As a potential client is visiting your website, a current trend that is becoming prevalent within the content of sites is the appearance of awards, results, and past experiences (testimonials, case studies, etc.). Due to the competitive nature of the digital space, these accolades are becoming a vital component to a site’s success in truly being able to separate you from the competition, especially when the visitor will proceed to check out a few of your competitors’ websites afterward.
Not only does the presence of accolades and accomplishments increase trustworthiness with site visitors but can now improve the performance of your website in Google through their E-A-T metrics.
E-A-T stands for “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness” and it’s by these three metrics that Google evaluates the quality of a site. When a user comes to your website, they should be able to tell just by looking at it that you are an expert in your field. You must show that you and your website can be trusted, and though that is often times done through content, the visual aid in these additional features can make a big difference.
It would only make send that the inclusion of accolades within a site would give users greater satisfaction and overall trust with the website. But, are they that important to the average user? Even as the website owner, many of these features may seem somewhat vain (constituting a vanity approach to presenting information about yourself on the website). But vanity isn’t a negative here – awards, accomplishments, and accolades are seen mostly as favorable to the average person, and through another study that we conducted, we’ll see that all of these features are important for the success of websites in 2019 as far as time on site, pages visited on the site, and overall conversions.
Identifying What Accolades are Important to the User
Our team produced a survey that allowed 100 different users the ability to rate the importance of testimonials, case results, review badges, and awards on several different sites and then rate their importance on a scale of 1-10.
The higher the user rated each accolade, the more important they found it to be for a site.
Here is an example of what the survey looked like to the users who participated:
Results:
Average rating of importance each element received (1-10):
- Testimonials 1
- Case Results 8
- Review Badges 9
- Awards 6
According to the users who participated in our survey, the most important to the least important accolades that we tested were the following:
- Testimonials
- Awards
- Review Badges
- Case Results
As you can see from the results, accolades do provide a level of importance to the user of a website. It shows that the business has a greater trust and satisfaction with its clients. I would say I am somewhat surprised that these numbers aren’t closer to the 7-8 range – when we did a study about the importance of reviews, on a 1-10 scale, the number often barely missed 8. But that was more so for reviews showing up in maps during a regular Google search, not so much the features on a website.
The conclusion still stands that across the board, all of these features should be on any website, and would make an even bigger impact should it be above the fold.
These results from our survey show that by including these accolades on the site, the website will gain an even better chance of getting the business of someone who visits the site.
What Are You Waiting For?
If you have a website and have not yet incorporated accolades within the content of the, it may be time to make a change. If your law firm has accumulated testimonials, case results, review badges, or awards, then you should take the time to add these to your website now. By implementing these accolades to your site, you can offer physical proof to your potential clients as to why your firm deserves their future business. Not only are you providing proof of your trustworthiness to visitors, but also to Google which in turn will create a stronger digital presence.
The team of digital marketing experts at Market My Market works hand-in-hand with law firms and other businesses across the country to ensure their websites are set up to gain the most leads and provide the most helpful information to visitors. If you would like to reevaluate your digital marketing campaign, allow us to be of service. Schedule a free marketing consultation by completing our contact form.