Most reviews come from buyers you nudge. Sellerlane has a built-in review-request lifecycle that emails customers after they buy, with a signed one-click link to the review form (no login needed), plus reminders and an optional reward after purchase, authenticity and content checks. Public approval is separate from earning a reward. This page is the deep dive on collecting reviews and rewarding them — for moderation, display, imports and syndication see Product reviews and Review tools.
For the full order-eligibility, moderation, reward, edit, deletion, refund, and clawback map, see Order & rewards lifecycle.
Three paths create a review:
Allow guest reviews vs Require verified purchase).Go to Reviews → Requests → Settings.
Switch Enabled on. It is off by default.
Pick the Trigger — the order event that starts the clock: Order created, Order paid, Order fulfilled (default), Order delivered, or Digital granted (for digital products, fires when access is granted). For apparel, delivery is a useful starting point when reliable delivery events are available; fulfillment alone does not prove the buyer received it.
Confirm the Default channel is Email and that Email enabled is ticked. Email is the only request channel.
Set the send delay — Send delay days (default 7) and Send delay hours
(default 0) — measured from the trigger event, so the email lands after the
buyer has had time to use the product.
Click Save request settings.
The sender identity (from-name and address) is owned by your outbound email configuration, not this form — see Store emails.
A request that goes unanswered can be followed up automatically, and is closed after a window so you are not chasing stale orders.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Send delay days / Send delay hours | 7 / 0 | Wait after the trigger before the first email |
Reminder enabled | On | Send a follow-up to non-responders |
Reminder delay days | 7 | Days after the first email before the reminder |
Max reminders | 1 | How many reminders at most |
Media reminder enabled | Off | A separate nudge asking text-only reviewers to add a photo |
Media reminder delay days | 3 | Days after their text review before the media nudge |
Expires after days | 90 | An un-actioned request is closed after this many days |
Not every order should trigger a request. Under Settings, a row of toggles
controls eligibility — each maps to a Send for … checkbox:
| Toggle | Default |
|---|---|
| Online orders | On |
| POS orders | Off |
| Physical products | On |
| Digital products | On |
| Gift cards | Off |
| Event products | On |
| Canceled orders | Off |
| Refunded orders | Off |
| Test orders | Off |
Requests are line-item aware: a request is created per reviewable product on the order. Product-type and order-state settings decide which requests are created. These invitation filters do not define whether an already-submitted, authentic review keeps its reward after an ordinary return. Turn POS orders on if you take in-person payments and want to follow up those buyers too.
To avoid over-emailing, requests are pooled per order and rate-limited per customer.
Open Reviews → Requests for the lifecycle dashboard.
Use Reviews → Tools → Rewards for direct review offers. These are separate from review earning rules in the loyalty program. Keep the two configurations clear when writing campaign copy: they share a limit of one financial review reward per order and do not stack.
The page has three reward cards, plus a section for older rule types if present. It does not expose campaign schedules, customer-cap controls, or a full reward history. To inspect a direct reward, open Reviews → Reviews, select the review, and read its Rewards panel. Buyers can see applicable rewards in their customer account.
| Check | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Purchase | Payment was fully collected and the buyer experienced the purchased item: physical delivery, digital activation, or a completed attended event. Company/wholesale purchases do not qualify. |
| Complete submission | The buyer has finished the original review/upload step. An abandoned step closes at its attachment deadline. |
| Media | Attached qualifying media have finished safety checks. Clean scanned media can qualify; rejected or failed media cannot. Public CDN readiness is not a financial requirement. |
| Authenticity | When AI moderation is enabled for review text, its saved authenticity result must be available. The review must not be deleted, private feedback, or explicitly disqualified. |
| Existing award | The order has not already received a financial review reward through either the direct or loyalty route. |
A review does not need to be public, have a positive rating, or wait for a normal return window to end to earn its review incentive. Hiding it for display purposes is not financial disqualification. These review rules differ from loyalty purchase rewards.
Assume a buyer has a qualifying personal order and accepts ₹50 credit for a text review or ₹100 credit for a photo review. These are example offer amounts, not platform defaults.
| Buyer action | Reward result |
|---|---|
| Writes a text review and completes the submission without media | The base ₹50 reward can issue after the remaining checks. |
| Adds a photo during the original submission and finishes | Evaluation waits for the scan. A qualifying clean photo selects ₹100, not ₹50 plus ₹100. |
| Photo passes its scan but is not yet publicly displayed | The clean photo can qualify for ₹100; public display follows its own checks. |
| The only photo is rejected or the scan fails | That photo cannot qualify for ₹100. A valid text/base tier may still qualify. A later retry is not a promise of an upgrade after qualification has been frozen. |
| Earns ₹50, then adds a photo from a delayed media reminder | The photo can appear after safety and publication checks, but the award stays ₹50. |
| Reviews a second product from the same order | The review can be collected, but the order does not earn a second financial review reward. |
Among matching direct tiers on one review, video takes precedence over photo, then text/base. The comparison is by content tier, not by whichever monetary amount is largest. Set the values deliberately so your advertised ladder makes sense.
