By Barbara McNichol
You never know when someone may contact people on your testimonial page. What are they saying about you?
I eagerly detoured from my planned projects last week after receiving a “Barbara McNichol” Google Alert that commanded my attention. Lo and behold, I learned that my website made an elite list of 26 Small Business Websites You Can Trust—the only Editing site on the list. It included categories from Article Distribution Service to Domain Registration Service and Publicity/PR Expert to Website Analytics.
On April 27, SiteProNews.com ran a post originally written by David Jackson, a marketing consultant who did the research to come up with the 26 Websites. (Here’s David’s complete article.)
David explained his motivation and process of investigation this way: “With so many scams and rip-offs prevalent on the Internet, I decided to compile a list of small business websites you could actually trust and rely on.
“In order to compile my list, I surveyed hundreds of small business owners and asked them which small business services they used, trusted, and would recommend.”
The websites that received the most votes in each category made the grade. His two main criteria were:
- Proof of Customer Satisfaction. The service had to have legitimate, verifiable customer testimonials.
- Stability. The website had to have a verifiable online track record of at least three years.
How did he prove the Customer Satisfaction claim?
David explained in an email to me, “I randomly verified the testimonials of the selected sites to make sure they were indeed legitimate. That’s right. I actually contacted at random people who provided testimonials via email.
“I asked them what they liked and didn’t like about a particular company. I only contacted those companies that provided a website address. It’s been my experience that any testimonial signed Sara J., Anytown USA is usually bogus. That’s why verifiable contact information on a website is so important.”
As David emphasized, “If a company is asking you for your business and you can’t find any contact information, that should be a huge red flag.”
The lesson for me—and every business owner with a website—is this: What I write on my site gets noticed—and so does everything I do to satisfy my clients.
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Barbara, congratulations and you are so right! We operate in such a vacuum sometimes, not knowing if what we’re doing or writing is having an impact. But people do notice, as you have experienced. This recognition of your hard work is well earned!