Tell us how you are using Vouchforthis

Tell us how you are using Vouchforthis and we will add you to our Member Directory – generating more traffic for your website. You might also get to feature in our next Newsletter. If you have not already told us how you are using vouchforthis, and as a little additional incentive, let us know what page(s) you have installed your widgets on by the end of May and we will add 3 months to your subscription absolutely free!

We will also gift an additional 3 months membership to the person who adds the most testimonials to their account between now and the end of June – so if you have been meaning to dig out those old testimonials and add them to the site, now is the time to do it.

You can see the most recently added testimonials on our new Latest Member Testimonials page. We hope to further develop this so that it becomes a searchable directory of testimonials that allows visitors to look for testimonials for products / services and locations, helping more people to find YOU. More about this soon!

You are using Vouchforthis… aren’t you?

Many businesses register with us, but then don’t go on to use the full range of our services. Your vouchforthis account summary (see below) will tell you what stage you are at with your membership. If you are a little confused about vouchforthis and would like some help, please get in touch with us.

Member Focus – This Month : Business-Scene

With 25,000 businesses and 11,000 Events listed Business-Scene is a great resource for helping small businesses to get noticed and to find new customers.

Business-Scene gets lots of testimonials from members who have attended great events, or who have been happy with the bookings Business-Scene has generated for the events they have listed, or who have achieved positive results from listing their business in the Business-Scene directory.

Business-Scene uses vouchforthis in a number of innovative ways to ensure that relevant testimonials are shown on a number of different pages on the site…

New member sign-up highlighting the benefits existing members have gained

Testimonials received from members attending Business-Scene Connections Events

On their main Testimonials page

The way this has been achieved is to create multiple widgets, including only those relevant testimonials in each widget, and then displaying each widget on the appropriate page in the website. It’s actually easier than it sounds – really!

In addition, Business-Scene members can enter their vouchforthis widget id when editing their business-scene profile, which results in their widget getting automatically displayed as part of their business profile… See my own profile as an example here.

Remember : If you don’t use vouchforthis (and don’t tell us how you use it) we cannot feature you here. So get adding those testimonials, build those widgets, and start deploying them around the web, and maybe you will be featured next month!

About DMJ

DMJ Computer Services own and operate the Vouchforthis website. We build and operate other websites too, and help website owners to deliver more traffic to their websites by using good SEO techniques.

We think of ourselves more as “web-presence” builders these days rather than pure web designers / developers, preferring to use existing technologies to deliver cost-effective results in a timely manner rather than re-inventing the wheel by building websites from scratch. WordPress is our current favourite platform, as it enables us to build good-looking, functional, robust websites for clients very quickly and at a fraction of the cost of a traditional website, whilst at the same time delivering a great solution for website owners to make future modifications to their website themselves without incurring further development expense.

If you would like to discuss a website project or want to explore ways of increasing your traffic or improving your conversion rates, please contact us.

So we have added a new page… Latest Member Testimonials to display in reverse chronological order the latest active testimonials.

Hopefully, this will attract a little more search traffic to the site as well as showing visitors that the site is active. We’ll update it over the next few days to include upload dates, and hope to extend it further over the next couple of months so that it becomes a full-blown, searchable directory of testimonials helping visitors to search for companies (YOU) that can demonstrate verified testimonials for products and services that they are looking for.

Ultimately, we believe that this will greatly increase the value of vouchforthis to your business.

What this means is that you will now be automatically credited with sending new members to us if any of your website visitors click the ‘more’ link at the foot of the website testimonial widget.

This doesn’t stop you from also including your referrer id in other links from your web pages or in emails to your contacts – but you will need to do that yourself

Find out how to earn referral income by recommending your friends to vouchforthis

So in order to make it just a little harder to ‘forge’ a vouchforthis widget we have changed the link at the foot of each widget so that instead of giving a link just to the vouchforthis home page we now link to a vouchforthis page which verifies that the person using the widget is actually a vouchforthis member. It even names the member in case the forger tries using a link belonging to somebody else. If a link does happen to point to an invalid member then we are sent an email alering us to this fact so that we can investigate and ask the offending website owner to take the widget down.

Passing products off as authentic when they are not is a problem affecting all walks of business life, from handbags to music to software. At the end of the day we are delighted when website owners try to mimic our widgets, as it shows that they have appreciated the value of our system of verifying testimonials. What they should also be appreciating is that at just £9.99 per year it is far better to own the real thing.

It’s been a good March for Vouchforthis

Here we are at the end of March already. Have you had a good first quarter of 2010? Whilst we have been very pleased with the number of new members that have joined during the past few months (62 members and around 100 testimonials added since January) we are a little concerned that after an initial burst of enthusiasm many members fail to come back and regularly manage their Vouchforthis accounts.

What’s wrong with that I hear you ask?

Vouchforthis is a powerful marketing tool for your business, and if you don’t use it to its full potential, for example by regularly adding new testimonials or asking recent customers to add a testimonial for you, then you could be missing out.

