Did you know that a product with 5 reviews has a 270% higher purchase likelihood than the same product with no reviews?

Of course you did.

Even if you didn’t know the exact number, you definitely know this advice:
“Add reviews and testimonials → get more upgrades, purchases, even trial starts.”
Not rocket science.

But here’s the thing.

A lot of products I see (including teams I work with) treat testimonials as a 0/1 task: Do we have them? Good, that’s enough.

This is exactly what happened to one of my clients.

They had great testimonials… buried inside huge video chunks on the homepage that no one watched:

Conversion from cold traffic was low.
When we ran some user interviews, the pattern was clear:

“I don’t trust this product enough to convert and honestly, even to spend more time researching it.”

Chasing the 0/1 checkbox makes us forget why testimonials exist in the first place.

The purpose of a testimonial is to:

But for that to work, they have to hit the right psychological triggers.
If they don’t, they won’t stop users from ghosting your website forever.

You can literally paste this into Slack:

If I’m [our ICP] with [our core problem], what evidence do I see here that this product has already solved this exact problem for someone like me — more than once? If yes, does it take me less than 2 seconds to understand them?

If users are scrolling down to testimonials, they’re already interested enough to not bounce on the first screen.

But they’re still hesitant.
At this point, they’re trying to answer three questions in their head:

Fear: “I’m afraid to waste time and energy on something that won’t actually fix my situation.”

Loss aversion/risk aversion – trying a new tool costs time, attention, sometimes political capital. People hate feeling they “lost” those for nothing.

Most testimonials talk about how nice the product is (“love the UI”, “great team”) instead of what problem it actually solved. That doesn’t reduce risk.

Doubt: “Sure, it worked for them. But I doubt they share our problems.”

Similarity bias – we trust proof coming from people who look like us, work like us, or operate at our scale.

Most testimonial sections stack logos of huge companies or random verticals and call it a day. If you’re an early-stage startup or a tiny ops team, seeing “Fortune 500” everywhere can actually push you away: “This is not built for us.”

Fear of shame: “Am I getting fooled?”

Trust / authenticity heuristic – we’re very good at sniffing out generic fluff, and when something feels off, we push back out of fear or at the risk of being shamed and embarrassed.

AI-generated text, stock photos, vague quotes like “They changed our business!” with no context — all of this screams fake, it’s just too polished and nice, like a marketing playbook. Instead of building trust, it creates doubt.

You don’t have to trick users or rush them into conversion.
But you do need to answer these questions in a way that takes seconds, not minutes, to process.

I’ve pulled a couple of examples from Monday. com, Amplitude, and Semrush (screenshots are below).
Let’s look at how strong testimonials answer these three questions — and how you can steal the patterns.

Make sure testimonials describe a clear result tied to a clear problem, not just kind words.

It doesn’t have to be a big shiny number. It can be:

The key: the quote should connect use case → outcome.

The moment you show a clear link: “This problem → this result”, you lower perceived risk and give their brain a concrete outcome to latch onto instead of a fuzzy promise.

Match testimonials to how you segment acquisition:

If you’re selling to early-stage tech startups, putting “Google” and “Walmart” front and center can actually backfire. If your core customers are schools or non-profits, a random fintech logo is just noise.

On a landing page for a specific ICP, highlight stories from that ICP, not your entire logo zoo.

The moment I see “a team like mine” in the quote, I stop doing mental gymnastics. I don’t have to guess whether this could work for us — I have a direct example.

Yes, boy oh boy, this is harder with AI paranoia everywhere. But basics still work:

Real people, concrete details, and little bits of context are hard to fake at scale. They pass the “does this smell like a real human?” test and make the rest of your claims easier to believe.

Here are some great examples of a testimonials section you can use as an inspiration or a direct reference. Go through them and think what you would change to answer those questions even better?

Testimonials can be a growth powerhouse — but only if they answer the right questions, not just hang there and look pretty.

Hi, I’m Anastasia Kudrow, and I write Ghosted.

I am also a product growth consultant. I help SaaS teams apply psychology and PLG to drive upgrades. I run my own project, Growing Pains, and also work with one of the leading PLG consulting agencies, ProductLed, led by Wes Bush.

Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anastasia-kudrow/

Or check out my website, maybe we can work together: https://www.growingpains.consulting/

See you next week!