Whether your business is a week old or a century old, customer testimonials can go a long way. They’re extremely beneficial at all levels of business, with everyone from freelancers to the world’s biggest companies using them, and they are great for those working with a small budget.

If you’re providing any kind of service or product from your website, testimonials are ideal for inspiring confidence in prospective customers. You don’t need to run an ecommerce store to use feedback either; agencies, resellers and creatives can all benefit too. In addition to promoting your website or company, testimonials are ideal for events, workshops, conferences and so on.

New Adventures in Web Design Conference testimonials

What makes a good testimonial?

Ideally, a testimonial will be specific about what the person likes about your company/service/product, will provide reasons and avoid clichés. It doesn’t have to be long; depending on where you use your testimonial, a single concise sentence can do the job. Having said that, asking for a paragraph gives you the opportunity to pick and choose sentences – but be careful not to take words out of context.

Testimonials work best when they are simple, genuine and down to earth with good spelling and grammar. A testimonial from a well-known person or company can make a huge difference, as can testimonials from related niches.

BuySellAds.com testimonial

How to get customer testimonials

Step one is to decide what you want testimonials about. You might want to focus on a specific product, your service as a whole, your website, yourself or your company. It all depends on what kind of business you run and where you intend to use your testimonials.

The next thing to consider is scale. If you have a large number of customers/lots of feedback, think about how you’ll present their reviews and how to pick which ones to show. If you want to be more selective or only work with a small number of people, you may want to draw up a list to contact and include photos and links with the text. Think about the potential for joint promotions, guest posts etc. and how you can help develop your relationship with the people you’ve contacted.

If you’re a small company or just starting out, it may be best to contact customers directly. Finding people to approach for testimonials can be tricky. Try starting off by contacting a client who was particularly friendly or keen to recommend you, and consider using social media for a less formal approach. However, don’t just tweet the same message at several people – take the time to create personalised messages, and space them out over a period of several weeks. If you’re starting out on your own and you need testimonials straight away, ask friends or old colleagues for short character testimonials; LinkedIn is ideal for this.

Many people will be happy to write a sentence or two in return for a link from your website. You could also offer your own testimonials to people; create a list with all your tools of the trade such as software, equipment, and so on, and then contact people. Even if you want to avoid reciprocal testimonials, they can be a good way to get exposure for your website and a good link back.

If you have a physical product, include a small card or leaflet with a link for feedback with your order. Reviews can be encouraged with a prize draw or giveaway.

Photo by Iain Farrell

A follow up email with a link for customers to leave their views can work well for both online and offline products and services. Send your product to a few people (bloggers may be a good bet for added publicity/links) and ask them to review it or give you some quotes you can use. Alternatively, you could offer a free trial or discount on a service. These methods also have the added benefit of giving you valuable feedback about user experience and ideas for improvement.

If you want a more hands-off approach, a simple form on your website will do the job, or a discussion on Facebook can work quite well. There are plenty of forged testimonials out there, but keeping them real will provide more impact and prevent future issues. Always ask for permission and show the person in question the final testimonial if you really have to change it.

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Ways to present testimonials

There are no hard and fast rules – simply make sure your recommendations are easy to read and well-formatted.

Some ways to present them are:

• At the bottom or at the side of key pages

• With page content using quotation marks and different styling

• As a list on their own page (style them well and include submission details)

• Display a quote at random on your homepage (check out this WordPress plugin)

• Integrating them into your portfolio by using them as a typography sample

• Via video – if you have really keen customers!

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Using testimonials beyond your website

Testimonials can come in useful across a whole range of formats, particularly print materials such as leaflets and adverts. You could also link to recommendations using a QR code to save space, or include them as part of your social media profile designs to catch the attention of potential customers. If you’re a designer, turn a quote into a design and add it to your portfolio or Flickr page or use it in a tutorial.