Introducing Version 2.0

It’s been a busy start to 2010 for us, and we hope it has been equally successful for you and your own businesses. We have put the new version of the Vouchforthis website live over the past week and are acting like proud parents wanting to show our new offspring off to you all.

What’s New in this release?

The move to release 2.0 was prompted more by a desire to come up with a look-and-feel that was easier on the eye than it was to improve on the functionality. Our launch release needed to prove that the site worked – which it did – so we wanted to make the site look better (which I think it does) and to move to a framework that made future enhancements easier. That said, there are some new features that you might want to take a look at…

• We have a nifty new slider control on the home page to get the benefits across a little better than before
• We have integrated a blog into the main site so that we can start to build a good repository of useful information, let you know what we are working on, and what issues there are with the site, as well as using it to announce new functionality as it happens
• Once you have added your testimonials and created your widget you can now preview your entire widget BEFORE adding it to your own website. This will help you to fine tune things like the size and colours without risking it on your own web page before it is ready
• You can now use the website to ask a former customer to provide a testimonial for you. When your customer responds the testimonial they provide will already have been verified.

We have lots of new functionality on the way, and will let you know about this shortly.

Are you making the most of your 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 to the site. We will then 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”.

The method for getting your Vouchforthis testimonials onto your web pages and blogs is to create one or more of our widgets, and then to place these widgets into your web pages. Each widget can be used to 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”. As mentioned above, you can now preview your widget before you add it to your website making it even easier to get just right before you deploy!

Hint 1 : When adding your testimonials, you don’t need to surround them with quotes, 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). You can now get vouchforthis to ask for the testimonial for you (see new features).

Member Focus

In every newsletter we are going to feature one of our members whose 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?

Lynn Tulip – Assessment4potential

Lynn runs a Recruitment and Career Support website, helping people to develop professional and life skills to achieve the best outcomes for themselves. Vouchforthis testimonials are used by Assessment4potential in their “What our clients say about us” page, and on their Business-Scene profile page.

If you think that Lynn could be helpful to your business or to you personally, why not get in touch with her? Her company does have quite a few testimonials (many verified by Vouchforthis) and so she 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 their 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.