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If you have an online business and rely on good advertising and effective copy to get your product out there, you need to be familiar with the advantage of using testimonials. Testimonials rank among the most valuable components of advertising; consumers tend to trust the reviews of fellow consumers, such testimonials are especially persuasive and powerful if they contain the contact information of the customers, enabling others to verify their claims.

What makes a good testimonial?

Many testimonials are good in themselves but lose their effectiveness due to poor placement in the article, the webpage, or the sales letter. A good testimonial must hit the sweet spot in terms of placement and good use of language or grammar without sounding contrived or obviously fake. Based on experience, I can say that the best testimonials are those that come with pictures of the writer and possibly an email address or a website through which the maker of the testimonial can be contacted for more information. You can’t expect potential customers to rely on your word alone or just believe something positive that has been said about your service. Some will actually verify claims, and if the claims turn out to be false the knock-on effect can be very negative and damaging.

How can I get testimonials?

If you have a good online social network, whether through your blog or your website, you can get testimonials from loyal followers or from customers with whom you have done business in the past. You can ask for a testimonial in exchange for links or a reciprocal testimonial from yourself, especially from customers who trust you with their business.

As most consumers tend to trust testimonials they know they can verify, you will gain more credibility points if your testimonials contain pictures and contact addresses. You will need to ask for permission from the maker of the testimonial for these, but most will usually oblige, especially if you offer to do the same for them.

How can you use testimonials effectively?

There are several factors to consider and test when attempting to maximize the effectiveness of your testimonials, from finding the most strategically effective locations to use them in your page or sales letter to using the right size, font, and color to grab maximum attention.

First though, make sure your testimonials sound professional and give off no scent of being contrived or manufactured. If you are asking for testimonials from a select group of clients, the best thing to do is use the testimonials in the way they came in, without doing any editing, whether it concerns grammar or the content of the testimonial. Testimonials coming from genuine customers usually sound natural and “unprocessed.”

I daresay that more is not necessarily better when it comes to testimonials. Choose the testimonial that sounds most natural and position it in an optimal location on your webpage or blog. In most cases, you can place the best testimonial on top of the sales page, in a larger font than the rest to grab more attention easily. I usually spread out several other testimonials in between paragraphs to break up the monotony.

An effective technique is to write the testimonials in a larger font than the rest of the paragraph so that they stand out, even though they are embedded in the paragraph. The reason you should only choose the best ones to post in your sales page or website is that online most customers only skim the tops of pages and refrain from reading the smaller print.

Another good way to make portions of the testimonials stand out is to underline the important parts or use boldface. A common example is writing slashed-off prices or special offers in bold, larger, or red letters while keeping the rest in standard black in a generic font. The big, bold, and red letters can easily grab keep readers’ attention if what you are offering is interesting enough.

If you want to show off the rest of the testimonials from loyal customers, you can place them in one corner of your page. However, reserve your best testimonials for your sales pages and your headers.

Should you fake testimonials?

One drawback to using testimonials is that they can easily be faked. It is easy to write a testimonial singing the praises to your product, attach a fictional name, and post it on your site or slap it on your sales letter. But if you want to develop a reputation as an honest online merchant, refrain from using fake testimonials and instead rely on goodwill contributions from customers who really like you. If you have no testimonials to speak of, this is one thing you can use to motivate yourself into giving the best quality service you can provide so that you can easily ask your customers to spread a good word or two about you and your service. All it really takes is one confirmation that your testimonials are fake for all your customers to lose respect for you, and decide to take their business somewhere else.