Product reviews are comments submitted by customers or viewers of your site directly onto the product page. You can manage product reviews using the built-in comment system or by installing a third-party app from our App Marketplace. This article covers the built-in BigCommerce review system to manage reviews and send review requests to your customers.
Requirements
- To view and manage product reviews, you must have the Manage Products, Manage Reviews, Edit Reviews, and Delete Reviews permissions enabled on your user account.
- To view and manage store email templates, you must have the Manage Channels and Store Design permissions enabled in your user account.
- To view and manage Store Settings, you must have the Manage Settings permission enabled on your user account.
Enabling and Disabling Product Reviews
Product reviews can be enabled and disabled within Settings in the control panel.
1. Go to Settings › Comments.
2. Click the Built-in tab at the top of the page.
3. Check the box next to Product Reviews to enable the built-in system. To disable it, uncheck the box.
- Only accept product reviews from past customers — Customers leaving a review must enter the email address they used when purchasing from the store or the review will not be processed. The customer must have an order with a status of Completed or Shipped to leave a review.
4. Save your changes.
Pro Tip! Only accepting product reviews from past customers can help to reduce spam, along with reCAPTCHA. See Enabling reCAPTCHA for more information on using that feature.
Managing Product Reviews
Reviews must be approved before they will appear on your storefront. Managing your reviews gives you an opportunity to remove spam and other unhelpful content before it appears on your storefront. However, you can also set your reviews to be approved automatically.
Localized Store Experiences: Customer-facing pending approval and review error messages are available for all of our supported languages. For more information on the default language store setting, see Store Profile Settings.
Approving, Disapproving, and Deleting Reviews
Product reviews are managed under Products › Product Reviews. From here you can approve, disapprove, and delete reviews in bulk. You can also edit the content of individual reviews, if desired.
Reviews in Pending status have not been approved or disapproved yet. Check the box to the left of the reviews you would like to perform an action on.
- Click Delete Selected for the reviews to be deleted from the system entirely.
- Click Approve Selected for the selected reviews to appear on your product page.
- Click Disapprove Selected for the selected reviews not to appear.
Click the Action menu to the right of a review, and select Preview to open a pop-up window displaying the review contents. Select Edit to open the Edit Review page for making updates to the review content.
Did you know? You can email a reviewer by clicking their name under the Posted By column. This can be helpful in understanding why the reviewer left the review. The link will not appear unless you have the Only accept product reviews from past customers option enabled. See our FAQ for more information on controlling who can make product reviews on your store.
Additional Settings
Additional settings for product reviews are located in Store Settings. These include various display settings and setting throttler limits.
Display Settings
The following settings can be found in Settings › Display.
Under the Display Settings section:
- Auto Approve Reviews — Enable or disable automatic review approval. If you disable this feature, you will need to manually approve reviews before they will display on the storefront.
Under the Product Settings section:
- Show Product's Rating — Enable or disable product ratings displaying on brand, category, product, and search result pages.
Throttling Reviews
To limit how many reviews are placed on your site within a given time frame, you can enable the review throttler and edit its threshold. This can decrease the number of potential spam reviews placed on your store if you choose not to limit reviews to verified customers when enabling product reviews.
To enable or disable the throttler or to edit the throttler settings, go to Settings › Miscellaneous under the Throttler section.
Product Review Email Settings
Product review emails are invitations to your customers to review the product(s) they purchased from you. This email is automatically sent after a certain number of days after the order is marked as Shipped or Completed, and includes links to the product pages of the items they purchased.
To disable the review emails from being sent, go to Marketing › Transactional Emails. Click the Action Menu next to Product Review Request and select Disable. Once disabled, you can re-enable the emails by selecting Enable from the Action Menu.
Additional review email settings are found in Settings › Miscellaneous under Email Settings.
From here, you can set the number of days after the order is marked as Shipped or Completed that the email is sent and choose if guest customers should be sent review emails.
One day is the minimum setting for when to send out the product review email. We recommend 7 days, since ideally you want to make sure that the customer has received their order and had some time to examine and use the product before they're asked to review it.
Customizing the Product Review Email
To customize the review request email that is sent to customers, go to Marketing › Transactional Emails. Click the Action menu next to Product Review Request and select Edit Template. For more information on editing email templates, see Customizing Emails.
FAQ
Are reviewers automatically notified when their review is approved?
No, but you can reach out to them manually through email to thank them for their feedback. Reviewer email addresses are available under Products › Product Reviews.
Can I comment or respond to reviews on my products?
There are not any built-in settings to do this in the control panel, but a number of apps in the Product Reviews section of our App Marketplace support responding or commenting on customer submitted reviews.
Why am I seeing multiple options in the control panel for comments?
If you're using a legacy Blueprint theme, you will have the option to choose from multiple comment systems.
Can I limit reviews only to customers that have purchased the product?
Yes, you can do this by going to Settings › Comments, clicking the Built-in tab, and checking the box next to Only accept product reviews from past customers. To submit a review, a customer must enter an email address that matches an address used on a previous order.
Why aren't my customers receiving a product review email?
A product review email will only be sent after the order's status is changed to Shipped or Completed, and only after the number of days specified in your store's Product Review Email settings. A customer will also not receive a product review email if they have opted out of receiving Abandoned Cart Saver and product review emails in their storefront account. You can see if a customer has opted out of these emails by editing their account in Customers › View.
Can I edit individual product reviews?
Yes. You can edit them from Products › Product Reviews.
How can I import or export product reviews?
There are not any built-in settings in the control panel to import or export product reviews, but the free Product Review Importer & Exporter app can import and export reviews in a CSV format. You can add product reviews to a product with an API request.
What happens to a product's reviews when the product is deleted?
When a product is deleted, all of its reviews are deleted as well. We recommend backing up your reviews using the Product Review Importer & Exporter app or via the API before deleting a product.
Can customers add images to product reviews?
No, the product review Comments field only accepts text and does not allow for uploading or embedding images.
