty cool and reminiscent of the Ninja Kick Series. When a visitor clicks on a testimonial, a panel slides out and the background content is dimmed. The sliding panels are rich and can contain large, beautiful testimonials that look cool on mobile phones and tablets as well as desktops.

Walkthrough

I’d like to do a walkthrough for creating each of the types of testimonials on demo pages for Excited! Testimonials Showcase for WordPress.  First lets start with a look at the dashboard, then we will create a testimonial. After you install the plugin click on Testimonials in your dashboard menu.

From the main panel you’ll see all your testimonials and groups. You can add testimonials from the main panel or have visitors of your site submit them through the the submission form. Here you can also access the settings and open up a help/tips window.

If you click the button to the right of the plus sign in the top right of your screen you will open up the settings. These are very basic settings allowing you to change user access and adjust the reCaptcha.

Close out that window and go back to the main panel. From there you can open up a helpful window full of tips by clicking on the question mark on the top right of the plugin panel.

To add a testimonial, from the main panel, click on the plus sign and choose “ADD TESTIMONIAL” or click on the form field under ALL TESTIMONIALS, fill it in and hit enter.

You will be brought to the Add Testimonial screen. Add a photo here, and fill in the fields you wish to fill in. 

Scroll down and you’ll see more fields to fill out including a short review and a long review.

Scroll down further and you will see forms to fill out for contacts and social profiles. 

After you have added or approved the testimonials you want, you can create groups and add the shortcodes to your website. Create groups by clicking the plus button or by filling in the form field under MY GROUPS and hit ENTER. 

Once you have created a group you can highlight GROUP, SUMMARY or FORM to get the shortcode.

Click the + sign under the group you’ve created. In my case it’s “Excited Customers!” This will open up the edit group panel. Fill in the form fields you wish to fill in. Drag and drop testimonials into the group 

I want all the testimonials to go into this group, so I will choose the “PUSH ALL” to add everyone at once. You can drag and drop the pictures to rearrange the order of your testimonials. 

Scroll down and now we get to the good stuff! The Builder and the Settings for the layout and behavior. Here is the heart of the plugin, where you can customize the display and behavior. Change the font, corners, borders of the testimonial text, submission form and more. Edit the size, shape etc. of the photo, change positioning of any element and add or remove any element. 

Play around with the setting until you are happy and simply paste the shortcode from the main panel into your post, page or widget area. Below is our testimonial showcase. I used the Grid layout and added two categories: “Ladies” and “Gentlemen.” The category “Everyone” is created by default. 

Wrap Up

It took me around ten minutes to create this testimonial, and my internet connection isn’t the best at the moment. It’s easy to put up some effective testimonials in a very short amount of time with this plugin. It’s lightweight, very easy to navigate and produces excellent results. You can go further by adding your own custom CSS to make things pixel perfect on your website. I enjoyed taking this plugin for a spin and will post some more testimonials soon as I dive deeper into it. Let us know in the comments if you have any favorite plugins for testimonials or requests for demos.