Only 13% of Restaurant Websites Show Customer Reviews vs 61% of Dental Websites

Search for a dentist, a lawyer and a pizza place on the same phone and you land on three very different websites. The dentist's site lets you tap to call, read what other patients said and book a cleaning in two taps. The law firm's site asks you to call or fill in an intake form and wait. The restaurant's site shows a menu and an address, and not one word from a happy diner.

Every feature on that list removes a step between a search and a customer: a phone number a visitor can tap, proof from other customers, a way to book without waiting for office hours. Comparing industries side by side shows which of those steps your competitors already offer, and where a whole industry has left an opening.

The gaps are wide. 12.7% of restaurant websites show reviews or testimonials, against 61.1% of dental websites. Dental websites beat the small business average on six of the eight features measured, while restaurant websites fall below it on all eight. And 11.8% of small business homepages open with a background video, the most visible design trend of the lot.

In September 2026 we took businesses listed on US Google Business Profiles and checked up to three pages of each website, usually the homepage and two pages it links to, for eight features. We broke out six industries: 3,579 ecommerce websites, 668 law firm websites, 579 SaaS websites, 522 dental websites, 423 real estate websites and 150 restaurant websites, and compared each with the average across 21,859 small business websites in all industries. Online stores are retail businesses plus any site built on a store platform. Separately, on September 23, 2026 we loaded 1,235 small business homepages in a full web browser, the way a visitor sees them, and counted the video on each page, the words, tap-to-call links and forms.

A click-to-call link is a phone number a visitor can tap to dial. Reviews or testimonials means customer reviews or quotes shown on the site. Online booking means a scheduling tool or a book-now button. A lead form is a contact or quote form with at least three fields to fill in. Buy now, pay later messaging promotes paying in installments. Structured data, also called schema, is code that describes the business to search engines in a standard format, such as its address, hours or products. A website counts as having a feature if it appears on at least one of its checked pages. The median is the middle value, with half above and half below.

Reviews or testimonials appear on 39.1% of small business websites, but the spread by industry is wide. Dental websites show them at nearly five times the restaurant rate: 61.1% against 12.7%. Roughly one restaurant website in eight lets a diner see what other customers thought.

The industries at the top sell trust. Patients choosing a new dentist want to know whether others found the practice gentle, on time and honest about costs, and buyers or sellers handing a large decision to an agent or a lawyer look for the same reassurance. Real estate websites (52.2%) and law firm websites (48.5%) both sit well above average.

Restaurants are among the most reviewed businesses anywhere, so the praise usually exists; it just lives on other sites. A few recent reviews on the restaurant's own homepage keep the diner there, next to the reserve button. Online stores have a similar gap: 30.6% of ecommerce websites show reviews, and for a shopper who cannot touch the product, reviews do the work a showroom does in person.

49.6% of dental websites let patients book online, nearly twice the 26.5% small business average and about six times the 8.3% of real estate websites. Online booking fits dentistry because most visits are routine: a cleaning, an exam, a consultation.

Other industries send visitors elsewhere. Real estate agents route people to a form or a phone call, so a booking link for valuations or showings stands out in a field where few agents offer one. SaaS companies (11.4%) use demo request forms instead, and online stores (8.9%) rarely need a calendar at all. 22.7% of restaurant websites offer online booking or a reserve-now button. Law firm booking has its own dedicated study, listed under Related studies below.

The tap-to-call link splits businesses that serve customers in person from those that sell online. 80.7% of dental websites and 63.6% of law firm websites make the phone number tappable, against 33% of SaaS websites and 31% of ecommerce websites.

For SaaS companies and online stores the low rate is partly a choice, since their buyers research at a desk and often prefer to type. For restaurants it is a missed basic. 41.3% of restaurant websites have a click-to-call link, so a diner on a phone who wants to ask about a table or a gluten-free option has to copy the number or find it elsewhere on six restaurant websites in ten.

Lead forms show the opposite pattern to booking. 49.2% of real estate websites and 45.8% of law firm websites have a lead form with three or more fields, against 31.7% of small business websites. Both industries screen a lead before calling back: an agent by budget, timeline and location, a law firm by the facts of the case.

The forms are also longer where the screening matters most. The median real estate form asks for 7 fields, against 6 across all small business websites. Dental websites have fewer forms, 28.9%, because booking replaces them, but where a dental site does have one it also asks for a median of 7 fields. Restaurant and ecommerce forms ask for a median of 5. Every added field on a phone screen is one more reason for a visitor to stop.

14.3% of SaaS websites run a live chat widget, nearly twice the 7.8% of small business websites, and 26.8% embed video, against 18.6%, from product walkthroughs to customer stories. Online stores lead on a different tool: 12.4% of ecommerce websites promote buy now, pay later, more than twice the 5.8% average, usually near the price or the checkout button.

Chat fits software buyers, who compare several tools in one sitting and want quick answers about features or pricing. It is still the exception: about six SaaS websites in seven have no chat at all. Video is most common where seeing the product or the place helps someone decide: a SaaS demo, a dental office tour, a property walkthrough on 23.6% of real estate websites.

Installment messaging is aimed at shoppers who hesitate at the full price. Nearly nine online stores in ten still show none, so for stores with higher-priced products it is a small change with room to stand out.

Structured data appears on 65.9% of small business websites, and every industry lands between 53.9% for real estate and 75.7% for dental. Unlike the conversion features above, it does not separate industries much.

Much of it is generic markup that website themes and plugins add on their own. The WebSite type, which says little more than that the site exists, is common in every industry, from 34.8% of real estate websites to 57% of law firm websites. Types that describe the business itself, such as Dentist, RealEstateAgent, Restaurant, SoftwareApplication or Product, appear less often, and adding them tells search engines what the business does, where and at what price.

A background video is a silent clip that starts on its own and loops behind the headline. 11.8% of small business homepages have one, about one in eight, and 19.4% carry video of any kind. Video built into the page itself appears on 13.8% of homepages, twice the 6.6% that embed a YouTube or Vimeo player, so when a small business puts video on its homepage it is more often decoration than something to press play on.

Homepages with a background video are fuller pages. They carry a median of 730 words, 63% more than the 449 on homepages without one, and they are more likely to include a tap-to-call link and a form.

The cost is weight. A built-in background video downloads as soon as the page loads, whether the visitor wanted it or not. An embedded player streams only when pressed, the better choice for a video people want to watch.

Start with the feature your industry's best websites already offer and yours does not. For a dental practice that is online booking, which half of practices have. For a restaurant it is reviews and a tap-to-call number near the top of the page, which most competitors still skip. For real estate agents and law firms it is a shorter first form: ask for a name and a way to reach the person, and collect the rest on the call. SaaS companies should staff chat during the hours buyers research, and online stores should show payment options, including installments, next to the add-to-cart button.

Then add structured data that names your type of business, such as Dentist, Restaurant, RealEstateAgent or Product, with your address, hours or prices. If you want a background video, keep it under 10 seconds, silent and compressed, with a still poster image for slow connections and a pause control, and make sure the headline and main button stay readable over every frame.

A small business web design project that starts from these industry benchmarks puts the features your customers look for in the first screen, instead of copying a template built for someone else's industry.

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