CM Reviews. Google reviews, designed into the website.

For a dental practice, a physio clinic or any local business, Google reviews are often the first thing a new customer looks for. The usual way to show them on a website is a review widget: a monthly subscription, a script from another company on every page, and a slider that looks much the same on thousands of sites. The rating beside it is often typed in by hand, so it starts going out of date the day the next review arrives.

We wanted the reviews to be part of the website itself: stored on it, designed with it and always up to date. So we built our own.

1. A monthly widget subscriptionPaid for every site, every month, for as long as the site runs
2. Another company’s script on every pageExtra weight on the page, and another company in the visitor’s browser
3. The same slider as everyone elseA few colour settings, never quite the practice’s own style
4. A review count typed in by handOut of date as soon as the next review lands
5. CM ReviewsThe reviews in the website’s own database, designed into each page, and kept up to date by us.

Each business is connected once, by its Google listing. From then on the website checks Google every day for new reviews, along with the business’s current rating and number of reviews. Each new review arrives as a proper WordPress entry: the reviewer’s first name and initial, the stars, their words, the date, the practice’s reply and a link straight to that review on Google.

Because everything is already stored on the site, a visitor’s browser never has to ask Google or a review company for anything. The reviews arrive with the page, as quickly as the rest of it.

Because the reviews live on the site, each website can show them in its own style. These are the designs live on two practices’ websites today: open one to see it, then follow the link to the real page.

We build our websites in Etch, a visual builder for WordPress, with Automatic.css looking after the spacing, type and colours. CM Reviews was designed around that way of working, in two ways.

Designed from scratch. Each review is real WordPress content, so in Etch it behaves like any other content. We design one review card in the builder, in the site’s own fonts and colours, and Etch repeats it for every review: a wall, a marquee, a slider or a single quote. The rating, the number of reviews and the link to the Google listing can go into any heading, sentence or button, and the practice can still edit everything around them in Etch.

Ready to drop in. For a quick result there are six finished designs, each one line long, that pick up the site’s own fonts and colours. Their names were chosen not to clash with Automatic.css, so they never inherit a style meant for something else.

A practice with hundreds of reviews doesn’t want the same three on every page. So reviews can be sorted into categories, in WordPress, by the practice: Invisalign, implants, hygiene, nervous patients. Then the Invisalign page shows reviews about Invisalign, and the page for nervous patients shows reviews from people who were nervous too.

The practice chooses a lowest star rating once, and it applies to every review on the site: the ready-made designs, every loop designed in Etch, all of them. Ratings and totals still show Google’s real figures, so nothing is hidden from the numbers.

We have one rule on every website we look after: a star rating or a number of reviews is never typed in. It always comes from the figures Google gave on its last check, so a badge, a heading and a sentence anywhere on the site all change together when a new review arrives. If a figure is ever missing, it’s hidden, rather than showing an old one.

The stars are drawn to the exact rating. Most review widgets round to whole or half stars; ours fill each star exactly as far as the rating goes, so a rating just under five looks just under five.

CM Reviews updates itself, from our own release channel, the same way WordPress updates any plugin. When we improve it, every website that uses it gets the improvement, usually the same day. Each release is tested first on a throwaway WordPress site of its own, with made-up practices and reviews, and checked in a real browser for page speed, layout and accessibility before it goes out.

Its first week on client websites shows how quickly it can move: each idea from a practice’s website became a release, often the same day.

1. 6 OctMore than one business on a site, automatic updates, and protection for anything the practice edits. Then the six ready-made designs.
2. 8 OctA link to every review on Google, the practice’s name on each card, email alerts, and review categories.
3. 9 OctReviews sorted by category in the admin.
4. 11 OctA full code review and security check. Combined figures for groups of practices. Google’s own G everywhere. One lowest rating for every review on the site. Faster first paint, and accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA.
5. 12 OctRelease 1.17.5, the twenty-fourth that week, and every site up to date.

CM Reviews is part of how we build websites in Etch. It’s already live on two dental practices’ sites, with more practices and clinics moving to it as their new websites launch.

We Love Teeth, a private family practice in Weybridge, uses five of the designs, from a carousel on the home page to the pop-up on its treatment pages, with review categories ready, so each treatment page can show the reviews that fit it. The story of the practice’s four websites is in our We Love Teeth case study.

Diamond Court Dental Practice in Bakewell has its reviews designed entirely in Etch: a band and a spotlight carousel, a gently moving marquee on the home page and a Google reviews page of its own, all in the practice’s typefaces.