---
title: "Web design testimonials: real examples, taken apart"
description: "Two real web design testimonials from a live agency site, and what each proves that praise for the visuals does not. The questions behind them, and the layout that holds them."
url: https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/web-design
---

[Testimonial examples](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples) ★ web designers

# Web design testimonials, taken apart

Your portfolio settled whether the sites look good before anybody reached your testimonials. What it cannot show is whether the site then did anything, or what you were like to work with for the eleven weeks it took — and those are the two things a prospective client is actually trying to find out.

- **What the quote has to prove** — That the site did a job somebody can name, and that the process did not become the client's problem.
- **What holds it** — A quote beside the site it describes, with the number pulled out — spotlight or list.

## 01 What a web design testimonial has to do

A quick fork first, because two different searches land on the same words. **If you are looking for design inspiration for a testimonials section** — how to lay the quotes out, what a good one looks like on screen — that is the [widget examples gallery](https://testymo.com/examples), which has the layouts and styles side by side. This page is about the other thing: what a testimonial *for a web design business* has to contain.

Web design shares its structure with wedding photography and interior design, and the shared part is this: **the portfolio is doing the aesthetic argument, so the testimonial that also does the aesthetic argument is spent.** “They made us a beautiful website” confirms what the reader confirmed themselves two clicks ago.

What is still open is commercial and procedural. Did the new site actually change anything a business owner can measure — enquiries, bookings, calls, sales? And what was the *middle* of the project like: were deadlines real, were revisions endless, did anyone explain why things were built the way they were? A client who has been through one bad website rebuild is far more frightened of the second question than the first.

## 02 Real examples, and what each one is doing

Every quote below is real, published on the business’s own site, and attributed here exactly as that site attributes it. Nothing on this page was written for it. Each is excerpted — follow the link for the full text and the rest of the page it sits on.

**01 — The number, and where it sits.** Thrive publishes a long reviews page for its web design work. This is the shape worth copying:

> “Since having our new website built by Thrive, we have seen a 200% increase in the number of online contact forms being filled out and returned to us. Matt and his team worked closely with us to provide a site that met all of the criteria that we were looking for. The end result was a website that is attractive, organized and effective. Thanks to Thrive for all of your hard work and support!”
>
> *Brandon O’Brien, Demilec (USA), LLC, on [thriveagency.com](https://thriveagency.com/about/web-design-reviews/)*

What it is doing: look at the running order. The measurable outcome is the *first* sentence, and “attractive” does not appear until the third, where it is one adjective in a list of three. That ordering is the whole lesson. Most web design testimonials invert it — two sentences of praise for the look, then, if you are lucky, a vague note that things seem to be going well. Also note what the metric is: not traffic, not rankings, but **completed contact forms**, which is the thing the business owner actually wanted and the thing the next reader wants too.

**02 — The middle of the project, described.** From the same page, a quote that never reaches a number and earns its place anyway:

> “During the development process, Thrive sent me working models, listened to my critiques, and made appropriate changes, explaining why certain elements were built as they were.”
>
> *Bob Gechter, Hollow Hill Event Center, on [thriveagency.com](https://thriveagency.com/about/web-design-reviews/)*

What it is doing: it describes a *procedure*, in four steps, in the client’s own words — working models, critique, change, explanation. Anybody who has commissioned a site and received a finished thing they hated, with no idea how it got that way, recognises exactly what is being promised. And the last clause is the strongest: “explaining why certain elements were built as they were” tells a nervous client that they will be treated as a participant rather than as an approver. No sentence you write about your own process communicates that, because every agency claims it.

Quoted from

- [Thrive Internet Marketing Agency — Web Design Reviews](https://thriveagency.com/about/web-design-reviews/)

These businesses have no connection to Testymo and did not write anything for this page. If you own one of them and would rather not be quoted here, [email us](mailto:support@testymo.com) and it comes down.

