Product Review: Managing Product Reviews and Ratings
The Product Review app allows customers to submit product reviews, ratings, and comments for purchased items, helping other shoppers evaluate products and encouraging them to make purchasing decisions.
This guide explains how to set up and manage product reviews, including configuring review display settings, moderating customer feedback, using AI-assisted review management, importing and exporting reviews in bulk, sending review request emails, and integrating reviews across multiple channels to build trust and improve conversions.
Installing and Using the App
To ensure customers can leave comments on the products they ordered, you first need to install the plugin. Please visit the SHOPLINE App Store to install Product Review.
The system will automatically redirect you to the main page of the Product Review app. You can finish the basic setup for the review layout here.
Understanding the Home Page
The Home page displays the review data, the latest reviews, and the latest messages. By viewing the data and review lists, you can monitor and respond to product reviews in real time.
- In the Review data module, you can filter the review data of the last 30 days, last 90 days, and last year, including data on customer reviews, reviews with images, reviews without images, created reviews, and messages.
- You can display the reviews/messages added within the last 180 days. For the latest reviews, you can reply manually or with AI (Contact Merchant Success for a trial), and choose whether to hide or delete the review.
Basic Settings
After installing the Product Review app, you’ll need to configure the basic review settings based on your needs. To set them up, go to Settings and follow the steps below:
Enable Function
Enable Product Review: You can choose whether to display the review information from the store and to get email notifications when receiving first-level reviews.
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Enable message board: When enabled, users can ask questions about products by leaving messages on the product page. You can also set email notifications to alert you when receiving first-level messages.
After enabling the message board feature, you must add the Review List component to your Theme Editor to display the Questions & Answers section on the product detail page. Customers can submit product-related inquiries through the message board.
Automatically Make Evaluations Public
When turned on, reviews that meet the rating requirements will be automatically published.
Customer Evaluation Threshold
You can set a threshold for publishing reviews and customer feedback responses with the user ranges, including No limits, Logged in, and Logged in and purchased this product.
Display the Full Name of the Reviewing Customer
When turned on, the store website will display the full name of the reviewing customer.
Product Review Title
When switching on the toggle, customers can fill in the evaluation title when filling in the evaluation. The evaluation title is optional. When the function is turned off, if there are reviews in the history that include review titles, they will still be displayed.
You can also see the preview in the Display of results section.
Excellent Review
You can set the conditions for automatically tagging good reviews. Eligible reviews will be automatically displayed with the “good review” tag to attract new users to view them.
AI Evaluation Management
When enabling the Launching Smart filter toggle, the review contents and product ID will be sent to AI for data analysis. In this process, the review tag will be directly displayed in the store after completion.
You can see the preview of the display effects by clicking Understanding display effects.
Besides, you can also turn on the Enable AI negative review monitoring toggle. After the function is turned on, the store evaluation content will be synchronized to AI for data analysis. The historical data processing time depends on the amount of data, and new data will be processed regularly every day.
Custom Displays
You can create customized questions in Custom displays to tailor product reviews to your specific needs, especially for collecting and showcasing size and fit feedback for apparel products.
Start by creating a template with up to six questions—either choose the default Apparel template or design a new one tailored to your needs. Then, configure the applicable products, categories, or tags to ensure the questions are displayed for the right products.
Help Count and Rating Response Settings
When turned on Enable help count and review reply display, help count and review reply function will be displayed in the review collections component, review list component, review collections page, and review popup window.
You can also set up a click help threshold in the Customer Click Help Threshold Setting section and five frequently used replies in the Customize commonly used reply templates section to help you reply to buyers more conveniently and quickly.
Message Board Settings
In this section, you can set up a threshold for customers to both publish messages and answer message questions.
Reviews Display
In the Reviews display module, you can set the Listing widget, Review collections, Stars widget, and Customized widget.
Customizing Listing Widget
You can customize the appearance of the review list and review collection components on PC and mobile. SHOPLINE offers three layouts for your selection: Single-column layout, Multi-column layout, and Grid layout. You can select anyone to customize the layout.
Customizing Review Collections
Enable the review collection page to curate high-quality reviews from your store and showcase them on a dedicated page or module. For detailed instructions, see the "Creating a Review Collection Page for Your Store" guide.
Setting up Star Widget
Star widget positioning: It can be displayed below the product title on the Product detail page and below the product price on the Product listing page.
Select the Star pattern and Star color (automatically hidden if the product has no reviews): The color will also be applied to the excellent review tag.
Carousel Component
You can display reviews with images in a carousel format. Click Go to theme editor and connect a product.
Setting Up Customized Widget
SHOPLINE allows you to edit the review code to modify the style of the review component more flexibly.
Product Reviews
You can view all reviews and all messages, create a review/message, and bulk import reviews.
List of All Product Reviews
You can view the review data of each product, including average ratings, public reviews, hidden reviews, customer reviews, created reviews, and message quantity. You can choose whether to turn on reviews and the message board.
By clicking the corresponding product row in the product review list, you can view the details of the product reviews, including all reviews of the product, the reviewer, the content, the number of likes, the review date, and you can select whether to make the review public.
| Note: The AI generated reviews feature can create text and images only for Luggage & Bags and Apparel & Accessories. For other product types, it can create text only. |
Bulk Importing and Exporting Product Reviews
When managing a large number of product reviews, you may need to add, update, or reuse reviews in bulk instead of editing them individually. For example, you might want to apply the same customer review across multiple product pages or export reviews for analysis or migration. In these cases, the bulk import and export feature allows you to manage reviews more efficiently.
