_{Day 129/100}

Hey—It's Tim.

Yesterday the power died for the first nine hours of the day.

No Wi-Fi,
no espresso machine,
no “quick scroll”.

I stared into the abyss… and the abyss politely asked for a charger.

I did, however, have Caleb Ralston’s six-hour branding course downloaded.
So I pitched a tent in offline-land and took notes by candle-glow.

That little outage sparked today’s rabbit hole: testimonials.

We sprinkle a few on the Penfriend site and call it “social proof.”

Truth? They’re okay.

Okay doesn’t move the revenue needle.
Time for a rebuild - and I’m documenting the blueprint before a single line ships.

The Problem with Most Testimonial Sections

They read like LinkedIn love letters:

Nobody believes effusive vagueness.
We need specificity, hierarchy, momentum.

Why generic quote-cards don’t cut it in 2025

• Trust is cracked. Seven-in-ten people now believe business and government leaders deliberately mislead them
  

• Text reviews lost their halo. Only 42 % of consumers trust written reviews as much as a friend’s word — down from 79 % in 2020
  

• Video & UGC run the show.

  • 71 % feel confident after a video testimonial vs 38 % after plain text

  • 92 % say user-generated content feels more authentic than ads favoured.co.uk

  • 63 % trust a testimonial more when the speaker looks unscripted in a casual setting

Conclusion: the internet believes faces, numbers, receipts - not Canva quotes.

What people actually look for

• A real human. Full name, face, job title, LinkedIn link. Let me stalk them.

• Context → Outcome. Show the “before” and a metric-stamped “after.”

• Live receipts. Looms, dashboards, raw screenshots with timestamps.

• Third-party backup. G2, Trustpilot, Reddit threads — anywhere you don’t control.

• Fresh & imperfect. Mix glowing and merely “good” reviews; today’s date beats yesterday’s polish.

Ask yourself: Could a stranger click twice and verify this?

Proof-Block 2.0 — ship this to the page

This is the plan.

Get on a lot of calls with Penfriend users.

Hero hook (first three seconds)

• Eight-word headline: “Penfriend cut our briefing time 70 %.”

• Thumb-size avatar plus company logo.

• One tappable metric chip: “▲ +21 % demo bookings.”

Unfiltered video tile

• 30-60 sec selfie clip, vertical, captions baked in.

• Autoplay muted; badge reads “Recorded on 📱” (signals zero studio polish).

Receipts accordion

• Collapsible panel with a video walk-through and raw analytics PNG.

• One-sentence explainer under each asset: “Snapshot taken 14 days after launch.”

Clickable identity

• Name → LinkedIn (new tab).

• Role + company → company site.

• “Verified customer” badge with hover tooltip: “Email domain matched paying account.”

Community feed strip

• Auto-pull latest tweets/Substack shout-outs tagged #PenfriendWins.

• Show three at random; link to view all.

Balanced transparency (Still working on this one :P)

• Footnote: “We publish every review - good, bad, meh.”

• Link to the raw, filterable review page.

Layer it like an onion - casual skimmers stop at the hook; deep divers peel to the core.

Small implementation tweaks that move trust needles

• Schema markup. Wrap the block in Review & AggregateRating for star-rich snippets.

• A/B honesty test. Slick studio video vs shaky phone clip — casual usually wins.

• Accessibility pass. Transcripts for every clip, alt-text for receipts — inclusivity and trust.

TL;DR cheat sheet

If a stranger can’t click, stalk, and verify within 30 seconds, they won’t believe you.
Pair a tight quote with a face, a metric, and real-time receipts.
Keep a whiff of imperfection, let customers talk on camera, and host proof where you can’t edit it.

That’s the testimonial stack that still converts in 2025.

✌️ Tim "Proof Pocketed" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. If you’ve ever said something nice about Penfriend, expect a ping

I’m trading a five-minute selfie testimonial for 45 minutes of my brain on your project.

Sound good?

If you haven’t said anything nice yet… now’s the perfect time to change that. 😉

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.