For direct incentives and loyalty review earning, the invitation saves its configured offer for the displayed period, up to 30 days. Once a buyer submits, the accepted terms are retained. Editing or turning off a direct rule changes new offers; it does not rewrite that accepted promise. An invitation saved with no offer does not acquire a reward just because a new promotion starts later.
Example: Asha receives a valid invitation offering ₹100 credit for a photo review. You reduce new offers to ₹50 tomorrow. If she submits before the original offer deadline and qualifies, her accepted offer is still ₹100. If she has already submitted, pausing the direct rule does not cancel that promise.
For an on-page form, an offer can change while the buyer is filling it in. A stale-offer message asks them to refresh and review the current terms rather than silently accepting different incentive terms.
Points example: A review is accepted under a 150-point loyalty rule with a 50-point photo bonus and a two-day availability delay. Changing new reviews to 10 points, removing the bonus, or pausing the program does not reprice the saved offer. A qualifying photo review still earns its saved 150 + 50 points, subject to the saved conditions and current purchase/authenticity/account checks. Its configured two-day delay is anchored to submission, not an eventual worker retry.
A rule’s once-per-customer limit is recorded durably, including when several reviews are evaluated together. New workers, retries and server restarts use that record rather than granting a second award. Final issuance checks the cap again, including for older pending records.
Cap-change example: Asha already received this rule’s incentive while it was uncapped. You later enable once per customer. That history counts toward the new limit. An older offer she accepted while uncapped remains payable under its original terms; changing the rule does not rewrite that promise. Expiring or revoking an award does not reset the history, and merging duplicate customer accounts preserves the combined history. Creating a different rule is a separate campaign, not a way to rewrite the original rule’s records.
Honest return: reward stays
Asha pays ₹1,200 for a shirt, receives it, leaves a one-star review and earns the offered ₹100 credit. She returns it because it does not fit and receives a normal refund. The review describes a real experience, so the review incentive stays. The low rating and ordinary return are not fraud.
Invalid experience: reward is removed
A review is identified as fake, duplicate, spam or unrelated to the product, or its purchase was never eligible. Pending rewards cannot issue and issued benefits can be invalidated. Publishing the review again does not erase the financial invalidation.
An ordinary wording edit or hiding the review does not by itself take back an earned benefit. Editing text can trigger another authenticity check before a pending award issues. Deleting the review, removing required text, or deleting the last qualifying photo/video can remove the basis for its reward or media bonus. A late-reminder upload cannot substitute for the removed qualifying content. Do not promise a fresh reward if the customer edits, deletes and submits again.
If an invalidated promotional credit was already spent, a later refund of that spend does not turn it into unrestricted credit. Any recovered amount remains tied to the invalid source. Already-consumed benefits can leave an outstanding merchant cost; reversal is not a guarantee that unrelated cash will be collected from the buyer. See Store credit.
When enabled, the separate media reminder opens a seven-day content-only upload window after the original reward qualification has finished. Tell buyers it is for improving the review, not earning a second or richer incentive. The new photo or video still needs a safety scan and public-display approval. If an authorized edit/upload link cannot be provided, the reminder is not sent.
| Outcome | What to tell the buyer |
|---|---|
| Pending / checking | The review is saved; purchase, authenticity, media or issuance work is still pending. Use Check reward status or check again later. Do not submit another review. |
| Issued | Use the displayed discount code or the reward in the customer account, subject to its terms and expiry. |
| No reward offered / ineligible | A review was accepted, but that does not itself promise a financial benefit. Read the stated reason or contact the store. |
| Order already rewarded | The buyer can review its other products, but cannot collect another financial review reward for the order. |
| Used / expired / revoked | The old reward is unavailable; it is not a new spendable code or balance. Contact the store if the outcome seems wrong. |
| Status temporarily unavailable | The review is still saved. Check reward status retries the lookup without resubmitting. |
| Original loyalty offer needs checking | The old record lacks its saved offer. Contact the store for manual investigation; another submission or repeated refresh does not supply the missing terms. |
| Could not be issued | Contact the store so staff can investigate the review and reward record. Do not promise that refreshing will resolve a terminal failure. |
Background jobs retry transient processing failures. Neither the buyer nor staff should create a duplicate review or a second manual credit just because the first result is delayed. Check the existing record first.
Send for …
toggle, and that the trigger event has actually fired for the order.Product reviews
Moderation, media limits, voting, and display — the reviews hub.
Review tools
Imports, syndication, and groups — Review tools.
Store credit
Where store-credit rewards land — Store credit.
Discounts
Understand discount conditions and customer codes — Discounts.