Where to Get Them and How to Get More
You could have the best build quality in your county, and it won’t count for much if your Google profile has three reviews and your closest competitor has ninety. Garden rooms are a big spend, often £25,000 or more, and nobody’s handing that over to a stranger without proof that other people have trusted you and been happy with the result. Reviews are that proof, and for most garden room companies, they’re one of the most under-managed parts of the whole marketing setup.
This isn’t about chasing five stars for the sake of it. It’s about building a genuine, steady body of proof across the right platforms, so that by the time someone’s comparing you to two other installers, you’re the one that looks like the safe, obvious choice.
Where to Actually Be Collecting Reviews
Not every review platform carries equal weight, and trying to be active on all of them at once usually means none of them get done properly. These five cover the ground that actually matters for a garden room business.
This is the priority, no question. Google reviews sit directly on your Google Business Profile, they influence your local map pack rankings, and they’re almost always the first thing a potential customer sees when they search your business name. If you only focus on one platform, it should be this one.
Which? Trusted Traders
Garden rooms are a significant investment, and Which? Trusted Traders carries a level of credibility that general review sites don’t quite match, particularly with a slightly older, more cautious homeowner demographic who want that extra layer of reassurance before committing.
Trustpilot
Widely recognised, independent, and often checked by people doing a final bit of due diligence before they enquire. Trustpilot reviews also tend to get pulled into search results in their own right, giving you another route to be found.
A lot of garden room research happens through Facebook, whether that’s local community groups, garden and home improvement pages, or your own business page. Reviews here get seen in a more social, word-of-mouth context, and they’re easy for happy customers to leave if they’re already active on the platform.
Reviews.io
A dedicated review platform that integrates well with websites and can feed star ratings directly into your Google Ads and search listings. It’s less well known to the general public than Google or Trustpilot, but it’s a solid platform to run alongside the others, particularly if you want reviews displaying directly on your own site.
How to Actually Get More Google Reviews
Knowing where to collect reviews is one thing. Actually getting a steady flow of them is the part most garden room companies struggle with, usually because the process relies on remembering to ask, which inevitably falls through the cracks on busy jobs. Here’s what consistently works.
Put a QR Code on Your Business Card
A QR code linking straight to your Google review page, printed on the business card you hand over at the end of a job, removes almost all the friction from the process. Instead of someone having to remember to search for you later, they can scan and leave a review on the spot, or at the very least, have the direct link saved on their phone for when they do get a spare five minutes.
Incentivise With Vouchers
A small voucher, whether that’s for a local garden centre, a coffee shop, or even a discount off a future referral, gives people a reason to actually follow through rather than meaning to leave a review and never getting round to it. It doesn’t need to be expensive to be effective. The key is making the ask feel worthwhile enough that it moves from “I’ll do that later” to “I’ll do that now.”
A quick note on this one: always check the current guidelines of whichever platform you’re using, since some review sites have rules around incentivised reviews and how they can be worded, and you want to stay firmly on the right side of that.
Send the Link Directly From Your Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile has a built-in feature that generates a direct review link you can send straight to a customer. Sending this personally, ideally from you or whoever managed the job, rather than a generic automated email, tends to get a noticeably better response rate.
Must Read: Guide to Google Business Profile for Garden Room Installers
A short, personal message referencing their specific garden room (“Hi John, hope you’re enjoying the new garden office! Would really appreciate a quick review if you have a minute”) performs far better than a blanket request.
Send Review Requests by SMS Rather Than Email
This is one of the simplest changes that makes a real difference. Email requests get buried in inboxes, filtered into promotions tabs, or simply ignored. A text message gets read, almost always within minutes, and it’s far easier for someone to tap a link and leave a quick review from their phone than to open a laptop and do it via email. If you’re only going to change one thing about how you request reviews, switch from email to SMS.
Timing Matters as Much as the Method
Ask too early and the customer hasn’t had time to properly enjoy the finished space. Ask too late and the job’s no longer front of mind, and the request gets ignored or forgotten. A couple of weeks after installation tends to be the sweet spot, once they’ve had a chance to actually use the garden room but the experience of working with you is still fresh.
Build It Into Your Process, Not Your Memory
The businesses that build up a genuinely strong review profile aren’t the ones with the best work, necessarily, they’re the ones who’ve made asking for a review a fixed step in every single job, rather than something that happens if someone remembers to do it. A simple checklist item at the two-week-post-installation mark, whether that’s sending an SMS, handing over a business card with a QR code, or both, turns review collection from an occasional afterthought into a steady, predictable stream.
Don’t Forget to Respond
Collecting reviews is only half of it. Responding to every review, positive or negative, shows anyone reading them later that you’re an active, engaged business that takes feedback seriously. A thoughtful response to a less-than-perfect review, addressing the issue professionally, often does more to build trust with a future customer than the review itself does damage.
Bringing It All Together
Reviews are one of the few parts of garden room marketing where the effort required is genuinely low and the payoff is genuinely high. A QR code on a business card, a well-timed SMS, and a small incentive cost next to nothing to set up, but they can be the difference between a Google profile with a handful of reviews and one with a hundred, sitting right there as proof for every potential customer comparing you against the competition.
If you want help building a proper review system into your business, or getting your Google Business Profile working harder for you, get in touch and we’ll talk through what that would look like.