Are Testimonials Important To Your Website?
By: Gina Hoover © 2007
Testimonials are comments taken from
real clients that talk about your work ethic, product
usage, reliability, timeliness, etc. They can be solicited
or unsolicited. Testimonials should highlight the
benefits of your product/service and include the customers
contact information. Including the customers contact
information makes the testimonials more believable.
It's a common thought that many testimonials that
you read on the web are fake. A fake testimonials
will read something like "John is so amazing,
I'm going to start a new website just so that I can
work with him again..." That's over-exaggerated
and unlikely that a customer made the comment. A real
testimonial will read, something like "John not
only completes projects correctly and on time, he
also makes suggestions that helped to increase my
product sales." All of your testimonials should
be specific and talk about your products. A generic
sounding testimonial like "The product is great, I
liked it very much" really serves no purpose at all
other than filling up space on your website.
Testimonials are very important because
they help your potential customer build trust in you.
They can help to establish credibility especially
if you are a new company. They can also have a positive
effect on the potential customers purchasing decision
by improving conversions. People will feel less skeptical
about purchasing your products/services when they
see "good" feedback from previous buyers.
Sometimes people glaze over testimonials when reading
them because they might be too long. A good idea would
be to not list them as "testimonials" but
rather have a link or section on your website called
"See What Our Clients Are Saying About Us".
You can take your testimonials a step
further by writing case studies. A case study presents
an account of what happened to a business or industry
over a period of time. You can write about how the
customers company was changed or benefited by using
your products/service. Be sure to get some quotes
from the companies director or manager; more than
anything get them to allow you to post a link to the
work completed along with their contact information.
A telephone number or email will do just fine. This
will allow your future prospective clients to contact
them and back up your case study. With the Internet
being so big it can be hard to pick a good vendor
to work with. Testimonials atleast allow a customer
to interact with someone else who has used your products/service
and they'll know they won't get burned. This can give
you a little leverage over the other guy.
If you do decide to use testimonials
on your website just remember to use honest comments
from real customers. Using anything else in the long
run risks permanently damaging your reputation.
About the Author:
Gina Hoover can be reached for questions
about this article at http://www.hooverwebdesign.com.
Gina's company, Hoover Web Design specializes in professional
web site design, web templates, flash photo galleries
and flash music players for beginning Webmasters.
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