Case Study
TapReview
WhatsApp-native Google reviews for UK tradespeople
98%
WhatsApp open rate
20×
Cheaper than Podium
26
Trade landing pages
Most tradespeople know reviews drive jobs. Almost none collect them systematically. The methods on offer are awful: QR codes on a van that nobody scans, paper cards, “if you could leave us a review that’d be great” mumbled at the end of a job, or US-built platforms that cost £300/month and assume you’ve got a marketing manager. The result is that even brilliant tradespeople rank below mediocre competitors who happen to have figured out reviews. Meanwhile email open rates have collapsed and SMS sits around 45%. WhatsApp opens at 98%. Nobody was using it.
TapReview is one-tap review collection over WhatsApp. Finish a job, type the customer’s name and number, send. They get a personalised WhatsApp message with a button straight to your Google review link. If they don’t review within three days, TapReview follows up automatically. If they reply with the next customer’s details, TapReview parses the message — or the forwarded vCard — and fires the next request without you opening the app. £15/month, 5 free reviews to start, no contract. The same outcome platforms quote £300/month for, on a phone, in 5 seconds, from a van.
WhatsApp Review Requests in 5 Seconds
Type a name and a UK mobile, hit send. Twilio delivers a personalised template with merge fields for customer name, business name, your name, and a one-tap link to your Google Business Profile. 98% open rate. No friction for you, no friction for the customer.
Inbound Parsing — Reply or Forward
Customers reply on WhatsApp and the bot extracts the name + number. Forward a contact card and it parses the vCard. Either path auto-fires the next review request. You never have to open the app on a job.
WhatsApp Commands
Run the whole product from the chat: HELP, STATS, REPORT, LINK, REFER, STOP, START. Magic-link login over WhatsApp OTP — no passwords, no email. The dashboard is optional.
3-Day Auto Follow-up + Weekly Nudge
If a customer hasn’t reviewed after 72 hours, TapReview sends a polite reminder. Conversion roughly doubles. A configurable weekly nudge reminds you to send any you’ve missed, scheduled per-user for the day and time that fits your van life.
Confidence-Matched Review Detection
Daily Google Places polling (post-7am UK, ~97% cheaper than 15-min polling) checks for new reviews and matches them to requests by name. High / medium / null confidence scoring, 14-day matching window, milestones at 10/25/50/75/100 then every +50, dynamic share-card image generated with Sharp.
Trade-Specific Landing Pages + Comparison SEO
26 trade-specific landing pages (/for/plumbers, /for/electricians, /for/heating-engineers…) with unique testimonials, FAQs and job-value scenarios per trade. 7 competitor comparison pages (/compare/podium, /compare/checkatrade, /compare/nfc-review-cards…) each with feature matrices and a clear verdict. Programmatic SEO without programmatic SEO slop.
Production launch with paying users. WhatsApp-native flow that any tradesperson can run from a van without ever opening a laptop. 14 Drizzle tables, 24 page components, 47 UI components, a 9-command WhatsApp surface, a multi-tenant blog with SSR and JSON-LD for crawlers, a Model Context Protocol server exposing 9 admin tools, and a 3-layer Express architecture (routes → services → storage) with Vitest + Playwright coverage. One extra job a year from better Google visibility pays for a decade of TapReview.
The opportunity was sitting in plain sight. Podium charges $300/month. Birdeye and NiceJob are similar. They’re built for US dental practices with five staff and a marketing budget — not a sole-trader plumber on a Tuesday afternoon.
The insight wasn’t a feature. It was the channel. Email reviews sit at 20% opens. SMS at 45%. WhatsApp at 98%. Nobody had built a review tool that lived on WhatsApp end to end — request, follow-up, confirmation, weekly nudge, login. So I did. Add the commands surface so the app works without the app, the daily Places poll with confidence matching, the 26 trade pages for SEO, and you’ve got a £15/month product that does the £300/month thing better, because it was built for the actual user.
Core Loop
Twilio WhatsApp templates, review request flow, Google Places integration, Drizzle schema
Inbound + Commands
Webhook dispatcher, reply parsing, vCard parsing, 9-command surface, magic-link login
Polling + Matching
Daily Places poll, confidence-scored matching, milestone tracking, follow-ups, nudge scheduler
Launch
Stripe billing with 5 free reviews, 26 trade pages, 7 comparison pages, blog SSR, MCP server
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