Just let us know how you are using Vouchforthis!

It’s as simple as sending us a quick email telling us where your testimonials are displayed (blog, website, facebook, business-scene.com etc.).

We’ll then take a screen print of your site, write a little summary of your business, and add a link to your site.

Take a look at our Directory Page to see what we have done for other members…

…and then let us know about your site too!

They really wanted to use vouchforthis, but considered that the email that gets sent to request a testimonial was too wordy. We have worked together to come up with a shorter, snappier testimonial email that gets sent to your customer, and hope that this results in a higher acceptance rate for your testimonial requests.

The new message looks like this. As always, if this causes problems for you or your clients, please let us know and we’ll sort things out for you…

[Your name] has joined vouchforthis.com to manage recommendations and testimonials and told us that you provided this one for them…

“[Your testimonial]”

We hope that you can verify this by clicking the link below, as it greatly improves the credibility of a testimonial if the testimonial giver has confirmed it. You will be able to change the wording and edit the testimonial signature if you are not happy with it.

I am happy to edit or confirm this testimonial

I prefer not to confirm this testimonial

[Your name] has sent you a personal message to accompany this request…

“[Your personal message goes here]”

Of course, if you’re just requesting a testimonial without suggesting one, or if you’re sending a testimonial request and haven’t added your own personal message, then the email will look slightly different but still shorter than it was before.

Our Facebook Welcome Page

Want to add your Vouchforthis testimonial widget to your Facebook welcome page so your Facebook visitors get to see how reputable you are before they find out more about you and your business?

First of all you’ll need to create a welcome page for your Facebook.

There are a few Facebook apps you can use to do the job, but I’m going to demonstrate the one I used. Before we go too far, take a look at our own Vouchforthis welcome page on Facebook so you can see what you’re aiming for – why not ‘like us’ while you’re there?

Creating your Facebook Welcome page

I chose the Static HTML: iframe tabs app from a suggested list of 10 facebook apps for building custom pages to set up my custom welcome page. I did try a few of the other apps in the list, but this was the one that gave me the most flexibility, allowed me to add the javascript that the vouchforthis widget needs, and didn’t ask me to put a big advert for the developer on my page.

Here’s a link to the instructions for installing and configuring the app.

The nice thing about this app is that you can create different welcome pages for fans and non-fans – so the non-fan welcome page could be set up to encourage the visitor to ‘like’ you, and the fan welcome page could contain some helpful hints and tips that you’re happy to give away to your fans.

Adding your Vouchforthis widget to your new welcome page

Either during the creation of your welcome page, or afterwards, you can add the widget code to display your testimonials. Just place the widget code into your app html at the place where you want it to be displayed. Personally, I think it is best to add this to your non-fan welcome page so that it makes you look a credible business with genuine and happy customers.

The widget code that you add is the same code that you add to your other web and blog pages and looks something like this…

You can get the correct code for your widget by logging in to your vouchforthis account, then going to ‘My Widgets’ and clicking ‘Preview’ for the widget you want to use. If you don’t yet have a widget (or widgets) you can create them by following the navigation link to Add a Widget.

Problems creating your Facebook Welcome page?

If you’re having problems adding your Facebook Welcome page, or if you can’t add your Vouchforthis widget to it, drop us a line. If it’s a quick fix we’ll see if we can help out. If it looks like it will take a bit longer…

1. To protect the main site from malicious attacks
2. To improve performance by utilising their CDN (Content Delivery Network). CDN’s work by replicating website pages and putting them on servers in various locations around the globe. This helps speed up website traffic by reducing the number of hops a website visitors request needs to make before it finds the content – the closer your content is to your website visitor (generally), the better it is

Our hope is that this change in service will be beneficial to our users. Apart from a slightly improved performance, we don’t expect you to notice any differences. So if you do notice a problem, please let us know about it.

We send a survey to everyone who supplies testimonials for our members. A few days after you ask a customer to verify a testimonial we send them an email thanking them for helping you out (and reminding them to verify your testimonial if they haven’t done so) and we also ask them to tell us what they think of the service. One of the questions we ask them is…

“Are verified testimonials more credible than normal testimonials?”

Here are the results…

So we know we’re on the right track – and so should you!

If you display testimonials on your website and want them to appear more credibility than those on your competitors websites, join Vouchforthis today.

You told us you wanted to create your testimonial widgets so that they automatically expand to fill the space available to them in your website. This would help when placing the same widget in more than one place within your site – for example, in the main content section of your page and in a narrow sidebar, or where you weren’t sure what pixel width you have available to you.

To create a variable-width widget, just add your (or edit an existing) widget and set the Width field (see above) to 0 (zero).

Then save the widget and you’re done!

You can create your account, upload as many testimonials as you like, create widgets to deploy your testimonials around the web… all of this is free.

However, I’m sure you’ll agree that such a unique and valuable service could not have been built without hundreds of hours of development time, and so we would ask you to consider upgrading your account to our premium service for just £9.99+vat per year.

Upgrading your account will remove the advertising banner that we can sometimes display beneath your website widgets, and contributes to the cost of supporting our growing band of members.

So, to upgrade, just log in to your vouchforthis account and follow the link to ‘Upgrade to Premium Service….’ that appears after you log in…

We have now made it even easier to broadcast your testimonial to your Twitter followers. This is how it works :

• When your testimonial gets verified you will receive the usual email telling you it has been approved. In this email you will see a link that says ‘Share Your Testimonial on Twitter’…



• Click the email link and you will be presented with the Twitter Share application. Alternatively, you can do the same by logging in to your vouchforthis account, viewing your testimonial list, and then selecting ‘Share on Twitter’ for the testimonial you want to share…

• The tweet text will already be completed for you, but you are of course free to edit it if you like. The tweet automatically generates a url shortcode which links directly to a page on the Vouchforthis website that shows ONLY your testimonial…

Even better news is that your clients (those that provide the testimonials for you) will also be given the opportunity to Tweet the testimonial to their followers – should they be inclined to do so.

I think this is a great way to promote your testimonial to your followers, and am working on similar ways to broadcast to other social networks.

After all, you have done a particularly fine piece of work for them or sold them a product that they are delighted with, so wouldn’t now be a great time to ask them to give you a testimonial?

Don’t be too quick to ask them for a testimonial as you don’t want to appear too mercenary. For example, I generally leave it a week or two between putting a website live and asking my client for a testimonial as that gives enough time for them to get used to the site and realise what a gem I have delivered, but not so long that they have forgotten what I did for them.

We have written this guide to asking for testimonials.

Vouchforthis makes this process easier by allowing you to directly request a testimonial from your clients. Not only does this show them that you treat your testimonials seriously, it also means that you get a ‘Verified’ testimonial onto your website far quicker than might normally be the case.

Ask your customers for a testimonial by logging in to your vouchforthis account here… http://www.vouchforthis.com/login/ and then following the links to My Testimonials / Ask for a Testimonial. You can either leave the testimonial blank, in which case your customer will receive a request from us to provide a testimonial for you, or you can ‘suggest’ a testimonial, in which case your customer will receive a request asking them to either approve the testimonial or send one of their own. In both cases as soon as the client has approved the testimonial it will show as ‘Verified’ in your website widget.

First the tip :

If you are using vouchforthis and have added your widgets to your blog, or your website, or to a directory such as Business-Scene… LET US KNOW !

Why is this important to me?

For two reasons :

1. We will add your website to our Member Directory, which contains a quick reference to your business, a thumbnail image of your website, and a link through to your website. This should give you a small amount of traffic;
2. We will get to see how you are using your widgets and can suggest ways to improve them for you;

Visit our contact us page to let us know how you are using the website.