Increasing Your Credibility Online Part II

Last time I talked about the fact that credibility is the single most important factor in turning website visitors into prospects and customers. The design of your site was covered as one of the ways of establishing credibility. Here is another. What other people say Testimonials are a common way of increasing credibility. However, depending on how you use them, testimonials can have little or no effect on your credibility or they can enhance it. Creating a page called “Testimonials” is akin to telling visitors, “on this page I’m going to post all of the nice things I’ve ever been able to get people to say about me in an attempt to convince you that I’m okay.” Most people don’t click on a page called Testimonials because they already KNOW what they’re going to find. Have you ever seen a testimonials page that didn’t say nice things? I wonder how many people would notice if you posted a testimonial like this: “I had the worst experience with ABC company. They were rude and unhelpful. I used them anyway because there was no one else close by who offered that service. I highly don’t recommend them!” A better way to present testimonials is in context. Add testimonials to the side of your page or in the form of a pull-quote within the page. Then, visitors can easily read them at a glance.

To increase relevance, the testimonial should be specific to the page you put it on. For example, you will see a quote from an ecommerce customer on our page that describes our ecommerce services. Keep the quote short and in plain English so people can easily absorb it. Finally, make sure to put the full name and title of the person that wrote the quote. Anonymous quotes have far less credibility because it makes people wonder if you just made the quote up altogether. If someone was willing to put their full name and title next to a quote, you know that they are willing to stand by what was said, even if you did doctor it a little on their behalf. Stay tuned for Part III of this series…