Contractor Reviews Website: The Ultimate Breakdown

Does this sound familiar to you: You do quality work on home renovations, and customers are happy, but potential customers have no way of knowing that? Do you rely heavily on active sales rather than getting more business directly from your website?

Your potential customers have one question: How can I make sure a contractor is reliable and worth my money? They then typically go to contractor review websites to find social proof of local contractors.

To get quote requests online, you need to have a good reputation on the most important review site for your niche.

Let’s first list the most important review sites for American as well as European contractors.

Key Review Sites for American Contractors

Next up, let’s take a look at where general contractor business owners should focus their efforts.

Google

This is one of the most common places people look for local contractors.

Simply because it’s one of the most used search engines globally.

Get your Google My Business in order ASAP especially if you’re a small/local business.

Google reviews are a huge ranking factor and can help you get on top of those local searches.

When potential customers look for a specific service provider, they often start by going to Google and typing the service they need.

Our customer TaitoKatto has managed to make its way to the Places snippet by focusing on delivering excellent customer service and asking for reviews after project completion.

In addition, it has added reviews to its website to keep its website content fresh, dynamic, and trustworthy in the eyes of customers.

Our customers find us online. They’ve told us point blank that they chose us despite our young age solely based on the great reviews we have received.
Without Trustmary, we’d have old reviews on our website. If I had to update them manually, I’d do that once a year – tops!

Sakke Ikonen, Marketing & Sales Leader @TaitoKatto

Better Business Bureau

BBB is a non-profit organization that helps consumers in the US and Canada to find trustworthy local professionals.

Local contractors can get accredited on Better Business Bureau, and anyone can leave reviews for local businesses they’ve dealt with.

When consumers search for local contractors, they’re prompted to choose whether they want results from only accredited BBB businesses or non-accredited as well.

Get accredited here and start collecting more Better Business Bureau reviews to boost your credibility.

Facebook Listings

Facebook is where people ask for recommendations.

Be where your customers are and create a Facebook Business profile!

After you’ve created your business page, join local Facebook groups so happy customers can tag you to posts.

Remember to collect customer reviews to Facebook to boost your online presence.

Add photos, videos and respond to all comments.

Angi

Angi is formerly know as Angie’s list and it’s one of the review sites where people can look for various service providers including handimen, cleaning services, electrical work service providers, etc.

The Angie’s list has made it easy for anyone to find a local service provider for all types of needs.

Yelp

Yelp has restaurants, home services and auto services alongside bars etc.

What’s interesting is that you can advertise on Yelp the same way one can on Google.

Here’s an example below:

Before starting to create a budget for your Yelp ads, I’d recommend building up those reviews first.

Collecting Yelp reviews after each project can be helpful.

Important but Smaller Review Sites

Before optimizing your profile on the following review sites, make sure your this is relevant customer acquisition channel for your niche.

Niche Review Sites

1. Houzz
2. Mr.Handyman
3. NetWorx
4. ServiceWhale
5. QualitySmith
6. HomeStars
7. Home Advisor
8. Thumbtack

Pro tip: Check whether your competitors have set up their profiles on these sites! If not, it might be because it’s not relevant or because they haven’t thought about this channel. If they have one, you should definitely set up your profile ASAP!

Most Used Contractor Review Sites in Europe

Europe is an interesting area, as contractors typically operate within national limits.

In addition, there are numerous different languages, and customers always google with the local language.

Depending on the language and are this can mean less competition if there are less of certain contractors available, but it can also mean that the search volumes for services offered are lower.

Google

Google reviews on general contractors are essential for getting organic traffic to your website.

Have Google reviews for your business, and actively collect more reviews.

Our customer which focuses on roof renovations decided to add all their existing reviews on their homepage with an exit intent popup, and experienced a +60% increase in contact requests from their website. The same is doable for all companies in the construction industry.

That translates to multiple quotes more on a monthly basis. How much revenue would a 60% mean for your business?

Do the same with your Google reviews by searching for your Google business location below

That way, you can add your first Google review widget to your website to convince other homeowners that you’re a trustworthy company.

Home Advisor (Powered by Angi)

Similar to Angie’s list in the US, they’ve made localized versions for the European language areas.

• Travaux (France)
• MyHammer (Germany)
• Instapro (Italy)
• Werkspot (Netherlands)
• MyBuilder (UK)

The principle of these review sites is similar to Angie’s list: Private individuals can find contractors near them, read reviews on them and book them.

