Stars Testimonials vs Smush – Image Optimization, Compression, Lazy Load, WebP & CDN

Testimonials help consumers make purchasing decisions. If you’re not already using website testimonials for your brand, then it’s time to start! Most of your website visitors will be looking for reviews from past customers, 84% of consumers say they check for reviews before they make any purchase decision, that’s why social proof is a key part of any website. With the Stars Testimonial plugin, you can easily add WordPress testimonials to your website and increase your social proof. Displaying testimonials on your homepage or showing reviews on any part of your website can boost your credibility, as well as your conversion rates. Start with a Free Version of the Testimonial Grid With Stars Testimonials WordPress testimonial plugin, you’re able to: Create an unlimited amount of testimonials Include star ratings and company name in your reviews Insert an image for the customer testimonial Elementor is 100% supported – add Stars Testimonials element to your Elementor website with ease. All you need to do is look for the Stars Testimonials element, click on it, select your reviews widget from a dropdown, and that’s it! Watch how it works in action 📽️ Create a widget with grid layouts reviews Choose how many testimonials and columns display Change the colors of the reviews widget (background, text, stars, title, and company name) Easily preview, edit, and delete each testimonial Create testimonials widget with our shortcode builder (no coding needed!) Stars testimonials plugin works great with WordPress page builders including Elementor, Divi, Visual Composer, WPBakery, Gutenberg, and more. Upgrade to the Paid Testimonial Review Plugin for More Features The paid version comes with testimonial slider, testimonial wall (masonry), and with everything the free version provides, and more. The additional features you get access to include: A larger selection of layouts – besides just grids – testimonials slider is included! You can also create a reviews wall layout Collect reviews – get more reviews from your visitors. Show a button under your testimonials widget and let your visitors fill out their reviews. You’ll decide which reviews will appear on your website. You can also share a direct link with your customers and ask them to leave a review. Read more button for your client testimonials – if you have long reviews and want to show a shorter version, you can now add a “Read More” button to each review and show the full testimonials on click. You can decide what will be the character limit for your reviews. Reviews rating compatibility with Google snippets – allow Google to index your clients’ testimonials ratings and show them in the search results. More widget styles (17 beautiful testimonial layouts) Additional color and design options Upgrade to Pro 🚀 Collect Reviews From Your Website’s Visitors If you’re using the Pro version, you can easily collect reviews from your website’s visitors: Collect testimonials with ease by showing a button under your testimonials, your visitors will be able to submit testimonials. Control which testimonials are shown and which aren’t. The testimonials will be added to your website only after you approve the testimonials. You can also create a direct link for testimonials submission. Use our direct link and send it to your clients so they can submit their testimonial Live Demo A live demo of Stars Testimonials plugin is available at Premio’s demo site. In the demo page you can see some of Stars Testimonials’ layouts. Need more help? Check out our Stars Testimonials user guide Create Testimonials that Are Mobile-Friendly Using Testimonial Plugin It’s not enough to just display testimonials on your website. If your testimonial slider or testimonial carousel shows up wonky on mobile devices, then it defeats the purpose of the testimonials. This is why it’s critical to ensure your testimonials are mobile-friendly, especially with nearly 5 billion mobile device users across the world. With the Stars Testimonials plugin, you don’t have to worry about this. All of your testimonials will display on mobile devices in a way that’s accessible and legible. Why Testimonials and Reviews Are Important for Business It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in – testimonials are an indication of the quality of your products and services. A whopping 84% of consumers trust online reviews, which provides them with first-hand knowledge about a brand. If your company has an onslaught of negative online reviews, then your business will suffer tremendously. This is because the majority of online users are using Google to find info about a brand before doing business with them. About 82% of smartphone users consult with the web before making a purchase in-store. But it’s not just in-store purchases online reviews affect. Eighty-eight percent of consumers conduct online searches before making a purchase from both online and physical stores. By taking charge of your online reputation and displaying testimonials on your website, you can help convert more visitors into paying customers. Use Cases for Review Plugin There are several ways businesses can use website testimonials to grow their sales. Let’s take a look at a few. Get More Local Clients If you’re a local dental office, clinic, realtor, or other professional, you can use testimonials to drive more foot traffic to your business. With the testimonial slider implemented onto your homepage, you can show off customers’ reviews. Prospects see it and decide to schedule an appointment with your office. Increase Your Subscriptions Trying to grow your email subscriber list? Then you can use a testimonial carousel on your landing page to drive more visitors to sign up. You can display the testimonial rotator at the bottom of your blog posts or on a specific landing page designed to convince visitors to sign up for your newsletter. Your email list is a key component in a marketing strategy, as it can help boost your conversions. Boost Your Online Sales Selling products and services online? Then you can bet your visitors are going to look for peer reviews before buying from your brand. You can help steer them towards purchase by showcasing your testimonials on multiple areas of your site. For example, on the home page, products or services page, and about us page. When prospects see images, star ratings, and reviews from happy customers, they’re more inclined to make the purchase. These are just some of the use cases for implementing WordPress review plugins to grow your business. Create a Testimonials Page If you want to gain more trust and social proof, you can easily create a testimonials