Testimonials With No Names Attached

Great service, J.S.

Most testimonials pages look alike: a column of short quotes, each ending with a set of initials or a description such as happy customer or homeowner.

The quotes are warm and say nothing in particular. Great service, very professional, would recommend.

Many of them are real. The business asked for feedback, received it, and left the names off out of politeness or caution.

Visitors cannot know that. A quote anyone could have written, signed by nobody they can find, reads as one the business wrote itself.

What makes a testimonial believable

• A real first name, with a last initial or a town.
• A specific detail only a real customer would mention.
• The job it refers to, with a photograph if possible.
• A date, or at least a year.
• A voice of its own, rather than the tone of every other quote.

The second does the most work. Great service could be about anyone; a remark about the crew matching a 1960s trim colour from a can found in the basement could only be about one job.

Why anonymous quotes read as invented

Readers have learned to discount praise they cannot trace. Fake reviews are often in the news, and a testimonial with no name is the easiest kind to fake.

Uniformity makes it worse. When every quote is the same length, in the same tone, with the same handful of adjectives, it looks as if one person wrote them all.

There is a legal side too. In Canada, an invented or doctored testimonial can be a misleading representation under the Competition Act, so an honest business has every reason to make its testimonials visibly real.

Asking for permission

A customer's name beside a comment about your business is their personal information, so ask before publishing it.

Ask when the work is finished and the customer is pleased. Say exactly what you would like to use: their first name and town, perhaps a last initial, the quote, and a photograph of the job.

Get the answer in writing; a reply to an email is enough. Keep it with the job record, and take the testimonial down promptly if they ever ask.

Getting more than great service

Ask questions that produce specific answers: what they were worried about before the work started, what surprised them, and what they would tell a friend in the same position.

The answers come back in the customer's own words, with details no business would think to invent.

A short phone call often draws out more than an email, as long as you write down their exact words and send them back to check.

Edit only for length, and only with their agreement. Never stitch sentences together or change what they meant, and never write a quote for a customer to approve.

A photograph or a project

A quote beside a photograph of the work it describes is far harder to doubt than a quote alone.

Before and after photographs, a project page, or the customer with the finished job, if they are happy to appear, all tie the words to something real.

Where a project story exists, the testimonial belongs at the end of it, in the client's words, after the reader has seen what was done.

Keep house numbers and licence plates out of frame, and let customers choose how much of themselves to show.

A worked example

A residential painting company with three crews had a testimonials page of nine quotes, each signed with initials, several from 2012 and none with a photograph.

The quotes were real. The owner had copied them from thank-you cards and emails, and left the names off because he had never asked permission to use them.

He asked fifteen recent customers whether he could use their first name, their neighbourhood and before and after photographs of the job. Most said yes, and several sent their own photographs of the finished rooms.

The testimonials left their own page for the pages they belonged to: interiors, exteriors, fences and decks. Each sits beside the photographs of that job, with the month it was finished.

The old initialled quotes came down, except two whose authors could be found and agreed to be named. Beside them, a link leads to the company's Google reviews.

Real reviews alongside

Testimonials are chosen by the business, and visitors know it. Reviews on Google or Facebook are not, which is why many visitors give them more weight.

Show both. Link to your listing beside the testimonials, and say how many reviews there are and where to read them.

If you want to quote a public review on your own site, ask the reviewer, as you would for any testimonial, and quote it exactly.

Named testimonials on the site and the same tone across a long run of public reviews are two sources agreeing, which is what a careful visitor is looking for.

Where testimonials belong

Few visitors go looking for a page called Testimonials. They come across praise where they already are, or they do not see it at all.

Put each testimonial where it answers a doubt: on the service it describes, beside the quote form, near the price. One relevant quote there is worth more than twenty on a page of their own.

A testimonial that mentions a worry the visitor shares, such as mess, delays or the cost creeping up, answers it at the moment it arises.

The counter-case

Some customers cannot be named. Clients of counsellors, lawyers and many health practitioners have good reasons for privacy, and some professions restrict testimonials altogether.

There, describe the kind of work instead and rely on independent reviews clients choose to leave. A specific quote marked name withheld at the client's request is honest in a way bare initials are not.

And a business with few customers a year may only ever have a handful of testimonials. Two real ones are better than ten that look invented.

For everyone else, ask for the name, the town and a photograph, and put the result where people are deciding.

This month

1. List every testimonial and where it came from.
2. Remove quotes you cannot trace to a customer.
3. Ask recent customers for permission in writing.
4. Agree the name format and the photographs.
5. Pair each quote with the job it describes.
6. Move testimonials onto the relevant service pages.
7. Link to your public reviews beside them.

Step three is the one everything else rests on. A named customer, asked properly, turns a quote anyone could have written into one only they could.

Asking for public reviews without breaking the platforms' rules is covered in review rules most businesses break without knowing.

Frequently asked questions

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.