Written reviews still matter, nobody’s arguing Google Reviews are dead. But if you’re choosing where to put your next bit of budget or time, it’s worth understanding what each format is actually doing for you, because they’re not interchangeable.
A written review is fast to consume and easy to scan. Five stars, a couple of sentences, done. It works because it’s quick however that speed is also its weakness. Text is easy to fake, and on some level, everyone knows it. We’ve all seen reviews that feel suspiciously polished, or suspiciously vague. There’s a low-grade scepticism that sits under written reviews now, even genuine ones.
A video testimonial doesn’t have that problem. You can’t fake a real person’s face, tone, pauses, and body language. When someone watches an actual customer talk through their actual experience, with all the small imperfections that come with real speech, it reads as unmistakably real. That’s the entire value proposition of video testimonials: they short-circuit scepticism in a way text can’t.
There’s also a completeness to video that text can’t match. A written review might say “great service, highly recommend.” A video testimonial captures the specific problem the customer had, the moment they realised it was solved, the tone in their voice when they talk about the result. That’s the actual story your next customer needs to hear to make their own decision, and it’s very hard to get that nuance into three sentences on a review site.
That said, we wouldn’t tell anyone to drop written reviews. They’re still doing important work. They’re what people find when they search your business name, they build volume, and they’re low-friction for the customer to leave. Video testimonials are a different tool for a different job: they belong on your website, your service pages, your sales conversations, your social proof in ads. They’re the deeper layer that closes someone who’s already interested but not quite convinced.
If we’re being honest about the real answer here, it’s not “either or” it’s sequencing. Written reviews get you found and build baseline trust at scale. Video testimonials get you chosen once someone’s actually weighing you up against a competitor. The businesses getting the most out of their social proof are usually running both, deliberately, rather than treating testimonials as an afterthought they’ll “get to eventually.”
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