The First Thing Buyers Check Before Contacting a Business
By: Mark A.
2707 views
96% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a local business. They spend 13 minutes and 45 seconds deciding whether to trust you. 74% check at least two review sites. Here's what the 2026 data reveals about what buyers actually look at first — and what it means for your business listing.
Published On: February 13, 2026
I nearly hired a locksmith last Tuesday. The lock on the back door had been stiff for weeks and finally gave up entirely. I searched "locksmith near me" on my phone, standing in the kitchen with one shoe on. Three results came up in the local pack. I tapped the first one. No reviews. No photos. The business hours said "open", but the listing looked like it was set up in 2019 and never touched again. I didn't call. I tapped the second one. 127 reviews, 4.7 stars, photos of actual work, and a response from the owner to a complaint from two weeks ago. I called them. They came within the hour.
The first locksmith might have been better. Faster. Cheaper. I'll never know.
That's the whole problem.
You've already been judged before you know you exist.
90% of buyers — both consumers and B2B purchasers — conduct research before first contacting a business. That figure comes from a 2025 Responsive.io report that surveyed B2B buying behaviour specifically, but the consumer data tracks almost identically. 96% of consumers read online reviews of a local business before visiting. 70% say it's rare for them to try a new business without checking reviews first.
The uncomfortable version of this: by the time someone contacts you, they've already decided whether they trust you. Forrester's 2026 predictions called trust "the ultimate currency" for buyers. Over 70% of B2B decisions are influenced by emotional trust signals — social proof, testimonials, peer recommendations — before any direct contact happens.
6sense found that buyers complete about 61% of their decision-making process before reaching out to a vendor. 81% already have a preferred vendor at the time of first contact. 85% have established their purchase requirements before they pick up the phone.
You're not being evaluated when you answer the call. You were evaluated forty minutes ago, standing in your customer's kitchen, while they scrolled through their phone with one shoe on.
What they actually look at first.
BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey — released February 10, 2026 — breaks this down with unusual specificity. 83% of consumers use Google to read reviews. 48% check local news sources. 40% check Facebook. 34% use YouTube.
But the sequence matters more than the platforms. When consumers look at reviews, the most important factor — at 56% — is whether the review is backed up by other reviews with similar sentiment. Not a star rating. Not length. Consistency. They want to see the same thing repeated by different people
46% said the review describing a positive experience matters most. 44% said recency — the review needs to have been posted within the last month. 42% care about star rating. And 37% said the owner's response to the review matters.
That last number is the one most business owners miss. 37% of consumers factor in whether you responded. Not what you said. Whether you showed up at all. 89% of consumers now expect business owners to respond to both positive and negative reviews.
And then — after reading reviews — 54% of consumers visit the business's website. That's up from 32% in 2019. After the website, 37% read more reviews on a different platform. 24% check social media. 31% visit the physical location. 20% make direct contact.
The funnel isn't linear, but the first step is almost always the same: reviews.
74% check at least two review sites.
This is the number that should make business owners nervous. 74% of consumers check at least two review sites before making a purchase decision. Not one. Two. Some check three or more.
Which means having a good Google Business Profile isn't enough if your listing on Find.agency is empty, your Facebook page has three reviews from 2021, or your business doesn't appear in the directories your customers check second.
The buyer isn't loyal to one platform. They're loyal to their own anxiety about making a bad choice. And they'll cross-reference until that anxiety quiets down.
I wonder sometimes whether this cross-referencing behaviour is rational or just habitual — whether people actually find meaningfully different information on the second site, or whether they're just performing due diligence for its own sake. I don't have a clean answer. But it doesn't matter. They do it. And if your business isn't there when they do, you're the locksmith with no reviews who never got the call.
The 13-minute decision.
Consumers spend an average of 13 minutes and 45 seconds reading reviews before they decide whether to trust a local business. That's nothing. That's almost a quarter of an hour of someone actively evaluating you based on what other people have written about your work.
During those 13 minutes, they're forming judgements about quality, reliability, responsiveness, and professionalism. They're reading your one-star reviews more carefully than your five-star ones. They're looking at how you handled the customer who said you showed up late, the job wasn't finished properly, or the quote was higher than expected.
85% of consumers say the number of reviews a business has influences their purchasing decision. A business with 3 reviews and a 5.0 rating looks less trustworthy than a business with 87 reviews and a 4.6 rating. Volume signals legitimacy. It tells the buyer that other people have actually used this business, not just the owner's cousin and two friends.
