A review sitting on Google helps somebody who is already searching. The same review on your own website helps everybody who lands there — which is usually a much larger number.

Featuring a review

Mark a review as featured and set it to display on website. Featured reviews are the ones your site shows, so treat the set as an edited selection rather than everything you have.

Choosing well

• Specific beats glowing. "They rebuilt our shopfront in two days and matched the original stone" persuades; "great service" does not.
• Pick a spread — different services, different kinds of customer — so a visitor sees somebody like them.
• Keep them current. A wall of reviews from four years ago reads as a business that stopped collecting them.
• Do not only feature five stars. A run of nothing but perfect scores reads as curated, because it is.

Keep it honest

Refresh the selection

Put a reminder in the diary to revisit the featured set every few months. It takes ten minutes and it is the difference between a live business and a website nobody has touched.