Product reviews

Reviews are built in — no app required. Everything lives under Reviews in the store sidebar, which has its own sub-navigation: Overview, Reviews, Q&A, Requests, Tools (Imports, Syndication, Groups, Rewards, Product stats), and Settings. This page is the hub — see Collecting reviews and Review tools for the deep dives.

Turn reviews on

Product reviews and Q&A are on by default under Reviews → Settings: Enable product reviews and Enable product Q&A. The review-request emails that bring reviews in, however, are a separate lifecycle that ships disabled — you must switch it on (see below).

Collecting reviews

There are three ways a review gets created:

• On-page submission — buyers review straight from the product page. Under Reviews → Settings you choose whether Allow guest reviews is on (anyone) or Require verified purchase is on (only customers with a matching order).
• Review-request emails — sent automatically after an order, with a signed one-click link to the form (no login needed). This is the Requests lifecycle, off by default.
• Imports — bring existing reviews in from a CSV or another review app.

Set up review-request emails

1. Go to Reviews → Requests → Settings and turn on the request lifecycle (Enabled). It is off by default.
2. Pick the trigger event: order created, order paid, order fulfilled (default), order delivered, or digital access granted.
3. Set the send delay — Send delay days (default 7) and Send delay hours — so the email lands after the buyer has the product.
4. Choose which orders qualify. Toggles exist for online orders (on), POS orders (off), physical / digital / event products (on), gift cards (off), and canceled / refunded / test orders (all off).
5. Tune reminders: Reminder delay days (default 7) and Max reminders (default 1). A separate media reminder can nudge reviewers who left text to add a photo (off by default).
6. Set caps and expiry: Max requests/order (default 20), Max requests/customer/month (default 20), and Expires after days (default 90) after which an un-actioned request is closed.

Requests are line-item aware and combined into one email per order by default. Track every send under Reviews → Requests (scheduled, sent, opened, clicked, submitted, expired, failed). Full detail lives in Collecting reviews.

Photos, videos, and limits

Media is on by default and toggles separately for photos and videos (Allow media, Allow photo uploads, Allow video uploads). The defaults:

Limit	Default
Photos per review	5
Videos per review	1
Max video length	60 seconds
Max file size	10 MB

Media safety and reward qualification

Photos and videos are checked before they can appear publicly. Open a review under Reviews → Reviews to see each attachment’s safety status, reason and scan attempts, and to hide, delete or retry eligible media.

Status	What the buyer and merchant should expect
Pending	The attachment is being checked. It is hidden and cannot yet qualify for a photo/video reward.
Clean	The safety scan passed. Qualifying media can count toward the reward once the submission is complete; public display still waits for the separate publication step.
Rejected	The attachment failed safety or file-policy checks. It stays hidden and does not qualify for a media reward. Ask for a replacement if uploads are still allowed.
Scan failed	The scan could not complete. The attachment stays hidden and does not qualify. A staff member with review-management permission can retry it from the review detail page.

A clean photo can qualify for a reward even while its public copy is being prepared. Hiding a photo or the whole review changes presentation, not whether an authentic contribution earned a reward. Deleting the qualifying photo or video is different: it can remove the basis for that media reward.

The buyer must finish the original review and attachment step before its reward tier is determined. If they leave the page early, the attachment deadline closes that step later. The worker then waits for scans to settle and freezes the qualifying content. A later add media reminder is content-only and cannot upgrade or restore the original incentive. See the worked examples.

A scan failure is not approval

A missing or unavailable scanner never makes an attachment safe. Staff can retry a failed scan, but cannot manually mark it clean. Public display and financial qualification are separate checks; publishing a review is not a way to bypass safety or reward eligibility.

Moderation & publishing

Setting	Default	What it does
Auto publish reviews	On	Publish without manual approval
Require review body	On	Text required (turn on Allow rating-only reviews for stars without text)
Require review title	Off	Title field mandatory

Pending reviews wait in Reviews → Reviews, where you approve, reply, hide, or report them. Replies appear publicly under the review.

Publication is rating-neutral. There is no configurable minimum-rating publication gate: when auto-publish is on, policy-compliant 1★ and 5★ reviews publish the same way; when it is off, reviews of every rating wait for approval. Low-rating alerts can notify staff without changing visibility.

Caution

Do not use moderation to publish praise while suppressing criticism. A low-star review may trigger a support notification, but every policy-compliant review must follow the same publication rules. If you want private service feedback, ask it in a separate survey that is not presented as a public review.

Notifications, voting, and customer edits

• Notifications — Notify on new review and Notify on low rating are both on; Low rating threshold defaults to 2★ so 1–2★ reviews flag for attention.
• Voting — Enable voting is on (Allow downvotes off). The voting mode controls who can vote: anyone (default), customers, or verified buyers only.
• Customer edits — buyers can edit (Allow customer edit, on; up to 10 uses, token valid 720 hours) and delete their own reviews (Allow customer delete, on) via the signed link.

AI replies

Draft replies with AI under Reviews → Settings → AI reply settings — set the tone (friendly), length, sign-off, brand voice notes, and a support contact. Auto language matching is on, so a Hindi review gets a Hindi draft. You review and approve every draft before it publishes; nothing posts automatically.

Reward reviewers

Configure direct incentives under Reviews → Tools → Rewards. A financial review reward requires a genuine, fully paid and delivered personal purchase, a completed submission, and the applicable authenticity and media checks. Publication and star rating are not reward conditions.

Diagram viewer: scroll horizontally to inspect the full flow.

A reward follows the accepted offer and qualifying experience. Publication is separate; later media reminders do not upgrade the original incentive. Saved offer terms and customer limits survive later settings changes; eligibility is still checked before issuance.

