Product reviews and ratings

Product reviews and ratings are customer feedback on product quality and user experience that you can collect and publish on your website. They help store visitors make informed decisions when buying from you. Reviews also allow you to keep a finger on the pulse of your business and make timely improvements.

You can enable product reviews in your store so that customers can rate items they purchased whenever they like from their customer accounts. After you publish them, reviews will appear in the product grid and on product pages where shoppers can read them.

Enabling product reviews in your store

By default, reviewing is disabled in your Ecwid store. To start collecting reviews and ratings for products, you need to enable it first.

To enable product reviews in your store:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Settings → General → Cart & Checkout.
2. Scroll down to the Product reviews block.
3. Switch the toggle to Enabled:
   

   

That’s it! Customers can now write reviews for products they purchased in your store. You can turn off reviewing for individual products if you want.

After a customer submits a review for a product, you need to manually publish the review on the My Sales → Product Reviews page in your Ecwid admin to make it available to the public. 

You can always see the number of published and unpublished reviews and the average rating for a particular product on its page in Catalog → Products, in the Product reviews section on the right. This information also appears on order pages in My sales → Orders for each product in the order.

Writing reviews for products: Сustomer experience

Only customers who have previously purchased a product in your store can write a review and rate it. The order for the product must have the Paid order status. Customers can leave reviews from their customer accounts six months after the purchase. They will also get a Feedback request email prompting them to give feedback unless you turn off this notification in your store.

To leave a review for a product, a customer needs to:

1. Sign into their customer account.
2. Locate the Reviews block on the left-hand side and click Leave reviews.
3. Choose a product from the Products waiting for your review list and click Leave a Review:
   

   

4. Rate the product and write a review.
   Writing a text review is not mandatory; customers can simply rate the item by giving it a rating of 1 to 5 stars.
5. Click Submit.

That’s it! After a customer submits the review, they will see a message informing them that it will be published once checked. Customers can view all published and submitted reviews in their accounts.

After publishing, product reviews will appear in the product grid and on product pages where all store visitors can read and sort them.

Managing reviews in your store admin

After a customer submits a review for a product, a (Store name): new product review for “(product name)” email is sent to the email address(es) you set to receive admin notifications. You then need to check and manually publish the review in your Ecwid admin to make it available to the public. 

All the reviews, both published and unpublished, appear on the My Sales → Product Reviews page. Only the store owner or employees with “Sales” staff permission can access this area of the store admin. From there, they can:

• View and publish new reviews submitted by customers. This way, spam is filtered.
• View order and customer info for the reviewed product. For example, to see a shopper's email to discuss issues mentioned in the review.
• Delete reviews after publishing. For example, if a customer does not want this review to be published anymore or the stated problem has been settled.
  Make sure to check with your country's legislation on publishing and deleting reviews.

To manage reviews in your store:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to My Sales → Product Reviews.
2. (optional) Use the Filter menu on the left to sort reviews based on specific criteria.
3. Click Actions next to the review and choose your option or hit the Publish button:
   

   

   If you delete a review, it cannot be restored.
4. Confirm the action if asked to.

To bulk publish or delete product reviews in your store, tick them and use the Mass Update option on top of the page.

Disabling reviews for individual products

You can disable reviewing and rating for products that don't require it. For example, if you sell gift cards or collect donations in your store.

To disable reviews for a product:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Catalog → Products.
2. Open the product you want to edit.
3. Find the Product reviews block on the right, below the stock settings.
4. Click Manage reviews settings.
5. Switch the Reviews for this product toggle to Off.

That’s it! Now, customers can’t leave reviews for this product anymore. Reviews and ratings that already exist will no longer be displayed on your storefront. You can enable them back any time.

Disabling all product reviews in your store

You can turn off product reviews in your store at any time. In this case, existing reviews and ratings will no longer be displayed on your storefront and in your store admin, and customers can't submit new reviews.

To disable all product reviews in your store:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Settings → General → Cart & Checkout.
2. Scroll down to the Product reviews block.
3. Switch the toggle to Disabled:

   

That’s it!

You can always turn reviews back on later. In this case, the reviews you’ve already published will be displayed on the storefront again.

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