How to Add Reviews to Durable: The First Real Thing

The mechanics take a minute here, so the useful part of this is the reasoning. Durable generates a whole site from a few answers about your business, in less time than it takes to make coffee, and that is a real advantage when the alternative is having no site at all. It also means every word and picture on the page started as a plausible default. A visitor cannot tell that at a glance. What they can tell is whether anything on the page is checkable, and on a fresh Durable site your reviews are usually the only thing that is.

The Custom Code Block

Open the page in the Durable editor and add a Custom Code block in the position the reviews should occupy. Paste the widget embed into it and publish. There is no mode to switch into and nothing to escape.

Expect the editor to be unhelpful. Durable may show the block frame while editing rather than the rendered content, which is normal for this class of builder, so the published page is the check that counts.

The block sits in the page flow like other Durable blocks, so it takes its position from where you put it and the sections below move down to accommodate it.

Everything Else Started Generic

A generated site is a strong start and a weak finish. The structure is right, the sections are the ones a business like yours should have, and the copy is a competent approximation of what such a business might say. None of it is specific until somebody makes it specific.

That is fine and it is how the product is meant to work. The risk is stopping there, because a page of plausible defaults reads exactly like a page of plausible defaults to a visitor comparing three local businesses.

Reviews are the fastest fix available. They are not written by you, they cannot be generated, and the rating shown is the one on a profile a stranger can open in a second tab. Nothing else you can add in five minutes carries that weight.

Checkable Beats Well-Written

A claim a visitor can verify is worth more than a claim that is merely well phrased, and the gap widens when the visitor is already slightly suspicious. Somebody who suspects a site was generated is exactly the person who will check.

The header rating on the widget comes from the platform aggregate rather than from the review cards being displayed, so it matches the profile. That is the property that survives a click, and it is the reason to prefer a live widget over testimonials typed into the page.

It also means you should not dress it up. A rating shown plainly, with the real count, does more than a section headed with a superlative that the number underneath does not support.

Edit the Page Around It

Once the reviews are on the page, the generic copy near them starts to look generic by contrast, which is useful. It tells you where to spend the next ten minutes.

Rewrite the section directly above the reviews first. That is the claim the reviews are supporting, and a specific claim supported by real reviews is a much stronger pairing than a general one supported by the same reviews.

The same applies to images. A generated site uses stock, and one real photograph of the business next to a real rating changes the character of the page more than any amount of copy editing does.

How Do You Build the Widget?

Paste your Google, Trustpilot or Facebook profile URL, preview your real reviews and rating, then choose from over 100 layout styles across the slider, marquee, grid, list, masonry and badge families, and set the colours to the generated theme.

Matching the theme is quick because Durable themes are simple, and it matters because a widget in unrelated colours is one more thing that looks assembled rather than made.

Free plan, unlimited widget views. Durable is often chosen by a business at the point where spending is tight, and a widget that starts costing money once the site gets traffic would be badly timed.

Where Should the Reviews Go?

Higher than you would put them on a hand-built site. On a page where the copy is generated, the reviews are the strongest element, and burying the strongest element at the bottom is the wrong instinct.

Directly under the hero or immediately after the first section works well. A visitor who has just read a competent but generic headline gets something concrete straight away.

One placement, plus the contact section if the page is long. Repeating them is the usual temptation on a short generated site with space to fill, and space is better filled by rewriting a section than by showing the same rating twice.