| Introduction - Website Testimonials |
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Due to a lack of accountability, many unscrupulous website owners misuse the freedom of the web by posting testimonials for their services and products which are not genuine
(for example, written by the website owners themselves). Because of this, many people are cynical about testimonials, making it difficult for genuine ones to stand out from
the fakes. Thus, an excellent tool that could help decent and legitimate businesses has become hijacked. The more interesting phenomenon is that the better the testimonials
posted on a website, the more anxious and untruthful it may seem to the visitor.
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| Paid Services |
There are several online services attempting to address the problem by collecting buyers’ opinions on the behalf of the website. One such solution is
http://www.ekomi.co.uk, among others. Such services are possible solutions which may be very good for some
type of online businesses, but they also have inherent problems associated with them, one of which is the cost. Some of these services are quite expensive, starting from £99 GBP
per month for less than 3000 reviews, and the price often rises progressively. On the positive side, this type of solution provides feedback, and what is particularly good from
the website visitor’s point of view is that both positive and negative reviews are accepted and published. Another positive feature is the larger number of reviews that they
should facilitate (provided that is a large number of purchases).
However, as mentioned, these types of solutions have a number of drawbacks. The fundamental problem with them is that their model is centralized and artificial. Therefore it is necessarily
inconsistent and also expensive (as we saw), inflexible, not necessarily truthful, representative or impartial. For example, both, website owners and visitors have to trust the central
"authority". In this situation, the middleman "authority" has a lot of power, which may not be a positive thing. From the website owner's point of view, control over their own website
at this level is lost for as long as they are using the service. To see the fundamental inconsistency of these types of solutions, we will look at a fictional case. Suppose that there
is a large company holding the market of some gadget; a small new company emerges on the same market with a superior product and subscribes to one of these services. The large company
is not interested in competition or wasting much money to change their production, so they decide to buy gadgets from the small company from every single shop which they have around the
world, thus making the sales to look as though from genuine customers. Thus say the large company purchases 50,000 items from the small company, but they leave a negative review with each
order, then they stop buying – no-one would now buy from the new company since they would see 50,000 negative reviews on their testimonial page. This is in fact the same principle in which
monopolies use to squeeze competitors out of the market. Although this is only a hypothetical scenario, it demonstrates the inherent flaws in a centralized and unnatural system provided
by these types of services. It also worth mentioning that there are also a number of other problems and expenses associated with these systems, including extra technical and art work of
the website subscribing to these services. Furthermore, why should the customer believe such a list of testimonials? We have seen that these systems can be easily forged and manipulated,
bringing their trustworthiness and worth into disrepute. In fact, if website owners implement a proper customer feedback mechanism on their websites, they will derive most of the benefits
of a centralized system with far fewer disadvantages.
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| Free Services |
There are other solutions, such as websites designed for leaving reviews, and websites such as http://download.cnet.com where
members can leave reviews. However, as with the above example, neither of these solutions have proper structural models. Therefore, depending on the circumstances, reviews can range from informative
to damaging and outright untruthful. It suffices to say that typically the business model of these websites is based on gaining revenue from advertisements. The looseness of the comments and reviews
added to these services makes them unreliable and untrustworthy sources of information. Further, psychologically, without an incentive most people would make the effort to make a review only when they
are very dissatisfied and wish to complain, or are "blown away" but rarely when they simply receive something that does what it says on the tin. In conclusion, it is possible that a company could
employ a person to simply create accounts on these websites and place positive reviews for them and negative ones for the competition. This could be multiplied if they pay a few dollars to a group
of students looking to gain some easy money, and not to mention what a robot equipped with a decent spinner could do in just one hour. Some of these services simply accept payments to write and
publish reviews, and while some at least try to be objective, others deserve no comment at all; however this goes out of our scope of interest.
| | Website Seals |
Website seals of course should not give any credibility to a website, but for completeness we will briefly discuss them. Many people mistakenly believe that a website seal is a symbol for the
trustworthiness of a website. Of course this is not true at all. Provided that a website SSL seal is valid, it only means that information is protected while transferred to another SSL certified
website, or SSL enabled browser, for example the customer credit card details are secure while transferring them. It does not mean that the company will actually fulfill their promise for the goods
or service for which the visitor is paying. An SSL seal can be bought for as little as 10 USD, and in some cases can be obtained for free. Thus we will discuss website seals no further.
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| The Solution |
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Fortunately, there is a well-structured solution which ensures authentic testimonials and a range of other benefits. This solution is free and has a proper structural model. Put simply, this means
that all parties involved in the testimonial process only have to tend to their own responsibilities within it, and can be safe in the knowledge that the process is fair. With this solution, the
website owner keeps full control over their website and the testimonials published on it. The website visitor can be 100% sure that the testimonials are genuine as he/she is able to verify them.
The testimonial-giver receives a credit for his effort to make the testimonial, which is expressed in a higher rank of their website in search engines, and also visitors and traffic coming from
the testified website. In addition, a network is established. This solution is described in the How to Make Your Website Trusted protocol.
This solution not only allows a website owner to put the testimonials on their website and show that they are genuine, but also highly increases the trustworthiness of their website and online
business. Some drawbacks of this solution are that there will be a lower number of testimonials given compared to the centralized model. One real problem with this solution is that a testimonial
may not be verifiable in the unlikely event of a witnessing website being down.
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| Conclusion |
Regardless of whether they are free or paid-for, most of the available services offering testimonial collection are inadequate. The main reason for this is because by their nature they are
centralized and without a proper model and structure. A wider discussion on this issue is available at
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/technology/finding-fake-reviews-online.html
Fortunately there is a simple and effective solution to it described in the How to Make Your Website Trusted protocol.
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Continue with How to Make Your Website Trusted protocol.
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