1. Enable an Any review, Photo review, or Video review card.
2. Choose Discount, Store credit, or Points, and enter the value. Currency amounts are entered in the store currency, for example 100 for ₹100. Points are a whole-number count, not rupees.
3. Set the available expiry options. A discount creates a separate single-use, customer-bound code; a store-credit reward joins the customer’s store credit. Configured reward expiry starts when the reward is issued, not when it enters the queue.
4. Read the fixed Verified buyers only explanation and click Save rewards. This switch is on and cannot be disabled. Company/wholesale orders cannot earn these personal incentives, even when they can leave an ordinary review.

The Any review card is unavailable while Allow rating-only reviews is on in review settings. Turn off rating-only submissions to offer that base reward, or configure photo/video tiers instead. The reward screen does not expose campaign start/end dates or customer-cap controls.

For each review, the richest qualifying direct tier wins: video, then photo, then text/base. There is one financial review reward per order across direct incentives and loyalty review points. Reviewing three items from the same order does not earn three financial rewards, and a direct discount or credit does not stack with a separate loyalty review award. Open the individual review’s Rewards panel to inspect its direct reward status.

An honest review can be negative

Asha pays ₹1,200 for a shirt, receives it, and leaves a one-star review saying the fit is poor. If the review meets her accepted ₹100 store-credit offer, she can earn ₹100. A normal return and refund do not erase that experience or remove the review incentive. The merchant’s decision to hide the review also does not remove it. A fake purchase, spam, duplicate review, or other explicit ineligibility is a different case; see returns and invalidation.

Settings changes and current limits

Direct incentives and separately configured loyalty review earning save the configured terms when an invitation is created or a review is submitted. An invitation keeps that offer until its displayed deadline, for up to 30 days; submitted reviews retain their accepted terms after later edits or a program pause. A saved loyalty review offer includes its points, media bonus, delay and program conditions. The invitation itself can remain usable longer than its reward offer.

A once-per-customer rule keeps durable customer history. Earlier awards count when that cap is enabled later, and expiry, revocation or an account merge does not reset it. Previously accepted uncapped offers remain valid under their own terms. This customer limit is separate from the limit of one financial review reward per order.

Saved terms still require eligibility

A saved offer does not bypass purchase, authenticity, media or account checks. Temporary processing problems remain retryable rather than completing the review’s reward check with no result. Older records that predate saved loyalty terms stop before issuing points and require manual investigation. Today’s rule does not replace an unrecorded historical promise; check the invitation and financial history before deciding on a correction. See Rewards: settings and recovery.

The buyer sees whether a reward is pending, issued, used, expired, revoked or unavailable. Check reward status retries the lookup without posting another review. Setup, examples and failure handling are in Review requests & rewards.

Disclose the incentive

Tell buyers about the incentive before submission and never make it depend on a positive rating. Supported feeds identify incentivized reviews; destinations that prohibit compensated reviews do not receive them.

Import existing reviews

Migrating from another platform? Go to Reviews → Tools → Imports and upload a CSV. Pick the source so the column mapping is applied automatically:

The current source picker includes CSV, Judge.me, Loox, Yotpo, Stamped, Okendo, Junip, Fera, Reviews.io, Trustpilot, Wix, and Other. Choose the matching source and check the resulting rows and error report; an imported badge is not proof of a new Sellerlane purchase.

Rows match to products by product_handle, sku, or product_id, and support rating, title, body, reviewer name/email, date, verified flag, photo URLs, and a seller reply. An imported verified flag is a trusted migration assertion—not a Sellerlane order lookup—so set it only when the source platform verified the purchase. Imports stream in the background; you can cancel mid-run (rows already imported stay, the rest are skipped).

Display options

• Verified buyer badge (Show verified badge, on) — shows verified purchase status. Native verification comes from an eligible order; trusted imports and authenticated admin verification are separate assertions.
• Reviewer name format — defaults to Asha R. style (first name + last initial).
• Reviewer country (Show reviewer country, off) — optionally show where the reviewer is from.
• Star ratings appear on product pages and cards and feed the Product structured data, so ratings can surface in Google results — see SEO.

Review groups

Share reviews across related products under Reviews → Tools → Groups — useful when the same item ships as several variants or SKUs. A group can be manual (pick products) or tag-based (any product carrying chosen tags). Reviews and the aggregate rating are pooled across the group.

Syndicate to Google

Publish your published reviews to Google so star ratings can appear in Google Shopping and the Shopping tab.

1. Go to Reviews → Tools → Syndication and enable Google Product Ratings.
2. Set the publisher name (defaults to your store name) and the product identifier Google should match on — GTIN (recommended), UPC, MPN + brand, SKU, or Custom.
3. Sellerlane generates a Google Product Reviews XML feed (schema 2.4) that Google fetches on a schedule. Submit the feed URL in Google Merchant Center.

You can also publish to custom destinations (your own feed or API endpoint, JSON or XML, with API-key / bearer / basic / HMAC auth). Meta and TikTok are not direct destinations — both accept reviews only through their approved partner apps, so Sellerlane surfaces them as guidance rather than a connect button.

Note

Theme control: review blocks are sections/blocks in the visual editor, and the review_settings Liquid object exposes your configuration to custom themes.

Next steps

Collecting reviews

The request lifecycle, on-page forms, and media in depth — Collecting reviews.

Review tools

Imports, syndication, groups, and rewards walkthroughs — Review tools.

Store credit

Where review rewards land — Store credit.

SEO

Get star ratings into search results — SEO.