Practical guides

Publish authentic customer testimonials on a website

A useful testimonial describes a specific experience. Its value depends on its origin, context and the ability to correct or remove it later.

Go to the method

Two people reviewing customer feedback on a computer before publication
Illustrative scene; no actual customer feedback is depicted.

Collect an attributable experience

After a completed project, invite the customer to describe the original need, what was delivered and what proved useful. Ask for concrete examples rather than praise. Keep the original response and receipt date in a place available to the content owner.

Do not assemble a quotation from separate conversations or assign it to an invented person. If you shorten the wording, have the published version approved. The case-study guide distinguishes feedback, measured results and illustrations.

  • Original source and date retained.
  • Quotation faithful to the response.
  • Numerical results tied to a measurement method.

Agree on exactly what may appear

Show the customer the final quotation and each accompanying element: name, role, company, portrait, logo and link. Obtain permission appropriate to each one. Permission to quote a company does not automatically include permission to display its logo.

Do not turn approval for one project presentation into unrestricted use of a person’s identity or image. Record whom to contact for a correction or removal. If someone is recognisable in a photograph, check the rights connected to that image as well.

  • Final wording approved.
  • Name, image and logo cleared separately.
  • Correction contact identified.

Explain the evidence to readers

Place feedback near the service it helps explain. A dated, accurately attributed sentence is more useful than a carousel of generic claims. Identify the customer’s role, type of work and any important limit on the result described.

Do not publish an average score, review count or Review markup without the underlying reviews and eligibility for the search feature. Google’s review-snippet documentation requires marked-up information to match visible, eligible content.

  • Feedback linked to a relevant offer.
  • Date and context understandable.
  • No invented or extrapolated rating.

Plan correction and removal

Periodically check that the associated company, role and link remain accurate. Update names without silently changing the quotation’s meaning. If permission is withdrawn or a claim becomes misleading, remove it from pages, cards and translated versions.

Keep an inventory of everywhere each testimonial appears. Review images, captions and structured data when making changes. The content operations guide offers a simple review cycle.

  • Every placement recorded.
  • Identities and links reviewed.
  • Removal applied in every language.