How to improve online credibility
Unless your business has an internationally recognised brand, gaining customer confidence through your website can be extremely tricky and time consuming.
The importance of customer testimonials
There's a multitude of elements to get right before anyone browsing your website will be converted into a paying customer, and ensuring the information that customers want and need to see to gain their trust is key to doing this. Authentic testimonials in particular are very powerful endorsements of your products and services and can increase online credibility significantly if applied correctly. There are three major reasons to use testimonials on your website and also on any other marketing tools for your business.
- They help to build a strong bond of trust with visitors to your website
- Improved credibility of your company by demonstrating an existing and satisfied customer base
- They demonstrate your success.
This article will quickly show you how to get testimonials from your customers, what information to use and where on your website testimonials should be displayed. There are two types of testimonials, solicited and unsolicited, both are equally as important but the latter is far more rewarding. You will attain more testimonials by being as proactive as possible, whether you're face-to-face or on the phone to your customers always ask for a testimonial, if you don't ask you won't get.
Send your customers a thank you email after an enquiry or sale and provide a link from this to a concise online customer satisfaction survey. With all testimonials you should always get permission before adding them to your website as they should at least be accompanied by a name and business reference.
Choosing the right testimonials
Choosing the right testimonials is absolutely essential if you want to gain customer confidence and increase sales from potential customers. You want specific examples that talk about the return on investment, how reliable and dependable your company has been, what kind of response time you show, that you'll always be there for after-sale support, that you understand their business needs, and that you work within their budget and time constraints.
These are all aspects that will help to convert website visitors into actual paying customers. When selecting snippets for display on your website try to select snippets from testimonials that outline the definable benefits, like "Thank you, your product has made my job far easier..." or "Wonderclean halved the time it took to clean my kitchen...". Avoid using testimonials that simply read 'Thank you, your product was great' or 'Had a great time, I will be back next year'. Use a couple of sentences for the snippets and if you want to display more, link to the full testimonial on a separate page.
The best position for testimonials
Everyone displays their testimonies in different areas of their website to suit their content and layout. The home page of your website being the most viewed of any page is the most important therefore be sure to use the very best and influential testimonials here. If you have testimonials that relate to specific products or services make sure you include them on the exact pages they refer to, better still ensure a direct 'call to action' is displayed on this page, i.e. 'Buy Now' or 'Click here to register' in order to maximise the impact of the testimonials on your visitors.
As you are probably aware using testimonials on websites are not the only aspects that can help improve your credibility and profitability, but they an efficient and cost effective tool often overlooked by business owners. Furthermore using testimonials is a strategy that can be applied very easily, collecting them can be simple, either from an online form or easier still by asking your customers directly. For more information on how to use testimonials and more about effective internet marketing for your business phone us on 01458 253290 or contact us