Testimonial section

[Makingthenews]

Does your website have one?
Are they good for SEO oor just an ego boost?

[directmarketingadvice]

Are they good for SEO oor just an ego boost?

Are those the only 2 reasons you have a page on your site?

Steve

[spiritadventures]

Neither - it increases customer confidence. Sales usually go up on the day testimonials are updated.

[Christiane]

Yes we have one, updated as we receive them.
SEO - dunno
Ego boost - nice to have
Building customers' confidence - definitely

[Makingthenews]

Are those the only 2 reasons you have a page on your site?

Steve

No, I also hope it helps build consumer confidence.
Are there any other benefits?

[Real World Hypnotherapy]

I thought I would chime in here because I am a massive fan of testimonials.

I have used testimonials as a major part of my marketing plan for every business I have owned or managed. Testimonials work like a dream if you are able to give credible customer feedback to prospects.

Currently I work as a hypnotherapist, it is a subject that people in generally know little about. The point of the testimonials on my site is to remove the fear from seeing a hypnotist and also prove what I claim is actually possible.

Take a look at http://www.realworldhypnotherapy.com/Testimonials.html and have a listen to some of the recorded phone calls with past clients. Whenever I get an enquiry I simply send them links to a relevant testimonial e.g weight loss and stop smoking. Once they have listened I contact them back and they are really sold on the idea.

A few tips for testimonials are;

Have an outcome. By this I mean you should be asking the right questions and not just allowing clients to give their feedback. For example if you ran a restaurant would you want someone to say "the food was great" or "I had the pasta and it was out of this world. The waiters were friendly and the place was tastfully decorated. We thought the meal was great value for money and we will be back soon". Both of these could be from the same customer, but one is much more descriptive and useful to a prospect.

Make them credible. Try to get credible people to supply the testimonails and get them to put their name to it.

Use multi media. I use writen testimonials, audio conversations and videos (for my networking events see http://www.youtube.com/brookfieldnetworking)

Keep them current. I try to add testimonials all the time and date them.

Have a system. This is where people fall down. You need to have a system to make sure that you ask for the testimonial at the same time of the sales transaction each and every time. Do not rely on people contacting you to supply the testimonial. Asking for it when you have wowed them with your product/service is the perfect time. Also a good time to ask for referrals!


I hope this helps a few people in getting great testimonials in the future.

Matt

[directmarketingadvice]

No, I also hope it helps build consumer confidence.

The way you asked the question, it seemed like it was a choice of just those two reasons.

For any service business, not having testimonials is shooting yourself in the foot.

However, you shouldn't just have them on a testimonials page, they should be on other pages, too.

Steve

[Real World Hypnotherapy]

You are right about having testimonials on lots of pages. I do this on my hypno site, for example if you click on the stop smoking page then there are testimonials from past stop smoking clients.

Matt

[Makingthenews]

I thought I would chime in here because I am a massive fan of testimonials.

I have used testimonials as a major part of my marketing plan for every business I have owned or managed. Testimonials work like a dream if you are able to give credible customer feedback to prospects.

Currently I work as a hypnotherapist, it is a subject that people in generally know little about. The point of the testimonials on my site is to remove the fear from seeing a hypnotist and also prove what I claim is actually possible.

Take a look at http://www.realworldhypnotherapy.com/Testimonials.html and have a listen to some of the recorded phone calls with past clients. Whenever I get an enquiry I simply send them links to a relevant testimonial e.g weight loss and stop smoking. Once they have listened I contact them back and they are really sold on the idea.

A few tips for testimonials are;

Have an outcome. By this I mean you should be asking the right questions and not just allowing clients to give their feedback. For example if you ran a restaurant would you want someone to say "the food was great" or "I had the pasta and it was out of this world. The waiters were friendly and the place was tastfully decorated. We thought the meal was great value for money and we will be back soon". Both of these could be from the same customer, but one is much more descriptive and useful to a prospect.

Make them credible. Try to get credible people to supply the testimonails and get them to put their name to it.

Use multi media. I use writen testimonials, audio conversations and videos (for my networking events see http://www.youtube.com/brookfieldnetworking)

Keep them current. I try to add testimonials all the time and date them.

Have a system. This is where people fall down. You need to have a system to make sure that you ask for the testimonial at the same time of the sales transaction each and every time. Do not rely on people contacting you to supply the testimonial. Asking for it when you have wowed them with your product/service is the perfect time. Also a good time to ask for referrals!


I hope this helps a few people in getting great testimonials in the future.

Matt

Hi Matt,

Do you approach customers/clients and ask for a testimonial?

I've not done this in the past and instead only added comments customers sent to me independently. The reason I asked the original question is that I spent most of yesterday transferring testimonials from our old testimonial page to the new one at http://www.makingthenews.co.uk/testimonials.asp

I've still got 6 months to go but from the response it sounds as though having a testimonial section is essential.

Cheers

[Makingthenews]

The way you asked the question, it seemed like it was a choice of just those two reasons.

For any service business, not having testimonials is shooting yourself in the foot.

However, you shouldn't just have them on a testimonials page, they should be on other pages, too.

Steve

Sorry for the misleading question, Steve - and thanks for the tip. I'll see if we can add testimonials to other pages on the site.

[Real World Hypnotherapy]

Hi

I do ask for testimonials instead of waiting for clients to come for me.

When I ask for a testimonial I do it in a structured way. If you watch the videos from my networking events, you will notice the same sort of questions get asked every time. I ask the questions that I know prospects want to know.

I advise that you start to write a list of questions or points that you want to cover in a testimonial. Then you can either issue forms, record a conversation or video it. These testimonials are much more targeted and useful than ones people supply off their own back.

Also when you ask specific questions it gives you areas to work on and improve. It is great to get feedback from almost every customer as it allows you to develop your service. I have made massive improvements in my own companies from customer feedback.

Hope this helps.

Matt

[Makingthenews]

Great advice Matt, thank you.

We have a feedback section on the site but get little feedback. Asking questions which will help us improve our spoof newspapers, customer service can only be a good thing.

Top man.

[Wavecrest Ltd]

We have testimonials on our site. We have had a number of clients who have come to us as a result of reading them on our web site.

Best regards
Glen

wavecrest.co.uk
blog - http:// wavecrestlimited.choseit.com

[Peter Bowen]

I wrote a little bit of code to put testimonials in the sidebar of every page on a couple of our sites. We've got the testimonials in a database and each time a page loads up it grabs the next couple of testimonials off the top of the pile and displays them.

Having the testimonials seems to have improved the number of people signing up but it was not specifically split tested.

[MH1]

On my old removals site I listed hundreds of testimonials, all as received with no editing except to shorten them occassionaly with the clients permission. After I started doing this and had approx 30 odd on the site I found things changed regarding the clients initial approach.

Instead of ringing to inquire on my rates, clients started to ring and inquire on my availability. I have to credit Ling of lingcars.com for my reason of putting testimonials on my site, since her site used them very effectively.

I found it the most important page on my site eventually, and clients willingly gave testimonials on the basis I would not change a word. I also refused to say what I wanted them to say, since this way the testimonials read as true, everyone phrases things differently.

Ask the same questions too much and they no longer sound like true testimonials, I'm sure many people have visited site where the testimonials seem dubious because they are all worded very similarly, as if the owner has typed five or six of his own up in two minutes.

Definetely have testimonials on your site.