Highlighting your credibility is very important. One way to do that is to collect and display testimonials from your clients.

The Town Crier during the Old Town Week’s 2007 opening ceremony

Is there an easy way to do both?

In short, yes. As with a lot of things in the WordPress universe, there’s a plugin for that. Actually, there are several plugins for that. But the best one I’ve found so far is Strong Testimonials by Chris Dillon. This is a complete testimonial manager. You can add, display and collect testimonials from your clients, and it’s accessible out of the box.

The plugin provides both shortcodes and a widget for displaying your testimonials, as well as a built-in form for collecting them that asks for the headline, content, and client information such as name, email, company and company website. It also allows for adding a photo to go along with the testimonial for display purposes.

how It Works

The plugin adds a testimonial custom content type to your WordPress installation, and will work with any theme. You have the option of either using the default styling or styling it from the ground up so that it works best with your theme and matches the look and feel of your website. It comes with complete documentation on usage with examples of how to employ the shortcodes.

This is a great solution if you either don’t want to write and add your own custom content type, can’t code, or just don’t have the time. I found myself in the latter situation, and this is the best plugin I’ve found that will display the testimonials the way I want them to be displayed. The plugin author will be taking feature suggestions at an unannounced date, (see the “future” section in the documentation).

What About You?

Now it’s your turn. Are you collecting testimonials for the work you do? If so, how are you displaying them on your site? Leave your tips in the comments below.