page with all of your customers’ reviews. All you need to do is to create a new page and embed a shortcode that includes all your testimonials. Works Great With The New Gutenberg Editor Stars Testimonials plugin was tested with the new Gutenberg editor on WordPress 5 version and also on previous WordPress versions with Gutenberg. GDPR and Privacy Stars Testimonials plugin is GDPR compliant: We don’t store any visitor or user data We don’t send any data to remote servers Our plugin is only used to showcase testimonials on your website Start Using Stars Testimonials Today! Ready to start converting more visitors into customers? Then it’s time to show off how great your products and services are using our testimonial plugin. Download the Stars Testimonial plugin today and get started designing your testimonial widget! The plugin uses 3rd party API that allows users to submit feedback directly. The data is sent if you decide to deactivate the plugin and it includes your only data your agree to share like your email and reason for deactivation (both are optional fields). Your email will also be added to our email marketing platform with your consent (with the option to unsubscribe at any point). You can review the Terms of service and Privacy policy. Testimonials “It’s really helpfull – recommendable! This plugin is used in my website, it is perfect in the All. Support is great, very fast answer & action! Recommendable!” Biljana Bili Wechsler, Bilifotos

Compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load automatically with the powerful Smush image optimizer to keep your WordPress site fast, without losing quality. Smush makes it easy to optimize images, compress images, and deliver images faster across your entire WordPress site. This all-in-one image optimizer automatically reduces image file sizes, enables image lazy load, and serves modern formats like WebP and AVIF, all without breaking image quality or adding extra work. Whether you’re running a blog, store, or portfolio, Smush helps you optimize images at scale and keep your site fast with a trusted WordPress image optimizer. Trusted by 1+ Million Sites | 4.8/5 Star Rating Get everything you need to optimize images and speed up your site. Smush works out of the box with no complicated setup – just install and let it handle the rest. Compress images without losing quality Reduce image file size automatically while keeping your images sharp and clear. Smush is an easy-to-use image optimizer which let’s you compress images using both lossless and lossy compression, giving you the best balance of quality and performance without extra work. You can also compress images outside the media library using Directory Smush, making it easy to optimize images stored in theme folders, plugins, or other directories on your server. Lazy load images for faster pages Enable image lazy load across your site so images load only when needed. This image optimizer improves initial page speed and creates a smoother experience for visitors without extra configuration. Serve WebP and AVIF images automatically (PRO) Convert images to WebP and AVIF and serve them automatically to supported browsers. Smush helps you optimize images using next-gen formats to reduce file size and improve load times across your WordPress site. Deliver images faster with an Image CDN (PRO) Serve images through a global image CDN to reduce latency and improve load times for visitors around the world. 119 global CDN servers Up to 500 GB of bandwidth Faster image delivery based on visitor location Improved performance for image-heavy and high-traffic sites Automatically resize and fix image dimensions (PRO) Eliminate common PageSpeed warnings and improve layout stability with automatic image sizing. Smush dynamically resizes images to perfectly fit their containers, regardless of original size, helping fix the “Properly size images” warning in Google PageSpeed Insights. It also automatically adds missing width and height attributes to your images, improving rendering speed and reducing layout shifts. This helps you meet the “Ensure images have explicit width and height” recommendation without any manual work. Optimize your entire site, automatically Smush works across your whole site as a powerful image optimizer to optimize images as you upload them and maintain performance over time without manual work. Optimize images automatically on upload Compress images in bulk or individually Works with your existing media library No need to re-upload images Enable image lazy load across your site Convert images to WebP and AVIF Deliver images with an integrated image CDN Automatically resize and serve correctly sized images Optimize images outside the media library with Directory Smush Built for performance Smush improves page speed and overall performance by reducing image weight and improving how images are delivered. Reduce page load times Improve user experience Better performance for image-heavy pages Supports image lazy load and preload images (PRO) for faster perceived performance Works with your existing setup Smush is built to work with your current WordPress setup, including popular themes, page builders, and plugins. Compatible with Gutenberg, Elementor, WPBakery, and more Works with WooCommerce stores No need to change your workflow Easy to enable and configure Designed to be simple You don’t need to be a performance expert to optimize images with Smush image optimizer. Works out of the box Simple settings when you need them No technical knowledge required Safe to use on any site Why choose Smush? There are plenty of image optimization plugins, but Smush focuses on making it easy to optimize images, compress images, and improve performance without complexity. As a leading WordPress image optimizer, Smush gives you powerful optimization tools without the technical hassle. Trusted by over 1 million WordPress users Built specifically for WordPress Regular updates and improvements Backed by the WPMU DEV team Get started in minutes Install Smush, activate it, and start to compress images, optimize images, and enable image lazy load right away. This easy-to-use image optimizer helps most sites see improvements immediately without changing how they upload or manage images. About Us WPMU DEV is a premium supplier of quality WordPress plugins, services and support. Learn more here: https://wpmudev.com/ Don’t forget to stay up to date on everything WordPress from the Internet’s number one resource: WPMU DEV Blog Hey, one more thing… we hope you enjoy our free offerings as much as we’ve loved making them for you! Contact and Credits Originally written by Alex Dunae at Dialect (dialect.ca, e-mail ‘alex’ at ‘dialect dot ca’), 2008-11.