To help you see what position your Vouchforthis account is in we have introduced a personalised account manager which shows you just where you are with Vouchforthis (see right). Over the next few months this tool will be developed further so that it automatically generates personalised suggestions for improving your account to help you make the most of your Vouchforthis experience.

This months top tips

Earn £5 for persuading your friends to join Vouchforthis – find out how

Tell us where you are using Vouchforthis and we will add you to our Member Directory - and you could feature in our Newsletter

Member Focus

If you don’t use the website we cannot feature you here, so get adding those testimonials, build those widgets, and start deploying them around the web.

Katherine Davison – Epiphany Training

Epithany Training offer classroom and workplace software training to small businesses. Katherine has implemented her Vouchforthis widget on the Epiphany home page, and has perfectly matched the colour scheme of the widget to the Epiphany Website, and also displays her testimonials on her Business-Scene profile.

If you think that Katherine and Epiphany could be helpful to your business or to you personally, why not get in touch? They do have verified Vouchforthis testimonials and so must be good!

A Bit About DMJ

DMJ Computer Services own and operate the Vouchforthis website. We build and operate other websites too, and help website owners to deliver more traffic to their websites by using good SEO techniques.

We are great fans of WordPress, the well-known blogging platform, and are using it to build real websites (not just blogs) for clients who want a quick, cost-effective, visually attractive solution to their website needs. These days we see ourselves less as IT developers and more as Web Presence Enablers, helping clients to use technology that already exists to deliver their requirements in an efficient manner – why re-invent the wheel?

Here are a few of our recent WordPress projects :

Crowdwise – A question and answer site with an extensive polling solution

French Interest Website for English Speakers

If you would like to discuss a website project or want to explore ways of increasing your traffic or improving your conversion rates, please contact us.

We wish all of our members and subscribers a Happy Easter! ]]> http://www.vouchforthis.com/newsletter-march-2010/feed/ 0 http://www.vouchforthis.com/sorting-testimonials-on-my-website/ http://www.vouchforthis.com/sorting-testimonials-on-my-website/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:16:00 +0000 Martin http://www.vouchforthis.com/?p=478 We have changed the order in which testimonials are displayed in your widgets. Previously, testimonials were displayed in the order they were uploaded. This means that your newest testimonials appeared at the bottom when displayed on your website. Ideally, we would have wanted to allow you to determine the order in which they are listed, as you might prefer to show one particular testimonial at the top of the list. However, this is too big a change for us to consider right now and so what we have done is to change the system so that when widgets are added or rebuilt (e.g. when a new testimonial is added or when you change the size or colour of your widgets) your testimonials will be listed in reverse chronological sequence. This should have a positive effect on your testimonial display as the most recent testimonials are probably the most significant for your potential new customers.

We think that this is the best default for testimonials displayed on your website, with the newest testimonials being displayed in a more visible part of the browser window.

Please note : you will need to rebuild your widgets manually if you want this to take effect on your websites straight away. To do this, simply go to your My Widgets page and click Edit , Preview and Save against each of your widgets in turn. This will fool the system into thinking you have changed your widget and so it will rebuild them, changing the order of your testimonials as it does so.

A Great February so far!

We have had lots of new members join during February, and we’re glad to see so many website owners making great use of the site to add, manage and verify their testimonials.

Website Testimonials are great ways to show the World that other people appreciate your work! …and they are even more effective when they have been “vouched-for”…

So don’t be shy - if you have received any testimonials recently, why not get them onto Vouchforthis and get them verified? Have you recently completed work for customers that you thought was worthy of a great testimonial? Why not use Vouchforthis to ask them for one?

Want to look back at previous newsletters?

Take a look at our blog pages - there’s a section for Newsletter Archives as well as ’Recent Changes’ and ‘Known Bugs’ sections.

What’s new this month?

Earn some useful referral income by recommending Vouchforthis

All members are now able to earn referral income by recommending us to the people they know. This helps us to recruit new members, it helps you to earn a little extra, and it helps your contacts to do more with their website testimonials. What’s more, you can do it passively…  Find out more here

Get your website visitors to leave you a ‘vouched-for’ testimonial

You can now place buttons on your web pages inviting website visitors to leave you a testimonial. Any testimonials added in this way will be automatically “vouched-for”, and all you will need to do to display them on your website will be to log in to your vouchforthis account and activate the testimonials… Find out more

We think that these new features will really help you, and hope that you will see the benefit and start using them straight away.

Are you making the most of your Vouchforthis membership?

If you haven’t used Vouchforthis for a while, it’s worth having a quick recap…

As a member of Vouchforthis you can add as many testimonials as you like. We send your testimonials to the people that provided them for you to get them verified. When your testimonial has been verified it will appear with a nice green tick badge to show your website visitors it has been authenticated, but regardless of whether your testimonials get verified or not you can still show them on your website. To add more testimonials, just log in with your username and password and go to “My Testimonials”.

You put your testimonials onto your web pages and blogs by creating one or more of widgets, and then place these widgets into your web pages at the place you want your testimonials to appear.

Each widget can group together one or more of your testimonials, for example to group your testimonials by product or by company, and each can be styled to suit the web page(s) it will be used on. To add your widgets, just log in with your username and password and go to “My Widgets”.

