Collect Customer Testimonials From WordPress Form Submissions

How often do you read reviews and testimonials before purchasing a product or service? Probably pretty often. You know that social proof can have a big impact, but did you know it’s pretty easy to add it to your own site? With just a few tools, you can collect customer testimonials and display them on your website.

In this post, I’m going to show you how you can create custom testimonial forms and display your best reviews on your site automatically.

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Collect Customer Testimonials From WordPress Form Submissions

There are numerous testimonial plugins available in WordPress. The downside is that you’re limited in how much you can customize the forms they offer you, meaning you might not be able to collect all the information you want.

For this reason, you can connect a form builder like WPForms with a testimonial plugin. Then you can use a custom form to collect customer testimonials. Those results will come right into the testimonial plugin for you to review.

If it seems confusing, don’t worry. I’m going to walk you through each step and show you exactly what you need to do. By the time you reach the bottom of this post, you’ll be ready to collect and display your testimonials for all to see!

What You’ll Need For This Tutorial

To help ensure a smooth process, please make sure you have these 2 plugins installed and activated on your site:

• WPForms – We will use this to create your custom testimonial form. You will need to have a Pro license or higher to access the required Post Submissions addon, as well.
• Strong Testimonials – This plugin is available as a free download on WordPress.

If you need some help with installing a WordPress plugin, check out this step-by-step guide. If you’re not sure how to activate the Post Submissions addon in WPForms, this guide will show you how to activate WPForms addons.

Why Collect Customer Testimonials With WPForms and Strong Testimonials?

Step 1: Create a Testimonial Form in WPForms

The first thing we need to do is create a testimonial form in WPForms. Fortunately, this won’t take very long because there are several templates available to speed up the process.

First, with your WordPress dashboard open, navigate to WPForms » Add New.

The form builder will open and ask you to name your form and either start with a blank form or select a form template. You can search for testimonial forms and several options will come back.

For the purpose of following along with this tutorial, I recommend selecting the one called Testimonial Form. That’s the one I’m going to use for all of the examples in this guide. Once you understand how the form mapping works, you can choose another one if you’d like.

All WPForms templates are 100% customizable, so you can use them as-is or make them your own. Thinking about the testimonial content I want to display, I’m going to make some changes to my form as follows:

• Remove the dropdown list for “What product/service do you use?”
• Remove the radio buttons for “May we post your testimonial on our website?”
• Change the title of the paragraph text field from “Tell us what you think about the product/service” to “Testimonial”.
• Add a single line text field with the title “Headline.”
• Add a rating field.
• Add a checkbox to the bottom that users must select to acknowledge that testimonials may be published.

This is what the bottom half of my form now looks like after making those updates.

You can also click on Settings from the left menu and configure any settings you like.

• General: Update the form name, description, tags, button text, and CSS
• Spam Protection & Security: Enable spam protection using built-in tools from WPForms, reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Custom Captcha, or Akismet.
• Notifications: Set up the notification emails that are sent when someone submits your form.
• Confirmations: Make adjustments to how and where users see submission confirmations.

Other settings you see there depend on the addons you have installed. Because you activated the Post Submissions addon before we got started, you’ll see that one there, too. You can leave that one for now. We’ll come back to it in a bit when it’s time to map form fields.

When your form is updated to your liking, click Save in the top right of the form builder.

After you’ve saved, leave this window open. Open a new window or tab and navigate back to the WordPress dashboard for the next step. The upcoming steps will be easier if you have WPForms and Strong Testimonials open at the same time so you can work with both.

Step 2: Configure the Strong Testimonials Plugin

Create a New View

The first thing we’re going to do is set up a view that collects your customer testimonials. In the new tab or window where you opened your WordPress dashboard at the end of Step 1, navigate to Testimonials » Views » Add New.

When you click Add New, the new view screen will open for you to configure it. The first thing you’ll do is give the view a name. I just chose “Testimonials” for mine.

As you scroll down this screen, there are additional settings you can configure to personalize the look of your testimonials. The Mode lets you decide how you will display the testimonials, whether as a list with a layout or in a slider, for example.

