Among the variety of techniques available to you, there’s one that is virtually guaranteed to increase your business...testimonials! To understand why these are so powerful let's consider you customers’ perceptions. Here's how a customer might describe his attitude…..

"In addition to making me an enticing offer, you must prove to me you’re okay to do business with. You must eliminate any fear I have about doing business with you. The basis of my fear is doubt and skepticism. I’ve been conned before, I’ve been lied to. The quality of products and services I’ve purchased in the past haven’t always lived up to the claims”.

It's easy to understand why customers temper their buying decision with caution. They don't want to lose money and, more importantly, they don't want to feel foolish. Eliminating this natural fear and skepticism is the job testimonials do best and the reason is simple. If you say you’re good, people ignore your self-serving back-patting. When others say you're good...it's credible.

When buying stuff we look for validation, primarily from a trusted source or, if that’s not available, through the words of strangers. That’s why testimonials can be a powerful addition to the converting power of your website - particularly pages where you’re attempting to persuade readers into action - like completing a form or buying a product. So as a basic starting point, if you’re sales or conversion pages don’t have testimonials, add some! But that’s just the beginning…

As much as people need validation, and see safety in numbers, they’re also getting smarter, realising testimonials are easy to manufacture. This means that the true credibility of a plain, old-style text testimonial is diminishing. We need to get smarter.

Here are a few ways to make your testimonials work harder.

1. Show there’s safety in numbers
It’s sometimes easier to simply show your three best reviews, however you can wow your audience better with an avalanche of testimonials. This shows that dozens of customers have felt positive dealing with you. Amazon takes this approach with its review count.

2. Keep it real
We polish and polish our sales pages to perfection, but with testimonials, polishing can actually have the wrong effect. You want to ensure your testimonials are as down-to-earth as possible. If your reviews contain the odd typo, it may serve to humanise the message.

3. Validate the authenticity
Reviews from ‘average Joe’ can offer extra impact. If you can show the reader that Joe’s a real person by linking to his LinkedIn profile, Twitter page, or website, you facilitate a person-to-person connection. You want to avoid links to a generic website - that’s faceless and has a low impact. So if the CEO of a company provides you with a juicy quote, link to the About page where the CEO’s name and picture are on display.

4. Take it off your site
People know you control what’s on your own site, but they also know you can’t control what’s on others’ sites. If you can show that the glowing testimonials on your own site also appear elsewhere on the internet, the impact will go much further.

5. Show the bad and miss-aligned
When I suggest this, sometimes it doesn’t sit well, but hear me out! People accept that not everyone will be happy with your product, so if you don’t show the bad with the good, this could cause suspicion. Yet, if you carefully pick the right negative comments to show, you’ll do more good than harm. Say you’ve got a beginners’ ebook, and a more advanced reader is critical of the content. A ‘bad’ review saying, “…..I felt I wasted my money, the book wasn’t for me, it’s more for the beginner,” turns a negative comment into a positive for your target market.

Are you using testimonials to their best advantage on your website?