You can preview your widget before you add it to your website making it even easier to get just right before you deploy!

You can use the Vouchforthis to ask your existing and past customers for a testimonial too, and you can now put our graphics onto your web pages to encourage your website visitors to click through to add a testimonial for you.

Hint 1 : When adding testimonials, don’t surround them with quotes or include the name and company of your customer, as we do that for you

Hint 2 : If you want to link to your clients website from their testimonial you only need to enter the url into the field provided when adding the testimonial. We will then automatically convert their name and company into a link for you. This is a good way to “give a little back” to your testimonial giver.

Hint 3 : Don’t be shy about asking former customers for a testimonial. It’s a great way to re-engage with someone you worked with some time ago, and could really boost your credibility. Offer them a link back to their website from the testimonial (see above).

Member Focus

In every newsletter we will feature one of our members who have se testimonial and Vouchforthis website usage.

If you don’t use the website we cannot feature you here, so get adding those testimonials, build those widgets, and start deploying them around the web.

Don’t forget to let us know how you have used your Vouchforthis widgets so that we can add them to our Member Directory. Getting into the directory should increase traffic to your website as our visitors come across your entry and follow the links. Building good quality inbound links to your site is an important SEO activity, so why not make the most of the opportunity?

Chris Rowell - Positive Property Investment

Positive Property Investment is run by a team of experienced Investors who will show you how you can invest in property using little or none of your own money. Vouchforthis testimonials are used by Positive property Investment in their “Testimonials” page, and on their Business-Scene profile pages.

If you think that Chris could be helpful to your business or to you personally, why not get in touch? His company does have quite a few testimonials (most verified by Vouchforthis) and so he must be good!

A Bit About Us (Well, about me at least)

DMJ Computer Services own and operate the Vouchforthis website. I have been in the business of developing software since the late 1970′s – yes, really! and have been running DMJ Computer Services since the mid-1980′s. That’s quite some time given modern standards, and whilst I don’t profess to be as sharp as I was a couple of decades ago, what I lack in agility I more than make up for in common sense and realism.

I now spend nearly as much time discouraging potential and existing clients from developing new websites as I do actually building them. This might sound a little odd, but I have always tended to act as devils advocate, arguing against the business owners who think there website idea is the next big thing. This usually has positive effects – it shows the business owner that I don’t just take on any project because it pays to do so, and means that I am really committed to those projects that I do take on.

So, if you want to be talked out of a software or website project, you know who to talk to!

Seriously – if you want to discuss a website project or want to explore ways of increasing your traffic or improving your conversion rates, please contact us. ]]> http://www.vouchforthis.com/vouchforthis-new-features-more-members-better-news-for-your-testimonials/feed/ 0 http://www.vouchforthis.com/let-your-website-visitors-add-a-testimonial-for-you/ http://www.vouchforthis.com/let-your-website-visitors-add-a-testimonial-for-you/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:33:57 +0000 Martin http://www.vouchforthis.com/?p=461 So far, you have been able to use vouchforthis to add and verify testimonials that have already been given to you, and also to prompt your customers to add a testimonial for you. It’s up to you to manage this, and whilst I’m sure most members are pro-active in asking for testimonials where they think they have done a good job, there are lots of situations where this might not be practical. So we have added yet another feature to the website to enable you to passively ask for testimonials from people who visit your website, blog or social media profiles.

You can find out all about the new feature here, but in a nutshell :

1. We provide you with a choice of graphics
2. You paste the graphic into your web pages
3. Your website visitors can then click on the graphic and be brought directly to Vouchforthis where they can leave a testimonial for you
4. The testimonial will be automatically verified, and all you need to do is log in to your vouchforthis account and activate the testimonial if you are happy with it

Why not try it out by clicking one of the sample graphics on the right of this post?

A simple, and we hope, effective tool to help you get more testimonials. As well as receiving testimonials from “casual” browsers of your website for whom you may have previously worked, you can also point your existing customers to your website page and ask them to click the link if they would like to leave you a testimonial. This greatly reduces your own involvement – and you end up with a testimonial that is already “vouched-for”.

Don’t see a graphic that you like? Want something a little more customised for your website? Why not ask us to build one for you?

One of our members has asked whether these links can open in a new window whenever anyone clicks on them, as at the moment the link opens on the same page. We think this is a good idea and will be implementing it within the next week or two, and will take a look at other such hyperlinks (for example, the ‘Request a Reference’ link) to see what can be done with those as well. We will let you know just as soon as these changes have been made.

As awareness of the vouchforthis website increases so should the credibility of the testimonials we display – and that means yours too! So please help us to spread the word (and earn some valuable commission in the process) by encouraging your contacts to join by passing your referral code on to them verbally or through emails. Increase your earning ability even further by displaying our adverts on your website.

We think this is a great way of spreading the word about our product, and we hope that as many of you as possible embrace this opportunity to introduce your contacts / friends / colleagues to vouchforthis.

To find out more about the scheme, please visit our Referrer Information page.