I’m sorry-not-sorry for the click baity title but I wanted you to get your attention. I got rid of my Reviews page on my website and I wanted to share why I did it, what I do instead and why you need to do the same. You see, when we first build our websites, we might do lots of research and gather all the knowledge and stick it on our websites and not really be sure what we’re doing is actually working for us. 

What you need on your website

In my Visible Vibes membership I offer plenty of detailed trainings + resources on the pages you need on your website but here’s a general overview:

There’s the Homepage, the shop window where we entice people to click through to different pages of our website by sharing snippets of what to expect. A bit about Service A, service B, a bit about us, all linking through to pages where they can read more. 

Then there’s the About page, where we tell our story, our background, what makes us so excited about what we do and why we love it. Next up, our Service pages or online shop where we show off what we have for sale. 

We might have a Blog (particularly if you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that blogs are where we convince people we’re the experts, the brilliant resourceful ones, the ones who offer the best customer service)

We’ll definitely have a Contact page where people can get in touch with us and an FAQ page where we post our frequently asked questions to save us time from repeating ourselves to our customers who get in touch.

And then it comes to our Testimonials / Reviews / Praise / Happy Clients page which no longer exists on my website. Until recently I did have a Praise page but to be honest I hadn’t looked at it in years (since I launched this version of my website 2 years ago!). 

So I got rid of it with no fanfare except for, you know, blogging about it 🙂 

I deleted it and redirected the old Praise page link to my homepage in case anyone found the link and clicked on it (never leave an old link hanging from where you’ve deleted an old page or blog post folks, ‘cos people looking at your website don’t like coming across a “Uh oh we can’t find this page” which is what happens when you delete a page and don’t redirect it to a page that still exists).

Here’s why I deleted my Reviews page

You see, my Praise page was full of people I haven’t worked with in forever, many of whom I wanted on there because it looked good to have their name associated with me. I didn’t feel connected with most of them anymore, and in the interests of my new direction of focusing on connections, it felt disingenuous. 

If I forgot that page existed and I look at my website a LOT, then, my audience certainly will have done, because I haven’t been reminding them it existed by directing them to it with content in other places (like social media posts, shortcut on my Instagram bio, email newsletters, etc).

What do I do with my reviews instead?

Don’t get me wrong, I still collect my testimonials from clients and members and use them (in fact, in Visible Vibes membership I provide a template list of questions to ask clients to get the best feedback)

• I save them all to a file so I can read them through when I feel down.
• I write one or two favourite reviews on brightly coloured post-it notes and put them up on the inside of my kitchen cabinets as a nice pep talk when I open the doors (plus it’s a nice surprise for guests too!)
• I add my reviews around the rest of my website – like my homepage – where it’s much more noticeable and meaningful.
• I make sure I add plenty of reviews both text (and during a launch, video too) on my actual sales pages where’s much more convincing that I’m the one that my readers and potential clients have been looking for. 
• I use the language from the testimonials to spruce up my actual sales page text, my posts + emails about what I sell.

If I had an online shop selling products or I was in the hospitality industry, I could also display reviews might be to use a plugin or addon (depending on your website setup) like TripAdvisor, Google reviews, Trustpilot or Facebook to update the reviews automatically. This can be displayed in your website footer so it’s visible on all pages rather than having its own page.

So should you also delete your reviews page?

Here’s why it’s a good idea for you:

• Less pages to update meaning less work for you plus you’re making your website work smarter not harder
• Increasing conversions from visitors to buyers because you’re adding your reviews in the places I’ve suggested above.

Here’s the argument against getting rid of your reviews page:

• If you have juicy content to share about each testimonial like press features, case study links or blog links where you’ve shared more about each client. For example, if you’re a wedding photographer who has had weddings published on wedding blogs + magazines then you could add those press badges to a photo of the happy couple alongside their testimonial and a link through to the real wedding on your blog and/or the press feature. Here’s an example on my client Fiona Kelly Photography’s website. This makes the page a lot more engaging and again, convincing that you’re the one for the reader.

Make the connection with your audience

Ultimately, you need to use your website to make a better connection with your audience. You’ve put all this effort into getting them there, and you need to persuade them you’re the one for them. So you need to make your website work harder not smarter in order to make that connection.

So, whether you delete + absorb the Testimonials on your website or if you update your Testimonials on their own page to make it more engaging, you need to make an active choice to make your website as engaging and interesting as possible so more people trust you to open their wallets and pay you. Come on over to Instagram and pop me a DM – are you Team Delete + Absorb or Team Remain?

Maddy x

P.S. If you want to dive deeper into getting your business more visible, come and check out Visible Vibes here.