62.3% of Small Business Homepages Show No Customer Reviews or Testimonials

Someone needs a roofer after a storm. They find three local companies, open each website, and on one of them see a row of five-star reviews from neighbors: "Fixed our leak the same day." The other two homepages show a logo, a list of services and a phone number. The first company gets the call.

Reviews and testimonials are social proof: evidence that other people chose this business and were happy with it. A small business homepage is often the first page a new customer sees, and the customer has no other way to judge whether the business is trustworthy. Putting a few real customer words on that page answers the question before the visitor goes back to search results to compare.

Most small businesses leave that question unanswered. 62.3% of US small business homepages show no customer reviews or testimonials at all, nearly two in three. The industries where one job is a big, risky purchase, such as orthodontics, roofing and funeral services, show them far more often than restaurants, salons and shops.

We collected the websites of 21,718 US small businesses in 56 industries from their Google business listings and checked each homepage, between September 23 and 24, 2026. For every homepage we recorded whether it showed customer reviews or testimonials, then grouped the results by industry. Industry figures are shown for industries with at least 50 homepages.

A homepage counts as showing social proof when it has a testimonial section or a review widget, a box that displays the business's reviews from Google or another review site, such as those from Elfsight, Birdeye and Trustindex. Reviews that live only on Google, Yelp or Facebook, without appearing on the homepage, do not count.

37.7% of homepages show a testimonial section or a review widget, and the rest have none. A business can have plenty of reviews on its Google Business Profile, but a visitor who clicks through to a homepage without them never sees them. The reviews that persuade people on Google stop working at the moment the customer arrives on the business's own page.

That gap matters most for visitors who reach a website without seeing a Google profile first: people clicking an ad, a link from a directory or a referral. For them, the homepage is the whole case for the business, and in nearly two out of three cases that case has no customer voice in it.

Orthodontists are the most likely to show reviews, on 74.3% of homepages, followed by funeral homes at 66.7%, veterinarians at 63.8%, chiropractors at 60.3% and dentists at 59.9%. Orthodontists show reviews more than six times as often as restaurants.

These businesses share a buying pattern: the purchase is expensive, infrequent or personal, and the customer has to trust a stranger with their health, their home or their family. Trades follow the same logic, with roofers at 53.6%, HVAC companies at 52.8% and pest control companies at 52.2%. Real estate agents reach 53% and lawyers 46.8%. When a wrong choice is costly, businesses have learned that customers want to hear from other customers first.

At the bottom are food, beauty and retail businesses. 11.4% of restaurant homepages show reviews or testimonials, followed by churches at 12.4%, bakeries at 13.9%, barber shops at 14.9%, fashion stores at 15.7% and hair salons at 18%.

Other retail sits low too: beauty stores at 19%, home goods stores at 19.6% and furniture stores at 26.8%. SaaS companies land exactly on the overall figure at 37.7%. These are businesses where a visit is cheap or frequent, and owners tend to lead with photos, menus and products instead of customer words. That leaves an opening: in an industry where fewer than one homepage in five shows reviews, the business that does stands out immediately.

If your homepage shows no reviews, close that gap first; it is one of the simplest changes you can make to a website. Pick three to five short reviews from your Google Business Profile, include the customer's first name and the service they bought, and place them near your main call to action, the "Call now" or "Book online" button, so the proof sits next to the decision.

A live Google reviews widget does the same job and stays current as new reviews arrive. If you have written testimonials, add a photo or the customer's town, which makes them read as real people rather than marketing copy. In a low-scoring industry such as restaurants, salons or retail, showing reviews puts you ahead of most competitors nearby.

Then check whether it works: compare calls, bookings and form submissions before and after the change. Suff Digital's conversion optimization services test where social proof sits on the page and which reviews move visitors to act.

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