How to collect product reviews that customers actually write — and that Google shows.

Why reviews move sales more than photos do

A buyer on a small store has one question in their head: *will this actually arrive and be what the photo shows?* Your product photo cannot answer it, because you took the photo. A review from another buyer can. That is why the same product, on the same page, converts noticeably better once it has a handful of reviews — the review is proof from someone who has no reason to lie.

There is a second, quieter effect. Reviews are text written in your customers' words — "fits a size M perfectly", "the colour is darker than the photo", "reached Guwahati in four days". That language matches what the next buyer types into the search box, and once a product carries a star rating in its page data, Google can show the rating in the result itself. Stars in a search result get clicked more than plain links.

The one rule: ask after delivery, not after purchase

Almost every review request that fails is sent at the wrong moment. Right after payment the buyer has nothing to say — they haven't seen the product. Two weeks later they have forgotten. The window is the day the parcel arrives and the two or three days after, while the buyer is still pleased (or annoyed) enough to type.

On a SitesPlaced store the review email goes out automatically when an order is marked Delivered — by you in the Orders tab, or by Shiprocket, Shipmozo or Rehbar Post when their tracking reports delivery. Each product on the order gets its own Rate it button, so a buyer of three items can rate the one they have an opinion about without filling three forms.

Asking on WhatsApp — the channel most Indian buyers reply on

A large share of small-store orders carry a phone number and no email, especially cash-on-delivery orders. For those, the email never goes anywhere. Open the order in your dashboard and press Copy review link — you get a link that opens the review form directly for that order, with the buyer already identified. Paste it into the WhatsApp conversation you already have with them.

Keep the message short and personal. Something like: *"Hi Priya, hope the kurta reached you well! If you have a minute, a quick rating helps other buyers a lot — [link]. Thank you for ordering from us."* The word *minute* matters; buyers skip anything that sounds like a form.

• Send it 1–3 days after delivery, in the same chat, not from a new number.
• One message. A reminder a week later is fine; a third is spam.
• Never offer money or discounts *for* a review — it is against Google's guidelines and buyers can tell. A thank-you coupon *after* they review, unprompted, is fine.

What 'verified purchase' means and why it matters

A review is only worth something if the reader believes a real buyer wrote it. On SitesPlaced a review written through the order link, the buyer's account, or after confirming the email or phone number used on the order is marked Verified purchase on the product page. Reviews from anyone else (if you allow them — it is off by default) show without the badge.

Keep the default. A store with eight verified reviews looks more trustworthy than one with forty anonymous ones, and buyers have learned to discount the anonymous kind.

Approving reviews: what to publish, what to hold

Every review lands in your Reviews tab as *Pending* first. Nothing shows on the storefront until you approve it. That is not a way to hide criticism — a page with only 5-star reviews looks fake — it is a filter for the things that genuinely don't belong: a review about the courier rather than the product, a duplicate, an abusive one, or one that mentions a private detail.

1. Approve the honest ones, including 3 and 4 stars. A 4-star review that says "great fabric, slightly loose fit" sells more than a 5-star "nice". Mixed ratings are what make the 5-star ones believable.
2. Reply to anything under 4 stars. Publicly, briefly, and with what you changed. The next buyer reads your reply as carefully as the review. There is a full guide to that: how to respond to negative reviews.
3. Reject only what is off-topic or abusive. "Delivery was late" belongs on the order, not the product — reply, sort it out, and hold the review. A review with a wrong-product complaint is worth fixing and then asking the buyer to update.
4. Move mis-filed reviews. If a buyer reviewed the wrong item on a multi-product order, the Reviews tab lets you file it under the right product.

Getting the stars into Google

Google shows star ratings under a product result when the page carries Product structured data with an aggregateRating — the average and the count — plus a few of the reviews themselves. Writing that by hand is a developer job; on SitesPlaced it is automatic. Every approved review updates the product's average, and the product page emits the rating and the latest reviews in its structured data. Nothing to configure.

Two honest caveats. Google decides when and whether to show the stars, and it typically takes days to weeks after the first reviews appear. And it only works with reviews that are genuinely on the page — which is exactly why the built-in system shows the same approved reviews it reports.

The longer version, with what to check in Search Console, is in how to get Google star ratings for your products.

Already have reviews somewhere else?

If you sold on Shopify or WooCommerce with Judge.me, you don't have to start from zero. Paste your Judge.me API token under Settings → Integrations → Judge.me and every review comes across — dates, stars, text, photos and verified status — matched to your products by name. Reviews Judge.me had published go live; the rest wait for your approval. The step-by-step is in import your Judge.me reviews.

Reviews you have as WhatsApp screenshots are a different case: they can't become verified reviews, but they make excellent testimonial images in an About section, with the customer's permission.

Setting it up on a SitesPlaced store (2 minutes)

1. Open your store dashboard → Reviews → Turn on reviews.
2. Under Options, leave the review email on and auto-publish off. Change the heading if you like ("What customers say").
3. Mark your next delivered order as Delivered, or copy its review link into WhatsApp.
4. Approve reviews as they arrive. Reply to the low ones.

It is free on every plan, with no limit on reviews. The full reference is in the Help Center: collect product reviews.

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