Testimonials On Sites?

[Lee]

Do you think surfers actually beleive the testimonials that appear on some websites saying how wonderful a product is?

I must admit, whenever i see a testimonial page i usually just look at it to see how creative the copywriter for the site was with them from a marketing perspective.

Was just wondering what you folks thought about this, are testimonials looked at by surfers as 'fake' for the most part?

Regards,

Lee

[Chilihost]

If you are looking for real, why not put up testimonials that are on other sites like well known and independant review sites? Then link to them for proof.

cheers,
Luke

[maxpower]

To me testimonials like most text are only good to put key words in peoples minds, they do not really read it or trust much of the information, if you did your job right all their blood has already been diverted from their brain anyway.

Example of key words.

(This has to be the most Action Packed sites I have even seen, with a Huge Movie Selection and Exclusive Videos that Update Daily.) You only really care if the pick up on a few of these key words, the filler is just that filler. Granted this description sucks, but you get the idea

[CorbinFisher_BD]

When I have my surfer hat on and am just running about the web checking at porn, I rarely, if ever, believe testimonials. I just assume it's something the webmaster themselves wrote and put on the site.

And, on the same subject even, when I'd see sites have excerpts from reviews in magazines or by people I never heard of, I'd always just think "How lame...". For example, some site would have some text like "'This is the best porn site I've ever seen!!' - John Q. Writer, Porny Porn Magazine" or "'The leader in gay porn!' - DJ Tweakerman, Famous Circuit DJ".

If I'd never heard of John Q. Writer, Porny Porn Magazine, or DJ Tweakerman I'd think to myself "Why the hell are they being quoted, and how desperate was that site owner from a quote from someone?!" I mean if it was a quote from Keith Olberman that's one thing. But random people no one's ever heard of, yet that are being presented as people we should have heard of? Lame! hehe

We took all outbound links off of our site a long time ago, but before that the only ones we had were to a few review sites. Directing people to the actual sites, as Luke said, seemed the best way to go. Of course, that then created traffic leak issues and so we took those down, so you have to weigh that in.

[Paco]

I view this the exact same way I do the "doctors" whom we've seen on TV (promoting weight loss products), as well porn "bloggers" and site reviewers: rarely do I believe in any text or words uttered from the person who is trying to sell me something, ESPECIALLY if the text is linked (with a ref ID).

For many years we've had a big cock chat section (text only - no pics) which one can access from outside. We let our members do all the talking and if somebody asks for testis I simply point them to the bigcock ... chat.