You can also update query settings, if desired, and choose the layout, background, fonts, etc.

When you’ve made your way down through the settings, don’t forget to click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen.

Map Your Form Fields

This is arguably the most important step in the whole process. It’s the one where you map the form fields together to connect your form with the Strong Testimonials plugin.

After saving your settings on the last screen, go to the left-side navigation bar and click on Testimonials » Form.

On that page, you’ll see the form options that Strong Testimonials offers.

Since you’re using a custom form instead of a Strong Testimonials form, we need to map the fields. Leave this screen open and switch to the tab with WPForms.

With your form open, click on Settings in the menu on the left and then choose Post Submissions.

Next, you’ll see the option for Enable Post Submissions. Use the toggle switch to enable post submissions.

After you enable post submissions, more options will appear.

The first 3 options let you map the title, post content, and post excerpt to the respective fields on your form.

In this case, you want to map:

• Post Title to Headline
• Post Content to Testimonial
• Post Excerpt to Testimonial (optional – you can leave this blank if you want)

When you collect customer testimonials with your form, they’re going to come to the Strong Testimonials app, so to ensure everything is received and displayed properly, it’s important to take your time with this step.

As you continue down the page, there are more options to map.

• Post Featured Image: Map this to the field on your form that is collecting images. In the case of our example, it’s the “Upload an image of yourself” field. If something is uploaded, it will display with the testimony.
• Post Type: The post type should be set to Testimonials. As long as you have Strong Testimonials installed, you will see it as an option. It’s very important that the post type is set to Testimonials!
• Post Status: Set this to Pending Review so that you can review testimonials before they’re published to your site.
• Post Author: Set this to Current User.

Next is the Custom Post Meta. This is where you will need to flip back and forth between Strong Testimonials and WPForms.

In your Strong Testimonials tab, click the dropdown arrow to expand the first form field, Full Name. When you do, you’ll see the field name. This is automatically populated in all of the default fields. Copy client_name from this field.

Now switch back over to your WPForms tab. Below the Custom Post Meta heading, paste client_name in the box on the left. In the dropdown on the right, select Name.

This effectively maps the name field from your testimonial form in WPForms to the name field in Strong Testimonials for display purposes.

The next item on the list in Strong Testimonials is Email. Click that dropdown arrow.

Just like before, copy the lowercase text from the name field. Then flip back over to your WPForms tab and click the blue + next to the Name field that you just added. This will add another row to the custom post meta list.

On that next line, past the text from Strong Testimonials and then map it to the email field on your form.

Continue down through the list, mapping the fields that you have on your form. If you’re using the template as we’ve set it up, you won’t need to add any new fields in Strong Testimonials, but there is a button at the bottom if you want to in the future or with more complex forms.

For example, if you wanted to show a record of the user marking the checkbox to give permission to publish the testimonial, you could add a checkbox field and map it to the checkbox field in your custom post meta in WPForms.

For now, when you finish mapping everything, you should have something that looks like this:

These custom post meta fields, along with the fields that you mapped in the dropdowns above, will ensure that the data you want comes into Strong Testimonials, where you can easily publish it.

Don’t forget to save your work here!

Take a second to give yourself a pat on the back. Because of its complexity, this was the hardest step, and you finished it like a champ!

Step 3: Embed Your Form

Now that you’ve mapped all the form fields between the Strong Testimonials plugin and the Post Submissions addon settings in WPForms, you’re ready to embed your form on your website and take it live.

If you’re still looking at the Post Submissions addon settings in WPForms, click on Fields in the left menu to return to the form builder.

There are 3 ways to embed forms using WPForms, and which one you choose really is up to your personal preference. If you want to embed your form in a sidebar or footer, using the shortcode might be easiest. For this tutorial, I’m going to embed the form on a page on my site.

It never hurts to save your progress again, just to be safe. After that, click on the Embed button in the top right.

A modal window will open, giving you the choice between embedding the form on an existing page or creating a new one.

If you have a page already set up, you can choose that. When you select the page from the dropdown, it will open and you’ll need to use the WPForms block widget to embed the form.

