Testimonial Element Feedback

Beta
#1

Hi!

I have played a bit with a new Testimonial Element. Here are my thoughts:

1.
With this layout, the Citation text cannot be centered by the Text-align options. Only by Left-Right auto margins:

2.
The popular layout where the content is inside a box, and the image is above with a negative bottom margin, cannot be achieved due to the fact that there is no option for x-testimonial-content background. Also there are no padding options for the content.
I have made this using custom CSS:

3.
Star rating option would be great. Turn on/off stars, select positioning, color, size and number of stars, or assign custom star image.

4.
An option to Turn Review Schema on/off would be real something: Choose between Critic Review of Review snippet. If stars are turned on, also add Rating Schema.

5.
An option to turn on a link to the full review would be great. If this option is set to “on” then the Schema is Critic Review. If not, then the Schema is Review Snippet.

1 Like
#2

Great points here. I’ll bring this to the team for some more discussion. This would help make the Testimonial element a bit more distinct from the Quote element as well.

2 Likes
#3

I’ll add in here: since you’re adding reviews as per the FB post, make sure you swap out the image/icons with readable text for screen readers :slight_smile:

I believe it would be a simple as wrapping them like this:

<div role="img" aria-label="Rated 4 out of 5"> ... </div>

2 Likes
#4

Hey Michael! Thanks for bringing this up. We were able to get that in place! We’re pretty close to having the revamped Testimonial ready, then we’ll do another beta.

#5

Beta6 is now available. Try out the updated testimonial and let us know what you think!

#6

Hi @alexander!

Looks nice!

Here are two things:

Structured data error is being reported in the Structured Data Testing Tool.

Missing '}' or object member name.

An option to link to the full review would be great (Basically another part of the element with a link and the link text).
Also an option to add the headline that is used to highlight a short snippet from the review. However, both of these can be added as HTML inside the Review content, so not too big of a deal.

I have played with design variations and haven’t run into the situation where custom code is needed. Great work!
:slightly_smiling_face: :thumbsup:

#7

Beta 7:

This is interesting. Google doesn’t state the image to be a required property for the Review snippet, yet in their Coder examples they always have an image, and the Review element fails the Structured data testing tool due to the empty “Image” value.

#8

Howdy, @Misho!

Thanks for writing in and for your feedback, it was helpful in letting us get things sorted out on the last iteration. In the most recent release, we’ve actually included a few extra controls in the Schema box, including an image upload (along with “Telephone” and “Address” inputs):

I tested all of these new inputs with the structured data testing tool and everything seemed to be in order on my end. Can you confirm that things are working for you with these new controls? If you’re still experiencing an issue, feel free to let me know some more details so I can look into things a bit further.

Thanks!

#9

Oh, I have completely missed the new fields. Sorry. :slight_smile:

Yes, this validates nicely!

One thing that would be nice is the toggle to visually hide the stars, as they don’t always fit in the Review element design.

Or we can just do

.x-rating {
    display: none;
}

:slight_smile:

#10

@Misho, glad to hear things are validating well! The star markup and the schema sort of go hand in hand as we’ve abstracted all of that into the “Rating” partial, which is then utilized by the Testimonial. I think the best thing to do for hiding stars when you don’t need them visually (but still want schema) would be to hide them using Element CSS as you mentioned above.

#11

Hi guys,

I guess most people know already that Google just made a change how stars are being shown. They will work if reviews are made about third parties, but they won’t show up anymore if they are referring to the Website’s business itself.

So the best course of action is not to turn the review schema on if the Testimonials are being used as Social proof.
Testimonials are still doing their job when seen on the site itself, as long as the Reviewer’s names are not generic, like “John”, “Tracy P.” and so on.

#12

Right, and we wanted schema to be totally optional because there are even some unique design possibilities for the Rating and Testimonial element outside of their general nature. For example, Rating could be used to graphically represent a number of steps in a process. (Step 1/10 with filled bullets for example.)

1 Like