Guide
How to use customer reviews in your website copy
Find the phrases that more than one customer uses, then put them where a visitor decides: your headline, your first paragraph and your buttons. Your customers have already said what you do, in the words people like them use. You borrow their words instead of making up your own.
This guide shows how to do it by hand in four steps. The free brand voice checker does the counting for you.
Why your customers' words work better than yours
People look for their own words. Nielsen Norman Group's usability rules ask sites to speak the user's language, in words they know, not the team's jargon (Nielsen Norman Group, 10 usability heuristics).
People search in their own words too. Google's guide for site owners gives its own example: some people search for charcuterie, and others for a cheese board (Google Search Central, SEO starter guide).
And it has paid off in a test. Copyhackers took a rehab centre's homepage headline from what people wrote in Amazon reviews of books on the subject. Form submissions on the next page rose by more than 20% (Copyhackers, 2014). That is one test on one site, not a rule, but it is the idea in action.
Step 1: Gather what your customers wrote
Collect it from wherever you have it. That means reviews on Google or a review site, testimonials, survey answers, emails from happy customers and social media comments. Copy each one as it was written. Keep their spelling and their odd turns of phrase, because that is the part you are looking for.
Aim for at least 12. With fewer, one chatty customer can look like a pattern. That is why the brand voice checker asks for 12 before it shows anything.
Take out names, email addresses and phone numbers before you share the list with anyone. You need what they said, not who said it.
Step 2: Count the phrases that more than one customer uses
A phrase in one review is one person's way of saying it. A phrase in five reviews is how your customers talk.
Read each review and write down its short phrases, two to five words long, about what you did for them. Look for the problem they had, what you did and what changed. Then count how many separate reviews use each phrase. Count a review once, even if it says the phrase twice. Leave out names, dates and star ratings.
Sort the list so the phrases most reviews share come first. The top few are your raw material.
Doing this by hand takes a while. The brand voice checker does the same count. Paste 12 or more reviews, and it shows the phrases two or more of them share, with names taken out. The phrases most reviews use come first. Nothing you paste is kept.
Step 3: Put their phrases where a visitor decides
Most visitors read your headline, maybe the first paragraph, and a button. That is where your customers' words do the most work.
- Headline: the thing most customers say you did for them.
- First paragraph: the problem in the words customers used for it.
- Buttons and links: plain words a customer would use, not your team's terms.
How a team writes itIndustry-leading customer support
How customers say itThey got back to me the same day
How a team writes itFast, reliable fulfilment on every order
How customers say itIt arrived the next morning
Keep their words as they are. Swapping one of them for a grander word loses what made it theirs.
Step 4: Check your page against them
Go through your homepage one sentence at a time. Where you say something your customers say another way, write the two side by side: your sentence, then theirs. Those gaps are where to start.
The brand voice checker does this for your homepage too. After it finds your customers' phrases, give it your homepage's address. It shows how your wording compares, with the three gaps your customers would notice first.
What to avoid
- Building a page from your favourite review. One review is one voice. Use the phrases many customers share.
- Changing a review you quote. If you quote a review word for word, keep it as they wrote it. Quote a review only where you have permission to.
- Promising what one customer got. A customer can say it arrived the next morning. Your headline can only say it if it is true for everyone.
- Letting a writing tool smooth their words away. AI writing tools reach for the same stock words and phrases. The AI cliché checker marks those, with a plainer way to say each.
Keeping it up for a whole team
Doing this once for your homepage is a good start. Keeping it up is harder. New reviews arrive, and everyone who writes for you, in emails, proposals and posts, drifts back to their own words.
Copytone keeps the count of your customers' phrases and checks what your team writes against them, page by page and in its editor. When you ask, it suggests a version in your customers' words. A person decides every change. See how Copytone works.
Questions
How many reviews do I need?
At least 12 to see a pattern, and more is better. Survey answers, emails and social comments count too. A phrase is worth using when two or more separate customers use it.
What if my customers don't leave many reviews?
Use what else they write: survey answers, emails and messages, and comments on social media. If you have very few, Copyhackers suggests reading reviews of similar products to learn how buyers talk. Use those to learn their words, not to quote on your site.
Should I correct a review's spelling before I use it?
Not in a quote. A quote should say what the customer wrote. When you use their phrase in your own sentence, you can fit it to the sentence. It should still mean what they meant.
More free tools
- Brand voice checkerFind the phrases your customers share, then see if your homepage uses them.
- AI cliché checkerSee which words and phrases make your website sound like ChatGPT, with a plainer way to say each.
- Plain English checkerFind the words and long sentences that make writing harder to read, with what to say instead.
- Readability checkerSee your writing's reading level as a reading age or a US grade, against the NHS, Australia's Style Manual or WCAG.
- Tone of voice guidelines templateA guide to how your business sounds, with a section for the words your customers use.
By Owen Fisher, Copytone. Last reviewed 14 October 2026.