Trust Issues

SenseiSteve

HD Moderator
Staff member
Testimonials convey trust, but not so much if only first names are used, or if the hyperlink points to the site you’re presently visiting.

I once visited a site where the owner was inquiring, how to improve his ranking on Google. One of the first things I noticed on his site was that it had two testimonials from different individuals but listing the same URL for each.

The first testimonial raved about a service they didn’t even offer on their site, which immediately seemed strange.

The second raved about their customer support. I was curious, so I did a WHOIS on the URL that was listed on the testimonials, and it turns out that domain has never been registered, and the site I was on has only been online for four months.

Would I trust my credit card with that business? Not in a million years, and not because the site itself wasn’t professionally designed, or offered solutions that matched my specific requirements, or were even attractively priced. Their trust factor had been compromised.

Then this morning, I stumbled upon a web hosting site that used a video testimonial from a Playboy Model. I was immediately sold. :D

What are your thoughts on testimonials? Video or otherwise?
 
The most valuable testimonial for me is the one I didn't ask for. The most unexpected comments left in social media, or left on company's website (if detailed information follows next to it), are the ones I'll believe most.
 
Something that we encourage our clients to do in web design is if they have a testimonial - which they can shorten in order to get the point across - but we ask that they link out to the original source.

This way a user can independently verify that the person did actually say something, whether that's on Facebook, Yelp, Google, Twitter, or other source. It's that extra reinforcement that can mean a lot to some people.
 
This way a user can independently verify that the person did actually say something, whether that's on Facebook, Yelp, Google, Twitter, or other source. It's that extra reinforcement that can mean a lot to some people.

What would be totally cool is insert the comments made across the social media landscape into your website (Tweets, Facebook posts, etc). Makes the website more engaging and makes the verification process easy.
 
What would be totally cool is insert the comments made across the social media landscape into your website (Tweets, Facebook posts, etc). Makes the website more engaging and makes the verification process easy.

This is not standard on most platforms, but you can usually find a module that will do this, but some prices for these are over the top
 
What would be totally cool is insert the comments made across the social media landscape into your website (Tweets, Facebook posts, etc). Makes the website more engaging and makes the verification process easy.

Yeah, many will let you embed, either via a Javascript JDK or via an iFrame.

The big issue with this is speed. You're now slowing down your website while waiting for another site to produce information. That's the main reason we don't suggest embeds for clients.

Heck, even YouTube Videos, we don't suggest a normal iframe/embed that they provide. Instead we want an image overlay which when clicked will then start to play the video. This way the entire call happens on the website and only goes out to YouTube if the user clicks the image. The speed usually is only affected on larger sites, high traffic sites or heavy image sites.
 
If the website is slow then check it in GTMetrix then you need to change in IMAGES, PAGES, JAVA, CSS etc. according to report,

-- If your website in Wordpress then use cache plugin that help to increase page speed
 
If the website is slow then check it in GTMetrix then you need to change in IMAGES, PAGES, JAVA, CSS etc. according to report,

-- If your website in Wordpress then use cache plugin that help to increase page speed

Also using Cloudflare is a pretty quick/easy option.
 

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