One of the easiest ways to boost your credibility online is to collect and display the positive feedback you’ve received about your products and services.
Consumers readily make buying decisions based on the feedback of their friends and the testimonial is an extension of that. While testimonials don’t usually come from someone they know personally, they are a form of social proof in that they can see that there are other people, just like them, who have also used particular products and services.
But not all testimonials are created equal. In addition to having tips on how to get testimonials, I’ve also got easy to follow suggestions on how to do it and how to publish them.
Getting Testimonials
There are a number of ways to collect testimonials. Sometimes you’ll get them without asking and other times, you may need to ask. It doesn’t really matter how you get them because both ways can produce very powerful testimonials.
A few tips:
- Always collect emails that people send you, thanking you for your product or service. The best thing to do is ask for permission to share them and publish them right away, but if you don’t have time, put them into a testimonials folder, so you know where they are when you want to publish.
- Save blog comments or feedback you receive through your social media participation. You can save them by taking a screenshot of the page and cropping it to show the relevant feedback. On a PC, you just click CTRL + prt sc and then you can paste that into a graphics editing program for cropping and saving.
- Ask your customers for feedback. If you’re already talking to them, you can ask them if they don’t mind providing feedback. You can also set up an automatic autoresponder to ask for it after a certain amount of days after a purchase. That way, you won’t forget to ask anyone who buys your product.
- Ask “celebrities” in your niche for a testimonial or endorsement. Whether it’s a popular blogger, an expert or an author, if it’s someone people in your market readily recognize, it can go a long way to boosting your credibility.
- Facebook’s Like Plugin that shows “X also like this” is a form of testimonial as well. If you have a large following, it’s an easy way to partially automate your testimonial process. You still want to collect specific testimonials, so people can learn why people like your product and why they should try it too.
How to Make Sure You Get Quality Testimonials
When it comes to testimonials, the more specific and detailed a testimonial, the more meaningful it is to your potential client or customer. Testimonials that scream things like, “It was awesome!” don’t really say much, do they?
Some tips for quality testimonials:
- Ask your customers specific questions because detail adds believability and credibility. For example, ask them how long they’ve used your product, how they used it and what results they achieved.
- Where possible, always use your customer’s real and full name. Ask them for a photo as well. Before and after pictures are also great, if they apply to your product.
- Video testimonials are great because your prospects can actually see a living, breathing customer. Of course, you need to make sure your customer sounds sincere and acts natural.
Once you have some testimonials, start publishing them and add more as you go along. Add product-specific testimonials to your product page. General testimonials are perfect for your home page and about us page. You can even make a specific testimonials page that showcases the testimonials throughout your website.
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