## 03 The questions that produce those answers

Neither of those is what you get from “are you happy with the site?”. Four questions do the work in this trade:

1. **What was the old site failing to do?** Ask about the before, or you will get a review of the after with nothing to compare it against. The answer is usually concrete — nobody could find the phone number, it looked broken on a phone, the booking form went nowhere.
2. **What has changed that you can measure, and where do you see it?** The second half matters. “Where do you see it” forces the answer into a real place — the inbox, the phone, the booking system, the analytics — and an answer with a source attached is one a reader can believe.
3. **What happened when you did not like something?** This is the question behind the Hollow Hill quote, and it is the one prospective clients most want answered. It presumes friction, which every project has, and so invites a description of how it was handled rather than a denial that it occurred.
4. **What nearly stopped you commissioning this?** Price, usually, or a previous bad experience. Whatever it is, it is what your next reader is currently stuck on.

A caution specific to this trade: **never invent or round the number.** You are selling to people who will be tempted to check, and a metric attributed to a named client that the client would not recognise is the one mistake that cannot be walked back. [Why real testimonials look fake](https://testymo.com/blog/testimonials-look-fake) covers the honest version of the problem — a true number can read as invented if it arrives without a source.

## 04 Which layout holds a quote about a website

You are a web designer, so the layout constraint here is not a limitation but an audition: whatever you use to display client praise is itself a sample of your work. A testimonials section that is cramped, misaligned or obviously a default widget theme argues against you while it argues for you.

- **Spotlight beside the work, on a case study page** — The screenshot of the site, the client’s quote, and the metric pulled out as its own line. This is the strongest arrangement available to the trade, because the visual proof and the commercial proof sit in one frame.
- **List, on the testimonials page** — Full text, with a name, a company and ideally the sector. The Hollow Hill quote works only at length — the four steps are the point, and any crop leaves a compliment.
- **Wall, on the homepage** — Short extracts as a scannable summary, sending readers into the case studies. Keep the numbers in the extracts; they are what earn the click.
- **Not a marquee** — A scrolling row moves a number out of view before it can be read, and in this trade it also reads as a stock section from a template — the exact impression you are being paid to help clients avoid.

Testymo ships every layout in 21 visual styles on any plan, and the embed is one script tag with no iframe, which matters more than usual when the person installing it is going to look at what it does to their page weight. [The integration guides](https://testymo.com/integrations) cover installing it on the platforms you build client sites on.

## 05 The widget, running on this page

Everything below this line was drawn by one script tag — no iframe, no follow-up fetch, and nothing about your visitors read. The testimonials in it are Testymo’s own sample content rather than anybody’s real customers, which is the one place on this page where the words are not real, and it is labelled so here for the same reason the rest of the page is sourced.

## 06 Where to go next

The trade changes which answers are worth asking for and where the quote earns its keep. It does not change the mechanics, and those are written once: [how to ask](https://testymo.com/blog/how-to-ask-for-a-testimonial) has the scripts and the timing, [the question bank](https://testymo.com/blog/testimonial-questions-to-ask-customers) maps which answer becomes the quote, the byline and the photo, and [where to put them](https://testymo.com/blog/where-to-put-testimonials) puts the finished quotes on the five pages that decide anything.

Another trade

- [Personal trainers Transformation, without the before-and-after doing all the work](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/personal-trainers)
- [Wedding photographers One-shot purchase, decided on feel](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/wedding-photographers)
- [Real estate agents Repeat clients and peers, named by role](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/real-estate-agents)
- [Contractors Schedule, budget and mess, said out loud](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/contractors)
- [Coaches A result you cannot photograph](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/coaching)
- [Interior designers Whose taste won, and who chased the deliveries](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/interior-designers)
- [SaaS The byline outweighs the sentence](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/saas)
- [Freelancers The agency or the hire they chose you over](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/freelancers)
- [Course creators Vouched for by somebody worth checking](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/course-creators)
- [Online stores Four thousand reviews, none of them proof](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/ecommerce)
- [Consultants A client admitting what was broken](https://testymo.com/testimonial-examples/consulting)

The part the examples skip

Reading good testimonials is the easy half. Testymo is the other one: a form that asks the questions above so the answers come back usable, your approval on every word before it goes public, and the permission recorded alongside it. Free to start — no card, no view meters.

[Collect your first testimonial →](https://testymo.com/app?utm_source=testimonial-examples&utm_campaign=web-design)