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Author: Cal Hyslop We have all seen websites showcasing their testimonials either spread strategically throughout the site or all together on their own glorious page. They’re there with the intent of leading us toward that high dollar purchase or convincing us of something’s legitimacy. Sometimes we read them and sometimes we won’t. Sometimes we believe them and sometimes we don’t. Well, are they really worth all the time and effort? The quick answer: Only if you do it right. When done correctly, testimonials can really serve you in establishing your site’s credibility. Testimonials give you an opportunity to back up your claims. Believe it or not, as soon as someone visits your site you have immediately begun a relationship with that person. Your site will be one of the determining factors in solidifying that relationship and your testimonials can be a key component in building their trust. When done improperly, you might actually drive people away from you and what you have to offer. If your testimonials aren’t believable and honest then you probably don’t want them posted in the first place. Here are a few guidelines to follow if you decide to use testimonials on your website. 1.Testimonials Should be Brief. You want your reader to get the point quickly and read the entire quote. You might have a great testimonial, but it is a page long. The odds of someone reading it in its entirety are pretty small. A good idea would be to break it up into sections. 2.Don’t Fake It. Your testimonials should be believable and the best way to assure yourself of that is not to make them up your self or have someone else do it for you. Honesty is always the best policy. Phony testimonials will ruin your credibility immediately. Say “adios” to your customers if you want to fake it. 3.Specifically Identify. Testimonials should be signed with a full name and a specific title. Don’t use something like “Businessperson” or “Professional”. People wan to see a name and area of expertise. It is also a good idea to put a link to their website. This will help establish the legitimacy of their testimonial. 4.Ask Permission. Before you publish someone’s comment make sure that they are aware of what you are going to post and that you have their consent in doing so. It is easier to “sell” the idea if you agree to post a link to their website beneath the quote. 5.Address a Specific Benefit. A specific positive result has much more impact than something generic. It is better to post something to the affect of “Your product helped cut costs by 18 percent last quarter” as opposed to “Your product is great”. 6.Spread Them Out. You can have a page dedicated to testimonials. It’s a good idea, but you can’t guarantee that a visitor will visit that page. In addition to your testimonial page why not post a testimonial or two on each page throughout your website. You can even interweave your quotes into your content. This can most likely increase the strength of your message as your visitors peruse each page. SPECIAL TIP: Anytime you have a good experience with a website or online purchase send your own testimonial adhering to the above-mentioned guidelines. If published, you’ll probably get a link to your website. Over time that can add up and increase traffic to your site. When it comes down to it, testimonials help provide an independent and unbiased medium to promote you and your website. You have the option to use them or not. If you decide to use testimonials on your website then use them properly. Well-positioned and authentic testimonials can easily make a positive impact and strengthen your site.
This post comes a bit late in the whole web 2.0 cycle. I feel that it bears repeating because I have come across sites that don't follow some basic principles when pulling in 3rd party data from sites such as flickr, twitter et. al. APIs and data portabilityThe blessing of popular and easy to use APIs and the data portability of web 2.0 applications has had an unfortunate side effect, and that is that some implementations that use these services do not integrate appropriate contingency design should these 3rd party services fail. Caching data calls to APIs is a good bit of contingency design. Many APIs will require caching - like that of Amazon - but I suspect this is intended to help limit resource use of the API host, not the site using the API. The reasons a person using API accessed data on their website would want to cache the data are:
A simple implementation to handle those two cases would be one that caches an API call for a given amount of time and one that freshens stale cached data and triggers an error should an API call fail. Caching is good contingency design practiceAs I said above, this post is a bit late to the party but it is worth writing as recently I have come upon at least three sites where firebug and other widgets have revealed issues retrieving API fetched data and the site loading times have been horrible. A decent implementation idea would be to roll your own caching wrapper and agnostically plug it in to a stable caching tool, perhaps something like Cache Lite for PHP. In this manner you have a reusable, caching library independent piece of code that can handle caching/flushing and refreshing of data which could function to handle the two cases discussed above. And that's it. It's been 541 days since my last post. Wow. I hope this is a re-start of a new phase of blogging. Article Index: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 |
More Articles:1. The Critical Importance of Good Web Graphics to Internet Marketing Profits There’s an old saying: ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’, but this hardly applies to the science of designing web graphics. Everybody judges web sites by their ‘cover’ or home page, have no doubt.Is your site giving out a professional, visual aura, or is it telling visitors that you built it yourself, because of bad design?Ask yourself: Of the many thousands of web pages trying to sell you something, which are the ones that keep your interest? Which ones have convinced you to depart with your h… 2. Web Site Design Mistakes – Database Parameters In URLs By Halstatt Pires Creating a web site takes thought, planning and execution. Unfortunately, many designs are dead in the water before they are even published as far as search engine optimization is concerned. Whatever you do, avoid these critical mistakes.Database Parameters in URLMany web site designers don’t take into account the effect of database parameters in site URLs. A database parameter tells the server what should be loaded onto a particular page when a viewer tries to see it. In essence, the page is … 3. Choosing the Right Web Site Designer You've made up your mind. You want to have a website to represent your business.The next decision to be made . . . who should you hire to develop your site? There are many people capable of building their own personal sites. They can put cutelittle comments and pictures of their pets or kids up for you to enjoy. But, when itcomes to having a website that will be a form of marketing for your business, you wantsomeone with experience. Someone who has an understanding of the Internet andwhat is the… 4. Web / Graphic Design By Chris Rohrer When it comes to web design it is very important that you pick the right person to design your site. Taking your business online is just like opening a new store for the first time. The more you put into it the more you will get out of it. Your web site is everything when it comes to the internet. If it doesn’t look professional you are losing business right from the start. People want to be able to trust and depend on you and your business or whatever it may be. Seeing bad web design is a tur… |
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