Web Podcast - Episode 32: Testimonials or Case Studies?

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Hey guys, Episode 32 today and we're talking about testimonials and case studies and photo galleries.

So alot of websites need some form of reference as to the service you provide or the product you offer. People are conveyed by an external reference from someone they don't know nearly as much as someone they would know. So if I see and go and use this person for a massage because they gave me a great massage I'd trust that review nearly as much as I'd trust someone in my family for example. That's just the status quo, that's just the average. So testimonials are real good. Case studies obviously are telling people about a project you've done with supporting evidence and photos and stuff. And then we've also got just the standard photo galleries most sites use. So if you've offering 1 on 1 personal services like you're a misuse or you're a beauty therapist, you'll probably use testimonials more so than case studies. Now if you're a business analyst or a marketing firm or an architect designing buildings and houses then you're gonna have case studies and possibly a photo gallery.

So you got to really think, okay, what am I actually using here, If I'm a hair-dresser I'll use testimonials because I want my customers telling people on the website how affordable I was perhaps or how good a quality the hair dye was or how I didn't get a reaction or whatever it might be; and then I actually want a photo gallery with a few photos of people's hair I've done. Now you don't what to got to an architects website and see only testimonials on there and that's it, when you're building an architectural designed house we want to see the houses they've done, not some testimonials someone's saying, oh, they designed a real nice house for me. So you got to make sure you include the right stuff on your website, depending on what industry you're in. So yeah, if you're a builder or if you're an architect you're gonna have photos. If you're a business analyst you're gonna have case studies. If you're a misuse or if you're a clairvoyant whatever, you're gonna have testimonials; people saying, they did a real great job and I was able to get this value out of it whatever it might be, depending on what you do.

So when you're doing testimonials or case studies on your site and photos obviously we want to present them in a nice simple format that doesn't look to busy. Now testimonials can sometimes be a page long; people write for hours, some people write a few words and that's it. So you want to really have testimonials that are a couple of sentences max. So that means you might take a long testimonial and cut it down to a nice paragraph or two. People don't want to read too much into it, at the end of the day they just want the short and sweet. So get the testimonials, drive it back a little bit and if you really want to show the whole thing, have another page for that testimonial separate which people can click to. You don't want to clutter up your main page with a page long testimonial and you've got twelve of them.

If you're doing case studies, again, case studies are long so you need to really include them on there but summarize them at the top of the page or have an index page, so have all of your case studies an index page each with a little photo and a title. If you're a builder you might have the street name of the building and a photo of the building and then a button saying View Case Study. Same with the photo gallery, if you're building houses or you create wooden furniture whatever it might be, you might have a photo of the piece of furniture and then below View Photos, you click view photos, it's got close ups of all of the craftsmanship and all that sort of carry-on.

So really consider how you're gonna lay it out because people don't want to read through one massive long page of testimonials or one massive long page of photos or one massive long page of case studies, they want to be able to see "Oh, that's a nice looking house." or "That piece of furniture looks cool, I like that, I'll click on that and I'll view that because THAT'S what I want to view." "I don't want to scroll through a dozen of photos, oh that's a lounge, I don't care about a lounge I want to find a nice wooden chair." You keep it nice and simple and clean and even on your homepage it's good to feature the ol' testimony and case study. Obviously in your nav bar you have one of those sort of tabs up the top there, you might have testimonials you might have case studies or you might have testimonials and photos depending on what you do and then on your homepage it's also good to feature something, you could have a featured case study, you could have a featured testimonial, generally I go for testimonial because it's a little quicker and easier so your testimonial could have a short sentence with the person's name and where they're from and then, on that page, when someone lands on your homepage and see's that testimonial it's straight away some-sort of credibility behind what you do. So it's good to include a testimonial on your homepage.

Anyway guys that was a quick one, hoped you enjoyed it, that's Episode 32 and join us again next time. That's Matt from the RAZOR Web Design Wire Podcast, Cheers.