Testimonials – And Why I Say No
Occasionally, I get the odd email asking me for testimonials, also asking for the names of people and or names of websites I have developed, or assisted with development.
While I believe in the right for people to either like my work or not, I don’t see the necessity to promote the work I’ve done – for several reasons.
- Competition. In the good old days (been doing this for 20 years), people used to contact website owners, telling them how bad you are – even to the point where they’d say something along the lines of ‘he built me a site that turned out to be so buggy, that I had to have it totally rebuilt’. After a period of time, you get the contacts and word of mouth works more in your favor. Plus, the quality of work you can do increases, because your focus is more on ‘the work’, rather than trying to find new work.
- Security. Any reputable website developer, let alone WordPress professional, will not want anybody knowing that they are the architect securing a particular website, for numerous reasons – of which I won’t discuss here. What I will say though, is every website is different. My main focus whilst auditing websites, is security. I see so many ‘developers’ out there that are building websites for people, be it personal or for business, but lack the most important thing of all – security. If you’ve had a website built by anyone over the past 4 years, and it isn’t secured – ask them why.
- Fake. News. I hate the term, but it’s true. Do yourself a favor when you read some testimonials. Highlight some text, right click it and search Google for it. Any images – people for example, right click the image and search Google. Most times – not always though, you’ll see a persons face used in a testimonial that is used all over the web. Again, Fake News. Fake testimonials mean one thing. Desperation. They’ll take your money and run.
I’ve never had to advertise, and I stopped using testimonials 15+ years ago. I work at home, by myself. I don’t have the overheads that some companies do. I learned HTML, CSS and JavaScript in the late 1990’s. I dabbled and became interested in PHP and SQL about five years later. When WordPress came along, I got right into it and never looked back.
You could argue ‘why have this website then?’. Good point. Simple answer. People can connect with me, personally and professionally. Also, it might answer the question some may have, ‘what does Robert Crain do?’. And to be honest, I like having my name out there :)
Anyway people, just think about what I wrote. I’m not asking you use my services – just be careful who you choose to work with.
Interested? You may not be when you find out my rate is $88 per hour, minimum 3 hours. I can do a lot in 3 hours.
Have a great day!
