Ask past clients whether you may show a first name and last initial, their neighbourhood, the project and the year, and place each quote beside photos of that job. Praise nobody can check persuades nobody.

The site

A general contractor's site has a page called Testimonials in the main menu, between Services and Contact. It holds a dozen short quotes in italics, each in a box with a large quotation mark.

Each is signed J.S., M. and K., or Satisfied Customer. The quotes are warm and brief: great job, very professional, on time and on budget, would hire again.

None mentions a kitchen, a basement or a street. The home page shows three of them in rotation under a photograph of a finished kitchen that none of them describes.

The inference a visitor makes

Someone planning a basement renovation reads the page for reassurance. What they find is praise they cannot check, from people they cannot picture, about work they cannot see.

They know anyone can type a quote and sign it with initials. Nothing on the page shows these came from real clients, so they give them the weight of an advertisement.

The quotes are genuine, every one. The page simply gives the reader no way of telling, and a doubtful page makes the rest of the site look less certain as well.

What the page leaves out

A testimonial persuades when the reader can picture the person and the job. Each quote here is missing the details that would let a stranger do that:

The first two make a quote sound like a person. The last three make it sound like a job, which is what the homeowner is about to pay for.

Initials and Satisfied Customer

Contractors usually shorten names for a decent reason: nobody asked the client whether they minded. Initials feel like a safe compromise between privacy and proof.

To a reader they are neither. Initials prove nothing about who wrote the words, and Satisfied Customer is the signature invented reviews tend to carry.

So the page meant to build trust ends up looking like the least honest part of the site, even though it is the only page made entirely of other people's words.

Praise that fits any trade

Great job and very professional could describe a roofer, a florist or a dog groomer. When every quote uses the same few phrases, readers suspect one person wrote them all.

Real clients mention specifics when asked the right question: the dust sheets taped over doorways, the site swept every evening, the foreman who called before each delivery.

Details like these are hard to invent and easy to believe. They also tell a future client what working with the crew is actually like, which no adjective can.

No year on any quote

A testimonial from a renovation eight years ago describes a crew that may no longer exist. Without a year, a visitor cannot tell old praise from last month's.

Dates also show that the work continues. A page whose newest quote is from this summer tells a reader the business is busy now, not only in the past.

A page of undated quotes leaves the reader to assume the worst: that the good reviews stopped arriving some time ago.

Quotes kept apart from the work

Contractors sell work people can see, and this site already has photographs of it in a gallery. The testimonials sit on another page, so the praise and the evidence never meet.

Put each quote on the page for the project it describes, beside the photographs. The reader then sees the kitchen and hears from the family who cook in it.

Where no project page exists yet, a single photograph of the finished room beside the quote does much of the same work.

No record of permission

The office cannot say which clients agreed to be quoted, or to what. If one objects, or asks for a quote to come down, there is nothing on file to check against.

A short note in each job file, with the words approved, the name form and the date, settles that. It also makes it easy to remove a quote promptly when someone changes their mind.

A worked example

A general contractor with a crew of nine builds additions and renovates kitchens and basements in a growing suburb. Its office manager had gathered the testimonials from emails and thank-you cards over six years.

She had used initials because she was unsure whether clients wanted their names online. Nobody had asked them.

She called each client and asked whether the quote could appear with a first name and last initial, the neighbourhood, the project and the year, and whether photographs of the job could sit beside it.

Most agreed. Several added a sentence about something they remembered from the job, and two preferred to stay off the site, so their quotes came down.

Each quote now sits on its project page, and the testimonials page lists them newest first, each linked to its project. The office asks for written permission at the final walk-through.

A reader can now connect a person, a place and a job. The praise itself has hardly changed; what changed is that a stranger has reason to believe it.

The counter-case within the site

Privacy is a fair concern for some clients, and some homes are better left unidentified. A quote with a first name, a neighbourhood and a specific detail still carries weight without a surname.

A handwritten card, photographed with the client's agreement, can carry initials and still convince, because the card itself shows that a real person wrote it.

The fault on this site is not that a few clients are anonymous. It is that every quote is anonymous, generic and undated, so none of them can do the job a testimonial is there for.

What to change

  1. List every testimonial and the job it came from.
  2. Call each client to ask for permission.
  3. Agree on a name form, the area and the year.
  4. Ask for one detail they remember about the job.
  5. Place each quote on its project page.
  6. Take down any quote nobody can vouch for.
  7. Keep each permission with the job file.

Step five changes what the page is. A quote beside photographs of the job it describes stops being a claim and becomes part of the evidence.

Reviews collected through a paid lead service stay with that service rather than on your own site, one of the points in paying for leads that go to four contractors.

Frequently asked questions

Why do initials make testimonials less believable?

Anyone can type a quote and sign it with initials, so readers cannot tell genuine praise from invented praise, and they discount every quote on the page.

What should a contractor's testimonial include?

A name the client agrees to, their neighbourhood, the project, the year, one specific detail about the work, and photographs of the finished job beside it.

Do we need permission to use a client's name?

Ask every time, and record what they agreed to: the words, the name form, the photographs and the date. Remove the quote promptly if they change their mind.

What if a client wants to stay anonymous?

A first name, a neighbourhood and a specific detail still persuade. What fails is a signature like Satisfied Customer that tells the reader nothing at all.

Where should testimonials go on the site?

On the page for the project each one describes, beside its photographs, with a testimonials page that lists them newest first and links to each project.

When is the best time to ask?

At the final walk-through, when the client is pleased and the details are fresh. Ask what they would tell a neighbour rather than for a testimonial.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Testimonials signed with initials?

Point us to the testimonials page, and we will show how each quote could carry a name, a place and a job.

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