In the past, we’ve written about how to encourage customers to give reviews for your products. Shopify makes it easy to showcase and manage product reviews through their free Product Reviews app.

In this month’s featured app, we take a look at how you can build upon the Product Reviews app to actively and automatically seek reviews from existing customers.

Product reviews through emails: Product Reviews Addon app

The Product Reviews Addon app helps you get more reviews by automatically sending emails to customers prompting them to review their purchased products. Customers can fill a form with their review and rate your products from within the email.

Customers provide feedback from within the email

This takes away a step as customers don’t have to open a separate page to provide the review. The emails are mobile-optimized so that customers are able to provide feedback quickly while on-the-go. Amazon and other companies use similar embedded polls to get more feedback from their customers. You can also select from a number of different free designs to fit your brand needs.

The app allows you to customize how the reviews are displayed within the Product Reviews section. You can select how much or how little information and imagery you want to display within the testimonials.

product reviews customize display of reviews

Customize how reviews are displayed

Take a look at their demo store to see how the reviews are displayed and configured on product pages.

The app is free for basic features and 50 review requests per month. It is built by Stamped.io and you can choose to get more features, including other built-in products – with their premium versions.

Product reviews through emails: Installation and setup

We will focus mainly on the free version of the app as that is enough to automate review requests. Once you install the Product Reviews Addon app, you will be taken to the Email Queue section. Emails are sent after a certain number of days from the day of order fulfilment. In this area, you can see any emails that are scheduled to go out and the status of emails that have already been sent out.

Example of a full queue area (Source)

Here, you can see the customers, order numbers, email status, ratings, and more information for customers who have purchased items on your store.

Before you get started, you probably want to make sure that the main email information is correct and that the logo you prefer is being displayed in those emails. Go to the main settings section to fill out and confirm these details.

Fill out email and social media details for the emails

You can select whether the emails go to all customers or only those who choose to receive marketing information. By default, the emails will be sent to all customers. In addition, you can provide links to your social profiles that will be included at the bottom of the email.

In the General settings section, you can also import order history to retroactively send review request emails, if you have the premium version of the app.

Product reviews through emails: Customizations

In the Product Reviews section of the settings page, you can customize multiple aspects of the email. You can change a number of things, including:

Email template that determines the overall design.
Content of the subject line and the body. You can use fluid tags in the content to pull in the shop logo, customer name, product name, product image, etc.

Tags allow you to pull in shop and customer data

Number of days to wait before sending the review email.
Select the trigger point for the emails – time of order placement vs. fulfillment.
Exclude certain customers or products based on tags.
Enable reminders, ability to write anonymous reviews, and ability to review previous purchases.

You can also change the colors of various elements in the emails, and each text label.

Color and label options

The app gives you the option to publish reviews automatically when they are submitted or wait for your approval, and whether or not to send you notifications when a review is submitted.

That covers majority of the features that are available in the free version of the app. You can view the pricing page to find out about the different tiers for the paid version.

Product reviews through emails: Summary

Reviews by existing customers can help you increase conversions. People trust other users to confirm that your product delivers what you say it does. Think of the last time you went to try something new without checking Google reviews or bought a product without checking Amazon reviews. You can display customer testimonials on your store and products by using Shopify’s Product Reviews app. We wrote about the Product Reviews app in the May 2016 featured app post.

However, not all customers will leave a review without being prompted and checked upon. The Product Reviews Addon app allows you to customize and automate emails to your recent purchasers. This can help get you more reviews which builds more trust amongst potential customers, and improves product SEO.

How have customers reviews impacted your sales? What has your experience been like? Please tell us in the comments below.