By the time someone calls you, they’ve usually already decided to hire you. The deciding happens earlier, on a phone screen, in about a minute. Understanding how customers choose a local business is the difference between getting that call and never knowing you were in the running. During the holidays, when people are rushed and distracted, that minute gets even shorter.
| QUICK ANSWER Most people pick a local business in a few quick steps. They search, scan the map results, check your reviews and photos, tap through to your website on their phone, and then call or book if everything looks current and easy. Anything that slows them down, like old hours, few recent reviews, or a site that’s hard to use on a phone, sends them to the next listing. |
I spend a lot of my week looking at local businesses the way their customers do. Here’s the path almost everyone follows, and what to look at at each stop.
How Customers Choose a Local Business During the Holidays
Picture two different holiday customers. One is looking for a gift shop or a florist that’s open Sunday afternoon. The other just found water under the kitchen sink two days before twenty people come over for dinner. Very different situations, but they search the same way: phone out, a few words typed into Google, and a quick comparison of whatever shows up first.
Neither of them is reading long descriptions or comparing ten options. They’re looking for signals that say “this place is open, people like them, and I can reach them easily.” Every stop below is one of those signals.
Stop 1: The Search Results and the Map
For most local searches, the first thing people see is a map with a short list of businesses. Each listing shows a name, a star rating, the number of reviews, your category, whether you’re open right now, and often a photo. That’s all they have to go on, and it’s enough for most people to narrow the list to two or three.
Make sure your business category actually matches what people search for, your hours are right (including any Google Business Profile holiday hours you’ll need this season), and your main photo is something you’d be happy for a stranger to judge you by. Google’s tips on local ranking come back to the same idea over and over: complete, accurate, active profiles do better.
Stop 2: Your Reviews
Reviews are where people start to trust you, or don’t. They look at the overall rating, but they also look at how recent the reviews are and what people actually say. A shop with a handful of reviews from this year often looks better than one with a bigger pile from several years ago.
They also read your responses. A business that thanks people and handles complaints calmly comes across as one that will treat them well too. If someone left a frustrated review and got a thoughtful reply, that can actually help you. It shows how you behave when something goes wrong, which is exactly what a nervous customer wants to know.
One more thing customers pick up on: the details inside the reviews. When a review mentions a specific employee by name, a specific job, or the fact that you showed up on time on a holiday weekend, it carries more weight than a generic “great service.” You can’t write your customers’ reviews for them, but you can make the experience worth describing.
An easy habit to start now
Ask for a review right after a good experience, while the customer is still happy. A quick text with your review link works well. Then set aside ten minutes a week to reply to anything new.
Stop 3: Your Photos
Photos answer questions people don’t bother asking. What does the place look like? Is it clean? Is this a real business with real people? A restaurant’s photos of the dining room and actual dishes, a contractor’s photos of finished jobs, a salon’s photos of the space and the team. These do more to build confidence than any sentence you could write.
Recent photos also signal that someone’s paying attention. If the latest picture on your profile was taken several years ago, customers notice, even if they couldn’t tell you why your listing felt a little off.
Stop 4: Your Website, On a Phone
Once you’re on someone’s shortlist, a lot of them tap through to your website to confirm what they think they know. Almost all of them are doing it on a phone, often while doing something else. In that moment your website has a few simple jobs:
- Load quickly, without a long wait on a so-so cell signal
- Make it obvious what you do and where you do it
- Show your phone number as a button they can tap to call
- Show current hours and any holiday changes
- Make the next step clear, whether that’s calling, booking, or ordering
If any of those take more than a few seconds to find, a hurried holiday customer is gone. You can check your speed for free with Google’s PageSpeed Insights, and I put together a small business website checklist with the rest of what I’d look at.
What about social media?
Some customers will check your Facebook or Instagram too, especially for restaurants, shops, and salons. They aren’t looking for a polished feed. They’re checking that you’re still around and active. A recent post about your holiday hours or a seasonal special does that job nicely, so it’s worth a few minutes even if social media isn’t your favorite thing.
Stop 5: The Call or the Booking
This is the stop people forget about, and it’s where a lot of good leads quietly disappear. Everything up to now got the customer to reach out. Now the question is whether reaching you is easy.
Call your own number from a phone you don’t usually use. Does it ring through? If nobody answers, is there a clear voicemail that mentions your holiday schedule and tells people when they’ll hear back? If you have a contact form or online booking, fill it out yourself and make sure the message actually lands in an inbox someone checks. I’ve seen more than one business lose weeks of inquiries to a form that was sending to an old email address.
Try It Yourself: The Five-Minute Customer Test
The best way to see what customers see is to be one. Grab your phone and do this:
- Search for what you do plus your town, the way a customer would (for example, “plumber Sumter SC” or “florist near me”)
- Find your listing and compare it honestly to the two businesses next to it
- Read your five most recent reviews and check whether you replied
- Look at your newest photos and when they were added
- Tap through to your website and time how long it takes to find your phone number
- Call yourself or submit your own contact form and see what happens
Write down anything that made you hesitate. Those are the exact spots where customers hesitate too.
What This Looks Like for Different Businesses
The path is the same for everyone, but the weak spot tends to be different depending on what you do.
Restaurants and cafes usually lose people at the hours and the menu. If your holiday hours are wrong or your menu is a blurry photo of a paper menu from two years ago, people move on. A current menu that’s easy to read on a phone and accurate holiday hours go a long way.
Retail shops and florists tend to win or lose on photos and whether people can tell what you carry. Holiday shoppers want to know if the thing they need is likely to be on your shelves before they drive over.
Service businesses like plumbers, HVAC contractors, dentists, and chiropractors usually live or die on reviews and the call itself. People are inviting you into their home or trusting you with their health, so they read reviews closely, and they want a real person or a clear callback promise when they reach out.
Frequently Asked Questions
What matters most when customers choose a local business?
There isn’t one single thing. People look for a few quick signals together: accurate hours, good recent reviews, real photos, and an easy way to call or book. Being strong across all of them matters more than being perfect at one.
Do customers really check reviews for small purchases?
Most do, especially when they’re choosing between businesses they haven’t used before. Even a quick glance at the star rating and the newest review can decide it.
Should my website or my Google profile come first?
Fix your Google profile first, since it’s usually the first thing people see. Then make sure your website backs it up on a phone. They work as a pair.
The Short Version
Customers make up their minds before they call, based on a handful of small things that are easy to fix once you see them. Spend fifteen minutes walking through the test above this week, and you’ll probably find one or two quick wins before the holidays hit full speed.
If you’d like help looking at it with fresh eyes, send me a message. You can also see how I approach websites built for local businesses if your site turns out to be the weak spot.
