Friday, July 26, 2013

Verifiable Testimonials Explained

In this blog post I will address the following:
  1. What is a verifiable testimonial?
  2. Verifiable testimonials using Wiwitness
    1. Collect
    2. Manage
    3. Display
  3. How visitors can verify

What is a verifiable testimonial?

Testimonial is a "personal recommendation in support of a particular truth, fact, or claim". TFD(The Free Dictionary)defines testimonial as
"a recommendation of the character, ability, etc., of a person or of the quality of a consumer product or service, esp by a person whose opinion is valued"
Testimonials have been used effectively to sell a wide range of products for centuries. Key point here is, when you use testimonials, you should know how to use it effectively.
Effectiveness  of the testimonial depends on two factors:
  1. What has been said in the testimonial.
  2. Who has given the testimonial.
Testimonial author's identity should be verifiable in real time.

Let's try to explore these factors in little more detail.

What has been said in the testimonial:

I'll keep this section short. A lot has been said about what should be covered in a testimonial. The content of the testimonial should be thoroughly reviewed before displaying on your website. Since testimonials are critical for boosting your conversion rate, you are likely to feature them on your home page and other landing pages. Testimonials should therefore be given utmost care to make sure:
  1. They are free from obvious spelling and grammar errors
  2. Specific to a certain product or service
  3. Clearly highlight the benefits of your service/product

Who has given the testimonial:

Notice the last part of the definition I mentioned above:
....esp by a person whose opinion is valued" 
This clearly highlights the importance of author of the testimonial. When you have testimonial on your website, your visitors should able to verify the identity of its author.
When a visitor can not verify the identity of testimonial's author, either he will suspect it or ignore it. In either case your testimonial is not effective.

Hence, to get most out of testimonials, it is critical for you to let your visitors know the identity of testimonial's author. And that is useful only if they can verify it in real time.

Now that we know the importance of verifiable testimonials, we'll see how to get them for your website using Wiwitness.
Using Wiwitness you can collect,manage and display verifiable testimonials. And it is simple and and easy to do.

How do we do that?

  1. Wiwitness allows you to collect testimonials using your clients' social networking identity.
    When you signup with Wiwitness, your business will get a responsive landing page similar to this. You can find "Write Now" button at top right corner of the page. Your clients can write testimonials using their social identities.
  2. Managing the testimonials collected.
    When your business receives a new testimonial, you will be notified with an email about the same. New testimonials will be in pending state and are not displayed to public. You can login to Wiwitness dashboard and accept or hide the new testimonials received.
  3. Displaying the verifiable testimonials to your visitors.
    You can display the testimonials to your visitors in two ways
    1. On your responsive business page.
    2. Using testimonial widgets.

How visitor can verify the identity of the testimonial author?

Each testimonial displayed by Wiwitness system will have name and photo of the testimonial author. Name and photos are linked to author's social identity.

Here is a sample Testimonial widget , you can verify the identity of the testimonial authors by clicking on their name or photo.

Get the benefits of Verifiable Testimonials. Signup for Wiwitness.

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