| Random
Quotes & Testimonials
Testimonials
are a key way to develop trust and confidence
in a website. The person who is on the other
end of the browser screen wants to know
that other people have been in their shoes,
and that other people have made the right
decision by doing business with the organization.
But
studies show that nobody clicks on the testimonial
page on a site. It's better to "sprinkle"
them in throughout the site.
Rather
than go through each page of a website to
manually add in a testimonial, PHP programming
allows you to create a database table of
testimonials, and then randomly (or sequentially)
serve a testimonial on each page of the
site.
How
Does This Work?
- When
you visit a web page, php code on the
server chooses a random quote from a database
table.
- Think
of a table like a spreadsheet, where you
have these types of fields:
| ID |
Title |
Testimonial |
| 1 |
Great
Product |
"When
I started searching for..." |
| 2 |
Easy
to Use |
"I
was amazed how easy this was..." |
| 3 |
Can't
live without |
"I
can't imagine living without this..."
|
| 4 |
Two
Thumbs Up |
"I
was so happy to see that it worked..."
|
- After
the php code grabs the Title and Testimonial
fields from the correct row, it then inserts
the information onto a page on the site:
(Testimonial example from
our client's website, InJoyVideos.com)
Sequential
vs. Random
Instead
of randomly displaying a testimonial, the
site could instead sequentially display
testimonials.
For
example, the first page the person sees,
they would see testimonial #1, the second
page they visit, testimonial #2, etc. This
is different than having testimonial #1
on the about us page, and testimonial #2
on the contact page. Instead, it works by
counting each page the visitor requests,
and serves the testimonials in a set, sequenced
order.
This
tactic is ideal if you want each testimonial
to build upon the previous one, regardless
of which page they visit in the site.
Random
Quotes From A Book
For
a site promoting my wife's book, God
in the Wilderness, we wanted to feature
an attention-grabbing quote on each page
of the site:
(This
was definitely one of the more intense quotes
in the book.)
We
created an easy-to-use admin area where
someone could add, edit or remove quotes
to the site:
Summary:
With
an interactive language like PHP, you can
randomly "sprinkle" content like
quotes or testimonials throughout your site
to create trust and add excitement. |
