Testimonials are Key to Credibility
Testimonials have the highest content marketing effectiveness rating – 89% Unless you’re IBM, Apple, Nike, Google, eBay or another category brand leader, you need to build your credibility by associating your business with the respected third parties with whom you partner or do business. You can have a strong value proposition and compelling calls to action clearly laid out on your website, but every potential customer visiting is thinking, “This sounds good… now where do I find proof that what they’re saying is actually true?” The simple answer is in your third party testimonials, references and endorsements. To prove your quality and service claims, you need witnesses. The reputation and legitimacy of your organization is important for users to know before they decide to do business with you. People coming to your website will probably not accept the messages you’re promoting at face value. The fact is, what you say about yourself is less believable than what other people, especially those in positions of respect, say about you. It follows that what others say about you is more believable, so why wouldn’t you include plenty of testimonials and references on your website to make it a trustworthy resource for your visitors? Consider this statistic from a 2013-2014 survey of content marketers published by SocialMediaToday: “Customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness for content marketing at 89%. This tells us that 89% of the real experts, the people who actually implement online marketing for their companies and measure the results, rate testimonials as the single most effective aspect of content marketing. Go ahead and make your promise to your target audience, but be sure to back it up with a variety of third party testimonials and endorsements. Following are six of the most common forms of website testimonials and third party references. 1. Written Testimonials by Named Sources Quotes coming from named individuals carry more weight than those from anonymous sources. What or who is more credible, an unknown title or a real person representing herself and her organization? For example, when giving credit to a testimonial, instead of citing “office administrator for a major law firm,” cite instead “Anna Marie Medeiros, vice president of administration, Brenner, Rothschild & Clement.” If a person is willing to put their name on a quotation and make it public, you know they are risking their reputation by endorsing a business or product. This is clear evidence of your performance value. Testimonial Tip: For written testimonials, it’s usually best to 1) get permission, 2) write the testimonial yourself but in the client’s voice, 3) have the client sign off or edit. This technique makes it much easier for your customer and will speed up the process for you. 2. Video Testimonials Real people – real customers talking sincerely as they extol the wonderful benefits of doing business with you is proof that you’re the real thing. If possible, get a respected celebrity customer on video for your business and you’ll have pure marketing gold! In most cases, short video clips can be taken with a good smartphone because all you really need is decent picture quality and audible sound. Spontaneous and candid moments tend to work well in personal shares such as testimonials. You need to make people more comfortable about further engaging with you or your website. Below is an impromptu video testimonial of a Parker Web Services client that we feature on our website. 3. Third Party References Displaying respected business partners as well as organizational certifications and endorsements on your website engenders confidence in your company’s ability to compete and win in the market. When your company is involved in its industry and community, working closely with well-respected entities or individuals, you should make these relationships known on your website. Borrowing the brand value of respected organizations builds more equity in your own brand. 4. Case Studies Make the testimony tangible. Tell a true story about how your solution solves a client’s problem or how specific customers receive a superior experience, more convenience and better value from your website and service team. You’re giving visitors solid, provable facts about your products & services as well as a third party endorsement. Your website visitors can take comfort in knowing that you deliver what you promise. 5. Published Articles and Advice Columns If your business attracts trade media or broadcast coverage and your competition remains comparatively obscure, guess whose brand name gets the first Google search? If you have any relatively recent press coverage in a positive light, make it visible on your website. Invite publishers, editors and reporters in your industry media to consider the newsworthiness of your company’s unique accomplishments and post any positive media coverage you get about your company/product/services. Write expert advice articles that contain valuable information to your customers and work with editors to get them published. Liberally share these expert advice articles online to further build your respect as a thought leader in your market. 6. Awards Winning recognition for community service, business excellence, best-in-class technology, etc. further builds confidence among prospects in your target audience. Display your industry/trade/community service awards with the appropriate visibility. Don’t brag, but do allow visitors easy navigation to where they can find your company’s accolades. Work on Your Relationships and Deliver! So how do you get powerful testimonials and third party references to use on your website? Simple. If your relationships are good, you ask for them. It’s important to have conversations with your customers or other constituencies about your intentions to use their testimonials to improve your website’s effectiveness. Consider any cross promotional opportunities and be ready to back up your testimonials with swift inquiry responses and great customer service. After all, your customer is staking their reputation on you so you can improve your own. The last word: Third party testimonials and endorsements are like earned gifts. It’s your responsibility to honor your relationships and reputation by delivering what you promise while your customers and associates back you up. Parker
Are your website images giving visitors a bad impression?