Facebook business

Local businesses should put effort into creating and maintaining their Facebook listing.

It’s a great site and resource for convincing people that you’re in their budget and top professionals in what you do.

Local Websites for Contractors

As there are so many countries in Europe, let’s take two counties as an example.

The same strategy can be used for your own region.

Go to Google, and search for a specific project or specific contractor.

In Germany, there are at least the following contractor review websites:

• Blauarbeit
• Check24
• Gelbe Seiten (yellow pages)

See this little snippet? Getting your company to be listed in these would be great, wouldn’t it?

With Trustmary, you can get a public review page with all your reviews.

Think: A page filled with only your reviews that you could possibly get to that snippet next to those websites. That’d guarantee new projects to fly in from doors and windows 👀

Make your marketing job easier: Start using Trustmary TODAY for free by importing existing Google reviews to Trustmary by searching for your business location below:

Setting up a review widget took just 2 minutes. Compared to the difficult Google API, Trustmary’s process is smooth and straightforward. And after the set-up, everything just happens automatically!

Déla Victoria, CEO & Founder @EasyStart

Contractor Review Sites in the UK

• Checkatrade
• Trustatrader
• Fantasticservices
• Yell

And that’s just to name a few that pop up in the local snippets.

Get More Contractor Reviews for Your Business

Each potential customer will have a look at your online reviews.

Make sure you:

• Have good reviews
• Don’t censor negative reviews
• Don’t have fake reviews
• Answer to all reviews promptly

Then, get more reviews.

Encouraging people to leave reviews is easy, if you use dedicated review management software and review request forms. You can even automate the process to a T by integrating Trustmary’s review software with your contractor management software.

In fact, creating a review process once enables you to be consistent about collecting reviews and testimonials.

By using Trustmary the whole testimonial collection process is now systematic and uniform. We have one testimonial form in use and a process for how we get people to leave us a testimonial.

Aleksi Halsas, CEO & Founder @Clevenio

Quick Fixes for Local Contractors to Boost Sales

Depending on how well you’ve done your groundwork, these can be a breeze or take a moment to set up.

It’s important to remember that implementing these changes will bring you results during the next months and years.

Even though the set-up can be frustrating, it’ll pay itself off.

Or would you rather lose business to other contractors, because no one can contact you thanks to not adding a phone number to relevant contractor review sites?

1. Claim & Maintain Your Business Listings

After you’ve identified where the homeowners in your area find local professionals, it’s important to make sure your information is up-to-date.

Trust me, other contractors are doing this 💩 as well. It’ll pay off, I swear!

Checklist for Business Listings

1. Claim your business name
2. Check opening hours
3. Add your phone number to get phone calls
4. Add your website, possible social media handles and email address
5. Respond to all reviews (!!!), especially the bad reviews.
6. Add a few photos
7. Collect customer reviews

All in all, check that al your business information is accurate.

We’ve written guides on optimizing your Google Business profile and even on how to master your Google My Business.

If this is all new territory for you, check those out!

2. Collect Customer Reviews

Collecting customer reviews to contractor review sites can feel like a daunting task at first, but luckily Trustmary can automate that for you.

Did you know that you can:

1. Send a review campaign to all past customers?
2. Automate review collection with your ERP or CRM systems, so a review request is sent after completing a project?

Start your first campaign by typing your Google Business Profile below

When Glass Factory sent its first customer survey, the response rate was 20%, and it got 20 Google reviews in addition to valuable insights from customers.

3. Add Reviews to Website

Once you have reviews on review sites, it’s time to add them to your website.

Check your competitors: Multiple contractors are missing out on the opportunity to have star ratings shown on search engines.

Beat your competition:

• Import reviews to Trustmary (you can import any reviews manually)
• Create review widget with most recent reviews
• Add to your website

Additional Tips for Getting more Jobs Online

Make sure you are providing positive experiences to all your customers. In other words, be a good contractor.

Trust me, potential customers will ask around from friends, relatives and all other homeowners they know whether anyone has worked with you before.

People do their due diligence when it comes to hiring a contractor.

Once you’ve nailed that part, ensure your company shows up where your customers search for a contractor.

Showcase different projects you’ve worked on, and attach customer reviews next to the results.

After you’ve got these parts done, you can take a moment to optimize the look of the website with design ideas.

And maybe even take a dive into the world of search engine optimization to rank higher on search engines.

For the time being, make sure you’ve at least added your reviews to your website.

FAQ