June 2000   

Human nature dictates that the earnest and candid endorsement of a satisfied customer is far more believable than the self-serving publicity of an eloquent provider. And in the virtual world, where e-commerce is still striving to win acceptance, customers will tend to look around an online establishment for assurances that they will come out gratified. The strongest assurances are testimonials by fellow customers, their peers.

However, a Web page of endorsements per se does not guarantee that customers will promptly pour their time and money into your online establishment. The effectiveness of endorsements and user feedback depends on some specific strategies. Let's look at the methods you must employ to harness the power of testimonials.

Define Your Objective

You want people to patronize your business -- that’s the bottom line. You want online users to click on your Web site, inspect your products and services, put aside their doubts and skepticism, believe that they will not be poor victims of misrepresentation and dishonesty, and finally click on that "Order Now" or "Join" button.

Testimonials can be an effective tool in converting a lurker into a captured client, but before anything else, you need to define exactly what you want these endorsements to achieve.

Rick Paquin owns FishingMinnesota.com, a top-rated fishing site with more than 110,000 visitors a month. Here’s his reason for using testimonials: "We sprinkle our testimonials on pages that are intended to grab the reader and show them why they should decide to go further into our site. A visitor to our site can quickly see what others are using our site for and their opinion of it. Trust is rapidly secured and we can then get on to the business of exchanging information."

Susan Simcox, Marketing Project Manager of Dice.com, one of the leading high-tech job sites online, says, "We use testimonials on the site to give visitors concrete examples of how dice.com has helped people get great jobs. Our marketing says ‘if you want a high-tech job come to dice.com’ but it is really powerful to be able to support that with examples of people who have done just that. It also helps people visualize themselves getting good results from using dice.com."

By highlighting visitor comments, FishingMinnesota shows the fishing enthusiast what to expect and what others have found valuable within the community. Dice.com uses testimonials to give job hunters an image of the success they are bound to experience by using the site. Whether you are marketing a product, a service, a community, or a concept, a definition of your objective for using testimonials will guide you in streamlining your strategy.

Gather Comments

It helps if you're offering a knockout product or service because happy customers and users will tend to voluntarily express their delight. If only to catch these spontaneous outbursts of satisfaction, your online business should offer visitors the capability to input their comments and reactions. From there you can proceed to build a portfolio of positive feedback that can be culled into a testimonials page.

Encouraging visitors to send in their customer experiences and posting comments for the entire world to read can also lead to additional traffic. Happy customers will come back to see if their comments were published, and will even tell their family and friends about it, thus creating a chain reaction of visits and repeat business.

Gather testimonials by inviting customers to fill out a feedback form. Not only will you get a pulse on how your visitors feel about your offerings, you can also have a solid basis for future business enhancements.

Choose the Best Feedback

Satisfied customers will have a tendency to leave one-word superlatives. While these may qualify as five-star comments, they are not always the best testimonials. But neither are comments that are long or unwieldy.

High-impact messages that express concrete benefits and detailed reasons for satisfaction give potential customers a tangible basis for their trust. Therefore, in choosing which customer comments to include in your testimonial page, pick out those that reflect genuine satisfaction, but are concise enough to roll out in about two to three sentences.

Use the Customer's Exact Words

"We choose comments that are positive, well written and enthusiastic," says Simcox of Dice.com. "It is also important not to edit them; they are much more powerful if they are in the customer's voice."

Resist your marketing people's urge to fabricate a testimonial. Don't even allow them to edit or polish a customer’s feedback. Self-authored testimonials often sound phony; genuine ones speak with an aura of truth.

Give Full Attribution

The more extensively a testimonial is attributed, the more credible it becomes. A positive comment from "M. S. of New York" doesn't carry as much weight as one from "Marjorie Smith, Working Mother of 4, New York" or from "Michael Saunders, Quality Assurance Manager, CleneExpert Co., Buffalo, NY". A picture of Marjorie or Michael even raises the credibility factor a notch or two.

Full attribution also works best if the quote is coming from a known, respected source. Paquin of FishingMinnesota admits that among other criteria, they "choose to place comments based on how well the person/entity commenting is known." Undoubtedly, quotes from experts and expert organizations are always more highly respected over testimonials from persons who seem to be concealing their identities.

In all cases, of course, be sure to acquire permission to use a customer’s quote and to provide full attribution in your testimonials section.

Position Testimonials Strategically

Paquin admits that FishingMinnesota has run tests to determine the effects of testimonials. "Our average visit time on a page went up over 85 percent and the requests for our help jumped over 320 percent. We occasionally change the testimonials and track how effective they are."

His positioning strategy: "I would avoid a purely testimonial page/section and add them in spots where they can help folks decide if they would like to proceed through the site or through that page. I've found that two to three from different sources works best, prior to us describing what can be expected. That is assuming we have testimonials that do a nice job of describing what folks can expect."

As for the number of testimonials to include in one screen, Simcox recommends, "Somewhere between five and ten or so is probably a good number. Enough to have some variety and show some different perspectives without it becoming too long or slow to load."

Let Your Visitors Advertise Your Business

With high-quality offerings, a customer-feedback forum, and well-chosen, appropriately placed citations, you cannot go wrong; powerful testimonials will continue to be an effective marketing tool because they enhance credibility and engender trust. You may have the catchiest sales pitch in your line of business but a satisfied user's personal recommendation is what reels potential customers in.