Stock and Do-it-Yourself Photography can do more harm than good. We humans are visually wired creatures. Therefore, great photography is the anchor and hook of most good website designs. On the other hand, bad photography can be a turn-off and repel the very people you want to engage. You need to figure out what separates good photography from bad photography. Many commonly used stock photos insult our intelligence or make us cringe; portraying real adults as living in a fantasy world. Business isn’t fantasy. It’s hard reality. To save time and money, some website owners will snap the best shots they can with a smartphone or point & shoot digital camera but the images are often very disappointing. Amateur do-it-yourself pictures can reflect poorly on your people, products and company itself. A real image of your business in action, strategically planned, professionally shot and well positioned can tell an entire story or instantly bring home a key message to a website visitor. Sometimes a spontaneous photo, capturing a moment, can be serendipity for a great hero image. Truly, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” As information architecture and concise word choice can help lead a prospective buyer to take action, pictures of real people in real places using real products make an online message more believable and enticing. Following are just a few reasons why you should invest in the right kind of photography for your website: Pictures of your people help website users picture themselves engaging with your business. They like to see the real people with whom they’re dealing. Pictures of your location and offices/showrooms will make face to face visits more welcoming. Pictures of your people making your products in your location lets your web visitors feel better about your quality. Pictures of your products offer visitors an instant way to qualify their interests in color, style, make, model, etc. Naturally, crisp, clear images are required to sell anything by e-commerce. Picture Planning Bad or useless pictures can be worse than no pictures on a website. Following a few simple guidelines will help you produce highly effective pictures based on your priorities. Let’s examine what works. Nielsen Norman Group’s eye-tracking studies have documented a dramatic gap in how users approach website images. Mainly, they found that: Certain kinds of pictures are ignored. Decorative and large feel-good images are mentally filtered out from actual content scrutiny. Some pictures are viewed as important or critical content. For example, “real people,” i.e., the actual individuals representing your business usually fall into this category. According to Nielsen Norman, the classifications of “good” website photo use include: People photos – IF they’re real people (opposed to stock images with models). Product detail photos – multicomponent images like craft sets get much more viewing time than wide angle whole product, low detail shots like flat screen TVs. Big photos – especially real products and places proprietary to your business. Information-carrying images – pictures that show something relevant to what your visitors are doing and thinking. The common conclusion of these website user-photography studies is this: “Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to ‘jazz up’ Web pages.” This means there are good photos and bad photos (and useless photos) when it comes to website design. You Call the Shots! There are 3 basic ways to acquire the photography you’ll need for a great website design: Professional Custom Photography, Stock Photography and DIY (Do It Yourself). Here we advise you to apply careful consideration. We’ll look at each method and weigh its merits. Professional Custom Photography is listed first because in our experience, it’s the best choice in just about every situation. Today’s advanced optics and digital photography technologies have actually helped lower the cost of this top tier way to get the images you need for a successful website design. The relative ease of digital capture and intense competition among many professional photographers allows you to get proprietary custom images for your business at significantly less than what it used to cost. Of course it’s very important to check the reputations, references, portfolios, pricing and terms of any photographer you would consider hiring. Do it Yourself Photography (DIY) can be effective in some situations. Thumbnail photos on common real estate listings come to mind as an example. It makes no economic sense to send a paid professional photographer out on multiple locations to set up gear and shoot house photos that change up constantly. Self-serve digital photography with a good point and shoot camera or even a modern smartphone is economical if you need a fast and flexible method for capturing custom images on the fly. Stock Photography can provide some bang for the buck if you can pinpoint an exact story-telling image or find good highlight images for use in style sheets and other design elements. A major downside to stock photography is that your chosen images might be widely seen on other websites. Other issues with stock images are they tend to look sterile, overly staged or plain old phony. Stock photos will often clash with the authenticity of your messages so be very careful of the images you choose, especially from a branding standpoint. The Parting Shot Our overall recommendation regarding photography is this: For the majority of your photographic needs, invest in custom professional photography. Almost all stock images are ignored as “dress up” and irrelevant to the visitor. If you’re like most of us, you wouldn’t trust yourself to take a critical photo or group of photos that will be prominently displayed and have lasting value in public view, right? So use your best judgement and strive for the highest quality possible when it comes to your image. Keeping your pictures fresh, new and consistently relevant with your key messages is another important consideration. Maintaining your website for the best user experience involves keeping your photos changing enough to keep returning visitors interested
Website New Design, Redesign or Refresh?
