Do you collect your customers’ testimonials as a stack of letters, postcards and printed emails on the corner of your desk? Or even worse, you’re not collecting any?
It’s time to build trust and confidence with your online visitors and potential customers!
We live in an era where the quality and efficiency of your online presence is paramount.
Adding the testimonials you’re received from your customers on your website can improve the quality of your online image and increase trust and therefore sales.
Where do you add testimonials on your website?
I usually suggest my clients to create a single page for this purpose. If the main menu of your website is already crowded, think about what pages are the most important to catch the attention of your visitors. Could you put a page or two under a common heading? Maybe that’ll give you enough space to add this testimonial page on the main menu for maximum exposure.
How about rotating testimonials?
I simply love them! I reckon they add that little perfect “touch” of dynamic content to attract your visitors’ attention.
When I design websites for my clients, I like to add this feature to spread such great words about their products or services throughout the different web pages.
I use WordPress at a professional level for all my clients’ websites and I found great testimonials plugins to achieve this goal.
How do these testimonials affect your visitors’ emotions and decision-making process?
When a visitor is exposed to your company or brand online for the first time through your website, they want to know if other people have experienced doing business with you and how this interaction went.
How many times do you find yourself checking the star ratings on your smartphone’s apps before purchasing one?
Or maybe it’s the latest New York Times Best seller book on Amazon you’re looking for and you’re reading other people’s comments.
Whether we think we’re affected or not, other people’s opinions matter to us, even subconsciously.
What makes a great testimonial?
You’ll want to ensure the testimonials help your business.
I think a great testimonial is one that:
- is credible and genuine,
- builds confidence that the benefits of your products/services you’re stating on your website are true,
- adds value to your services or products,
- answers somebody’s specific needs so other people can relate,
- compares it to similar products/services from the competition (in a good way of course!),
How to ask for testimonials?
In my opinion, if you provide services to your customers, wait until you’ve established a relationship. This doesn’t have to take long but asking for a testimonial after the first consulting session may be too soon.
If you sell products, you may want to ask your customers’ opinion through a follow-up quick survey after they had enough time to use it. This could happen a few days or a couple of weeks after they’ve received it. There are plenty of different ways to gather feedback and testimonials from your customers such as online surveys, quick quality control follow-up phone calls, incentive emails and more.
As we’re all very busy, offering an incentive to your customers in exchange for a testimonial/feedback can improve your return.
One way I like to request testimonials from my clients is through LinkedIn. In comparison with certain individuals who may write fake testimonials themselves on their website, LinkedIn is an unbiased source of trust as you can only request it and receive it if your client agrees. You can’t even modify the text, if something is not to your taste, you can always request a small change but again, your customer is in control.
Your Google local listing works the same way. you can request your customers to navigate to your page and click “Write a Review”.
Once you’ve got them on such platforms, you can simply copy and paste them onto your website “et voila!”.
Here’s my testimonials page for you to get ideas.