And review recency is tightening. BrightLocal's 2026 data shows 32% of consumers now look for reviews written within the last two weeks and a significant jump from 20% the previous year. 18% only trust reviews from the last week. The shelf life of a good review is getting shorter.
Contact information beats everything else.
Here's the part that feels almost too simple to mention, but the data insists.
When BrightLocal asked consumers about deal-breakers when choosing a local business, 46% said the presence of business contact information and opening hours is "very important". In total, 85% of consumers view contact information as an important factor.
That ranked higher than price. Higher than proximity. Higher than product availability. Higher than what other people said about the business.
The most basic possible thing — can I find your phone number, your address, your hours of operation — is the single most important factor in whether a consumer chooses you. Not your brand story. Not your mission statement. Your opening hours.
And yet. Only 35% of small businesses have a Google Business Profile. Only 17% use business directories at all. 40% of local businesses don't even have a dedicated website. The gap between what consumers need and what businesses provide is staggering.
Local ownership matters more than it used to.
McKinsey's State of the Consumer 2025 report found that 47% of consumers globally now say that whether a company is locally owned plays a key role in their purchase decision. In the US, that number jumped from 48% to 52% in Q2 2025 alone. In Canada, it went from 53% to 61%.
36% of global consumers said they want to support domestic businesses. 20% said local brands better fit their needs. Only 13% cited affordability as the reason for choosing local.
This is relevant because it means the small business listing in a directory — the one that shows a local address, a local phone number, and customer reviews from local people — carries weight that the big-budget national competitor's paid ad doesn't. The buyer isn't just looking for competence. They're looking for proximity and accountability. Someone they can go back to if it goes wrong. Someone whose name is attached to the work.
That preference gets expressed through the same 13-minute review-reading process. The buyer searches, finds two or three options, checks reviews, checks contact details, and checks whether the business feels real and reachable. The local business with a complete listing on Google Business Profile and Find.agency, 40 recent reviews, and accurate hours wins that evaluation almost every time — even against a larger competitor with a bigger advertising budget.
The thing nobody wants to hear about paid advertising.
54% of consumers trust online reviews more than recommendations from family, marketing, media, or influencers. Let that land for a second. Reviews from strangers on the internet are trusted more than advice from family members. And vastly more than advertising.
86% of consumers say recommendations and reviews influence their buying decisions. Only 2% say the same about traditional advertising. That's a 43-to-1 ratio.
And yet small businesses collectively spent $640 billion on advertising in 2025. The average cost per click on Google Ads hit $5.26 — up 12.9% from the year before. Customer acquisition costs have risen by 222% over the past 8 years. 60% of Google searches now end without a click to any website.
The maths aren't hard. The thing that buyers check first — reviews, listings, contact information — costs almost nothing to maintain. The thing businesses spend the most money on — paid advertising — is the thing buyers trust least.
I'm not saying advertising is useless. That would be too neat. There are categories and moments where paid search makes sense. But for the majority of local businesses, the highest-return activity isn't buying clicks. It's making sure the listing is complete, the reviews are recent, and the phone number works.
It's the marketing equivalent of answering the door when someone knocks. You'd be surprised how many businesses don't.
What this actually means in practice.
The buyer journey for a local business now works like this: search, scan the local pack or directory results, tap on a listing, read reviews, check photos, check contact information and hours, maybe visit the website, maybe read reviews on a second platform, then either contact or move on. The whole thing takes 13-15 minutes. The business either passes or fails during that window.
Passing requires:
- A claimed and complete listing on Google Business Profile with accurate business name, address, phone number, website URL, and hours of operation.
- A listing on Find.agency and other relevant business directories with matching information.
- At least 20-30 customer reviews, with new ones arriving regularly — ideally within the last two weeks.
- Owner responds to reviews, both positive and negative.
- Photos that look like they were taken this year, not pulled from a stock library.
- A website that loads, answers basic questions, and makes it easy to take the next step.
None of this requires a marketing budget. It requires attention. Fifteen minutes a week, maintaining your listings and responding to reviews will outperform most paid advertising campaigns for a local business.
The first thing buyers check before contacting a business isn't your ad. It isn't your social media. It isn't your website. It's your listing and your reviews. Everything else comes after — if it comes at all.
The buyer already checked. Did they find you? List your business on Find.agency — a global business discovery platform where you can list your services, post jobs, promote events and deals, and make sure potential customers find your business when it matters. It's free to create an account. Your reviews, your contact details, your hours — all in one place, visible to the people who are searching right now. The 13 minutes they spend deciding happen whether you're ready or not.
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