I am often approached and asked to create a new website for a company. My first question is always: “Why?” After we go through the concerns which range from “It sucks” to “It’s not making me any money” to “It’s broken”, I consider these concerns, take a quick look and judge if the design looks up to date or not and then make a determination for a new design, a redesign or a refresh. New Website Design: Strategic Graphic and Content Plan I recommend a new design when the site is obviously outdated and there is little to no content on the site. This new design is like starting afresh and going back to the drawing board. A new design requires a strategic approach with short term and long term business objectives considered in the planning for the content to be implemented. If done correctly, a new website design can be one of the more intense things a company goes through in defining their messaging and their businesses. Those who have done it correctly and well take a great deal of pride and accomplishment in the outcome. And typically they see the results they would expect from such an investment. In all three of the following examples, the next step involved a new design. This new design was required primarily because the company was still working out its messaging for the audience, had not invested in a content plan, and was spending too much time between designs before seeking their next update. 1998 – New Design 2002 – New Design 2005 – New Design A Website Redesign: New Graphic Design When making a determination on which direction to go, if I see obvious thought and planning put into the content, it is seldom I recommend a brand new design. I probe deeper into the concerns the owner has and get to what is usually one or two direct concerns. I recommend redesigns when there has been a fundamental shift in the business offering or a significant change in the business direction or mission, but the overall business remains the same. I also recommend redesigns when the site is content rich, but the current design is fundamentally flawed or seriously outdated. But ultimately, the big difference between redesign and a new design is usually the content. In a redesign, much if not all of the content survives the redesign process. So the major change is in the look and feel of the site, not the bulk of the content of the site. Continuing with the above examples, the owner went through one final new design and created a site (2007) which was very content rich and contained a better refined message. When Parker Web started working with the client in late 2009, instead of creating an entirely new design, we redesigned the existing site leaving most of the content structure in place and focusing our time working on a high quality look to go with the quality content. The resulting website redesign (2010) was a significantly smaller investment than a new design, but achieved the desired results. 2007 – New Design 2010 – Website Redesign A Website Refresh: A Graphic Update A website refresh is something I seldom see sold in the marketplace, but it is a very effective way to keep your site fresh and up to date. Usually the refresh candidate owner is actively involved in their site, their content is fresh and rich and their traffic is at expected levels. The owner is concerned that their look is getting a bit dated and perhaps some basic layouts need to be changed. On the whole the site is acceptable, but not exceptional. A website refresh takes into consideration current graphic trends and also looks at current content trends and, using the current site as its basis, creates a fresh look. Using the same site as above, a refresh was done in 2013. The refresh relied heavily on the previous design and incorporated new trends in user expectations and some improved product focus. This was again even less expensive than a full redesign and was designed, approved and implemented in less than two weeks. 2013 – Website Refresh Website Maintenance is Key When Ramsey Chain partnered with Parker Web in 2009, they quickly discovered the value in establishing a high quality core of graphics and content and then the value of ongoing maintenance versus doing complete redesigns every few years. By working with a partner that can provide ongoing updates, content additions, minor graphic changes and other needs, it is more likely that a refresh will suffice over a complete redesign and it is seldom, if ever, that a brand new design will required. Parker Web prides itself on providing a top-notch website experience. Schedule a call today.