But I’m going to create a completely new page, so I’ll select that option.

When you select the option to Create New Page, another modal prompts you to name the page. Keep in mind that what you choose here will not only be the name of your page, but will also end up in the slug of the URL, so choose something that makes sense and will be user-friendly.

After you name the page, click Let’s Go!

The new page will open and you’ll see the form is embedded. Now is the time to add anything else you’d like to add to the page. I’m going to add some introductory text above the form embed.

You can also add images and additional page content. Customize it to match your site. When you’re finished, click the blue Publish button in the top left.

Congratulations! Your form is live! Now we have to set up your testimonial display. Don’t worry. It’s easy.

Step 4: Create Your Testimonial Display

Now that your form is live on your website and ready to collect customer testimonials, it’s time to set up the testimonial display. This is where the social proof comes in.

First, you’ll need to decide where on your site you want to display your testimonials. It could be a standalone page of its own, in a sidebar, widget, footer, or wherever you want it to be. Whatever it is, make sure you’ve got it open and ready for updates in WordPress.

The easiest way to create your testimonial display is by using the Strong Testimonials block in the WordPress block editor. For my example, I’m going to add testimonials to my testimonial page, in a slider above the form. With that page open, I’ll add a new block and search for Strong Testimonial View. When that comes up, select it.

What this is going to do is allow you to add the view that you created in Strong Testimonials in Step 2 above.

As soon as you select Strong Testimonial View, the widget opens and there is a dropdown for you to select the view you want to display. If this tutorial is your first time going through, you probably only have one view there. But you could theoretically create different views to display on different pages on your site.

If you want to double-check your settings or make any changes, you just need to click Edit Settings below the view dropdown. That will take you to the page where you set up the view. So for example, if your customer testimonials are set to display in a line and you want them to be in a slideshow, you can click that link and update the mode on the view settings page.

It’s important to note that you’re only going to see the widget in the page editor. You’ll see the actual testimonials on the live page once you have them, which takes us to our final step: publishing your testimonials.

When you’re finished, click Save in the top right of the page editor.

Step 5: Publish Your Testimonials

You’re in the home stretch now. You created and published a form to collect customer testimonials. You configured the settings in Strong Testimonial so you can manage those reviews. You mapped all the fields between WPForms and Strong Testimonials. You set up the widget to display your reviews.

Now all you have to do is manage your customer testimonials as they come in.

Because of the settings we configured, every testimonial you receive will come in with the post status automatically set to Pending. This means you can review them before they go live on your site.

You’ll know when you have customer testimonials to review because you’ll see an alert notification in WordPress. You can also get email notifications of a form submission from WPForms.

When you see that alert, click on it and you’ll see your customer testimonials there in much the same way you see a list of your WordPress posts and pages.

The layout might look a little chaotic like it does in my example here. That’s just because of all of the fields that we mapped and the information we’re collecting. Remember the Headline field we created on our form? That’s now the review title, and you can click on it to see the full review in the WordPress editor, so go ahead and do that.

If you like the review and want to feature it on your site, click Publish.

Keep up with your reviews so you have plenty to showcase. Once you’ve published a testimonial here, it’s published to the view you created. Since we published that view on our website, it should now be populated with customer testimonials that you’ve collected.

My view was set to display customer testimonials as a slideshow. Now that I’ve published the testimonials I’ve received, I see that review displayed where I added the Strong Testimonials block when I view my site.

Remember, you can always change the look of your view by updating the settings in Strong Testimonials. For example, maybe you want to show more than one review at a time in your slider. You can do that if you like.

And that’s it! Now you know how to collect customer testimonials with a custom form and display them on your website. Nice work!

Next, Learn How to Manage Your Invoicing in WordPress

After this tutorial, you’re on your way to becoming a power user. And if you’re running a business where you’re collecting testimonials, there’s a good chance you’re also managing invoicing. Are you looking for ways to do that in WordPress? If so, check out our post to learn 2 ways to bill smarter, not harder.

Do you manage events for your business? If so, you’ll also want to check out our guide to using the WPForms Repeater Field and Google Sheets to streamline event management.

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