Bulk Importing Reviews
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Go to Product reviews > Import reviews to download the bulk import template.
Open the downloaded template and fill in the required information according to the format guidelines. Only .xls, .xlsx, and .csv files are supported, and the file size must not exceed 40 MB.
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If the uploaded file contains both valid and invalid reviews, the valid reviews will be imported successfully, while the invalid reviews will be blocked and require correction.
Bulk Exporting Reviews
If you want to bulk export reviews for specific products, select the products and click Export reviews, then choose the review range you want to export.
Checking Import and Export Results
After the import or export process is completed, you can check the execution status, including the success and failure ratio, in Import/Export record.
- Click Failure record to view the reasons for failed records.
- Click Export all to download the imported or exported Excel files.
Store Reviews
With Store reviews, you can gather and display overall customer feedback about your store. To activate this feature, toggle the switch in the Store Reviews section.
After enabling this feature, go to the Theme Editor and turn on Activate store reviews in the App Block.
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Notes:
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Review Request Email
You can set the Review request email function to send emails to customers who have purchased products at your store and invite them to review the products they've bought.
Enable automatic review request: When turned on, emails will be sent to the customer's email address at a scheduled time, inviting customers who have bought products at your store to review the products.
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Set up discount code rewards: When turned on, a discount code reward will be sent to customers who have made an eligible review. SHOPLINE offers two types of discount code rewards you can select: Random discount code and Fixed discount code. You can select either type according to the needs of your store.
Note: You can also customize the requirements for obtaining discount code rewards. You can determine whether to send discount codes by setting restrictions, such as requirements on rating and reviews with images. -
Enable email notification: Click Edit email to enter the email preview page. Select the module you want to edit and preview in the left menu. Now you can edit the following modules: Email Subject, Logo, Email Content, Product List, Button and Rich text. Select the module you want to edit.
Note: If a customer purchases multiple products at one time, only one review request email will be sent to the customer. In the email, there will be a review area for each product purchased by the customer, and reviews written by the customer will also be automatically included in the review collections of the corresponding product. So don’t worry about customers receiving multiple review request emails when they purchase multiple products at one time, or about the product review not being archived in the right location. Review instructions: The Introduction of review could encourage customers to leave a review with easy-to-understand and engaging instructions. The text will display as a prompt when the customer clicks on the review request email link to write a review.
After configuring the settings, you can preview the content with the Preview function.
Integrations: Google Product Reviews Synchronization
If Google Product Reviews Sync is turned on, the product reviews of your store can be uploaded to GMC as a feed, and the latest data will be automatically updated at the earliest hours of every day. After obtaining the synchronization URL, fill in the corresponding URL when setting up GMC, and then the product reviews can be synchronized.
| Note: Product review synchronization allows you to set the GTIN and MPN fields, which are product information fields. Please be cautious when synchronizing these two fields, as some merchants reported that after synchronizing these two fields, the products may be automatically cleared by GMC, thus blocking the ads. |
Integrations: Multichannel Connect
Recommended Best Practices
Reviews Display Strategy
Users enter the website of your store through two paths: entering the homepage through search or recommendations, or entering the landing page (product detail page) through ads. Therefore the display style of customer reviews on the homepage and product detail page is particularly important. On the homepage, it can be displayed on a review collections page. On the landing page or product detail page, all user reviews exclusive to the product, including the rating and detailed review content, need to be displayed in a list.
Inviting Existing Customers to Write Reviews
In addition to importing reviews from other locations, you can use the Product Review plugin to set up review request emails that encourage and guide customers to write more real reviews and also display the reviews in an appropriate form using the above strategies, which can help you quickly obtain users' trust and increase conversion rates.
Word-of-mouth (WOM) Marketing Strategy
Generally speaking, a good reputation among customers is very important for highly-priced products whose efficacy requires a certain time to be verified. However, to gain trust, user reviews and WOM marketing apply to all products.
More than 90% of shoppers browse or analyze the reviews of a product before purchasing. More research shows that the trust level of reviews is higher than that of other content on the website.
Customer reviews and reputation on social media are a quick way for people to evaluate a product or service. You, therefore, need to attach importance to managing the reviews on your website and its reputation on social media (social proof). You can also install the Instagram Feed app to add an Instagram photo wall to the homepage of your website, which can display product reviews and photos from existing users to first-time visitors.
You can even start a feedback campaign on social media to quickly collect users’ feedback on the shortcomings of the products and services to make improvements. This is the essence of DTC: connecting directly with customers and actively listening to their feedback.
Customer reviews can intuitively reveal the rating of the products. For high-value products with a high repurchase rate, WOM marketing is a very important marketing strategy to implement.
The key to WOM marketing is to be able to describe to a real person, the real shopping journey, experience, and value a product has brought them in the form of an intriguing story. The screenshot below is the case of LuxyHair’s website design implementing WOM marketing. The website tells real stories of how the product brought about real changes to customers' lives and provides an entry to showcase user experience, where users share their experience of using the product, making it easier to build trust.
After completing the above steps, you’ll be ready to manage your product reviews.
If you want to gather product reviews from AliExpress, Shopify, and Amazon, the three major channels, please read Guide to Multi-channel Reviews Importer.