Does Your Practice Website Have Testimonials?
Testimonials feature on all sorts of websites for products and services. What about your practice website? Do you have testimonials that your audience can read?
Beyond a good website that provides a positive first impression to online visitors and prospective patients, testimonials can go a long way to creating that positive attitude towards your practice more broadly.
Why do I need testimonials on my website?
Here are the top reasons to add a page to your website today:
Testimonials help build trust in your practice
A few words from your current patients can be enough to earn the trust of your prospective patients. It’s proof that you have patients and therefore are legitimate – they are positive reviews of a kind, and reviews are more popular than ever.
They explain the benefits of your services
Often, people who are looking for health help aren’t quite sure what a chiropractor might offer them. With testimonials, some of that explaining is done for you! They can explain the benefits of what you are doing, especially if they include what the original concern or need for the patient was, and then how you helped to address it.
Testimonials can act like referrals
We tend to trust individuals over businesses, because we assume that a business just wants our money and nothing else. Whereas we take referrals from people we know or trust very seriously – and even if we don’t know the person, we take the individual’s opinion over that of a business.
They add emotion to your offerings
None of us wants to do a ‘hard sell’. We want to share with prospective patients the power of taking their health into their own hands, and seeking out the expert care they need – it’s not about ‘selling’ them something in an over the top way. This is why the emotional resonance of what you are offering is really important. Patients relate to other patients, and this can then make it easier for them to relate to your practice. Use names and pictures of patients if you can, to make it easier for people to connect and want to reach out.
Where should I place a testimonial for the best outcomes?
This really depends on the style of website design that you are using. Some businesses include them directly on the homepage, which works for a lot of websites that are found through Google search. But that’s not your only option. You might also include testimonials as its own separate landing page (called ‘testimonials’ or similar), on a services page, on any contact pages you have, underneath blog posts, or in your sidebar. You might also consider adding these to your hero image or header, or near any specific calls to action you have on your page – like to sign up to your email newsletter.
You can also include them in the email newsletters themselves, and on social media, so this isn’t just limited to your website. Oh, and don’t forget that your printed and other physical materials can also include testimonials!
You can track what works best online, however, with a heatmap behaviour plugin that can help detect where people click and engage with your site. So, for instance, if you discovered that nobody was scrolling down to the bottom of your homepage, this would not be a particularly effective place to put your testimonials! Test different spots and see what works best for your audience.
How many testimonials should I include on my website?
There’s no hard and fast rule on how many testimonials you need for your practice. One really excellent testimonial can be plenty for some people to feel convinced, and others will prefer to see a few, which can show that you have many happy patients who speak highly of you. Collect as many as you can initially and utilise the most impactful ones on your site.
How can I gather testimonials?
There’s no better way than simply to ask. Maybe at the end of a course of treatment with a patient, or you might follow up down the line via email. Reach out to your existing patients, those who you know came away with a positive experience, and ask if they’d be willing to put their experience into words.
Try to approach those who have experienced your services recently, and make sure to ask the right questions to help guide their response. This might be things like:
- What was the problem you had been dealing with before coming to see us?
- How did this problem affect your life?
- What was it like to come and work with us?
- How soon did you start to notice a change?
- What’s the biggest difference you’ve noticed since doing chiropractic?
- What is your life like now compared to before?
With these, you can help direct the information you hope to receive from your patients and give any newcomers a well-rounded idea of what to expect.
Make sure that you edit language to be grammatically correct and easy to follow, and remember that this is a testimonial, not a monologue! Edit down so that the information is concise. Include only the most pertinent information.
There you have it, the ins and outs of testimonials – why they are important, how to get them, where to put them, and more! Start gathering these as soon as you can and let the world know about the great work that you do.