Trust is a specific question
Visitors are not evaluating your general credibility. They are asking whether you have done this particular thing, for a company like theirs, recently, and whether working with you is low risk. Signals that don’t answer one of those do nothing.
Logos without context are wallpaper
A grid of client logos says you have had clients. What buyers want is which of them resembles them and what you did — one named example with detail outperforms twelve logos, for the same reason specificity is what makes a case study credible.
Twelve logos say you exist. One specific outcome says you can do this.
Testimonials need a job
Generic praise is discounted automatically. A quote that names the objection the client had and how it turned out does real work, because it addresses the doubt the reader is currently holding rather than praising you in the abstract.
Attribution matters more than the words
A real name, role, and company make a quote checkable. An anonymous “CEO, tech company” reads as invented, and one unverifiable claim casts doubt over everything near it.
Risk-reducers beat proof sometimes
What happens if it goes wrong, how you handle handover, what you commit to in writing. For considered purchases, reducing perceived risk converts better than adding another endorsement — the same reasoning behind saying how you work on the about page.
Put them next to the claim
Proof works where the doubt occurs, not in a section at the bottom. A relevant example beside the capability it supports is worth more than a testimonial carousel below the fold, which is how a services page should be structured generally.