When it comes to all businesses (large and small), the success of the business depends heavily on word of mouth. Testimonials are formal forms of expression that support that concept. They are extremely powerful tools when it comes to strengthening your branding. Testimonials strengthen the credibility of you and your business and as you know, people will not do business with you if they don’t trust you and find you to be credible. You will be surprised at how many valuable testimonials you will be able to collect, not just by asking your business connections for them directly but also through discussions that have been generated from your blog postings and other online discussions that have occurred as a result of your online presence.
Testimonials Ultimate by wpicode, is a WordPress plugin that enables one to display testimonials on your website. You can display testimonials from your clients in a sidebar through the Testimonials Ultimate widget or you can display them in a page or post through the short-code. Testimonials Ultimate plugin is easy to understand and use. It provides you with a clear admin page where you can create customers testimonials and how they will appear on the website.
To get started with Testimonials Ultimate, purchase and download the plugin from wpicode.com. Install it by uploading it . You should be able to see an added Testimonials menu item on the WordPress admin dashboard. This is what we will use to create customer testimonials and embedding them on the website or blog.
To create your first testimonial, click on the Testimonial menu on the dashboard. You should be able to see other four sub-menus pop up below it, namely, Testimonials, Add New Testimonial, Extra Shortcodes and Settings. For first-time users click on the Add New Testimonial menu. On the main window, you will see the Testimonials Ultimate window from which you will create your testimonials.
There are several fields that you will be required to fill. One is the Title of your testimonial. This title will be displayed on the website. You can also include a subtitle. In the Testimonial text box, you will be required to write the customers’ testimonial or product review. You can also upload the customers image or use a link to the image location. Fill the order number which can be anything from 1 – 10. There are several other fields which you can fill depending on the testimonial you wish to embed. You can even add a star rating. After you are done setting up everything, click on the insert testimonial button.
You will be directed to the testimonials page where you will be able to see the testimonials you have created. Here, you can edit or delete the testimonial.
Now you need to embed the testimonial on your website or blog. Just below the listed testimonials, you will see the shortcode generator which generates shortcodes that you can embed in your web pages and posts.
To generate your first shortcode, you will be required to fill in several fields.
- Category
- Layout (The layout in which the testimonials will be displayed i.e Accordion, simple etc. You basically have 9 layouts or 8 if you don’t count the widget view layout)
- Theme color
and several more additional fields. The shortcode will be generated automatically. Copy the shortcode and embed it in your post or web page to display the testimonial in your website. Depending on the layout and theme you chose, you should see something like this,
With Version 3.0 of Testimonials Ultimate, there are new shortcodes added to this plugin. These shortcodes can be found in the Extra Shortcodes sub-menu in the Testimonials menu item. We have the progress bar that displays 3 progress bar on your site. You can change the percentage and color values as you wish.
The other extra shortcode is the pricing shortcode for emebedding a price table on your website. This directs your client to purchase your products directly from your website.
