Getting More Reviews

Most happy customers never think to write a review. They aren't withholding it; they just moved on with their day. IndieMade gives you three ways to ask, and asking is nearly all of it. Reviews, reminders and the invite link are included on every plan.

First, turn reviews on

Go to Dashboard → Reviews and open the Settings tab. Tick Reviews are off so it reads Reviews are on, and click Save. That is the master switch: while it is off, nothing else on the page does anything.

Once you have saved with reviews on, you can tick Show reviews on product pages and Show a public All Reviews page. They stay greyed out until that first save. See Product Reviews for how reviews look in your shop.

When you tick Show a public All Reviews page, type a name in All Reviews page title too, such as Reviews. That name is also the page's link in your main menu; left empty, the link shows up in your menu with no words on it.

The Reviews Settings tab with the Reviews are on master switch circled, and Show reviews on product pages circled below it
Reviews → Settings. Turn on the master switch and save, then choose where reviews show.

1. Automatic reminders after an order

On the same Settings tab, find Scheduled reminders. Tick Enable scheduled reminders and IndieMade emails each customer once, on its own, after their order is done.

The Scheduled reminders section with Enable scheduled reminders ticked, Trigger reminder when set to Order is marked completed, and Delay (days) set to 7, each circled
Turn reminders on, pick the order step that means the customer has the item, and how many days to wait.
  • Trigger reminder when: choose Order is marked completed or Order is marked shipped. Pick whichever step in your workflow actually means the customer has the item in hand. If you never mark orders completed, choose shipped.
  • Delay (days): how long to wait before sending. The default is 7 days, which gives the package time to arrive and the customer time to enjoy it.
  • Link expiry (days): how long the review link in that email stays valid. Default is 30 days.
  • Email subject: defaults to How did you like your order from [store_name]?

Writing the ask

The Review page section controls the words the customer actually reads, both in the email and on the page they land on after clicking. Three fields, all yours to change:

  • Greeting: default A small favor, [customer_name]
  • Headline: default How did your order turn out?
  • Body: default Your words help future buyers and mean the world to a small studio. Take a minute when you have one. No rush.

You can use any of these placeholders in the subject, greeting, headline or body, and they'll be filled in for each customer:

[customer_name]The customer's first name.
[store_name]Your store's name.
[site_name]Your site's name.
[order_number]The order number.
[order_date]The date of the order.
[product_list]The items from that order.
[review_link]Their personal review link.

A few parts of the email are fixed: the button reads Write your review, the item list is headed Products from your order:, and the email is sent from your site's email address.

Say it in your own voice. The defaults are deliberately soft: no urgency, no pressure, no nudging toward five stars. That tone tends to get more reviews, and more honest ones, than a hard ask. But nobody sounds like your shop except you, so rewrite them.

2. Asking one customer, by hand

You don't need reminders switched on to ask someone directly. In your orders list, the operations menu on any order has Send Review, which sends that customer their review link right away.

Guest orders are skipped here. If someone checked out as a guest there's no account to attach a review to, so Send Review is greyed out and that order never joins the reminders queue. You can still reach those customers with the invite link below, which is built for exactly this.

3. The review invite link, for newsletters

In Reviews → Settings, the Review invite link section gives you a link with a copy button beside it. Put it in your newsletter, a thank-you card, your Instagram bio, anywhere.

The Review invite link section of Reviews Settings, with the shop's invite link and its copy button circled
Your invite link is your shop's address followed by /reviews/start. The button at the right copies it.

The page it opens says Leave a review and asks for one thing: the email address from their order. IndieMade emails them a secure link back. Once they're in, they can see everything they've ever bought from you and review any of it, including orders from long before you turned reviews on.

This works for guest customers too. If the email belongs to someone who checked out as a guest and never made an account, IndieMade sends them an account-setup link instead. Accepting it creates their account and moves their past guest orders onto it, so a customer who was unreachable a moment ago can now review everything they ever bought from you. Accounts are only ever created for an email that genuinely has orders behind it.

The link is safe to post publicly. It doesn't grant access by itself. It only asks for an email address, and an address with no completed orders behind it gets nowhere. The sign-in and account-setup links it sends are good for 24 hours.

This is the one to use if you're starting from zero. Reminders only cover orders from today forward. The invite link reaches back across every customer you've ever had, guests included. A single newsletter can seed your whole catalog with reviews.

Watching the queue

The Scheduled Reminders tab of Dashboard → Reviews shows every reminder IndieMade is tracking, with counts across the top for Total, Scheduled, Sent, and All Reviewed, and tabs to filter to any one of them.

Each row shows the order, the customer, when the order completed, how many of its items have been reviewed, and a status badge:

  • Sends Mar 14: queued, with the date it will go out.
  • Ready to Send: the delay has passed; it goes out on the next run.
  • Sent: already emailed.
  • All Reviewed: this customer has reviewed everything in the order.

Two buttons sit at the end of each row: send to send that reminder now instead of waiting, and delete to cancel it. Deleting stops the scheduled email and removes the tracking row.

The send button works even when automatic reminders are switched off. The page will tell you they're off and point you at Settings, but you can still reach out to any individual customer from here.

Keen reviewers still get the email. A scheduled reminder goes out when its delay elapses even if the customer has already reviewed everything in that order in the meantime; the email just arrives with nothing left to list. If you spot an order sitting on All Reviewed and would rather not send it, delete that row from the queue.

A note on asking well

Ask once. IndieMade sends a single reminder per order, never a drip campaign. That restraint is deliberate: the shops with the best reviews are the ones customers don't feel harassed by.