Testimonial sections: what to get right first

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. If you only fix one thing about testimonial sections this quarter, make it the first item below.

Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

Start here

A specific quote beats five vague ones. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Then this

Names, roles, and companies make quotes credible. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

Eventually

Unattributed praise reads as invented. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

How to tell if yours is fine

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about testimonial sections before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Unattributed praise reads as invented — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.