Importing Reviews

If you've been selling on Etsy or somewhere else, you've already earned reviews — they just live on someone else's website. Bring them over so a first-time visitor to your own site sees a shop with a history instead of a blank page.

Everything here is on the Import tab under Reviews in your dashboard.

Importing from Etsy

If your Etsy shop is connected, the Import from Etsy card has a single button: Import from Etsy. It pulls the reviews from your connected shop and matches each one to the right IndieMade product by its Etsy listing ID, so a review of your blue mug lands on your blue mug.

  • Reviews it can't match to a product still come across — they're imported as general store reviews rather than thrown away.
  • Duplicates are skipped automatically, so re-running the import after new Etsy reviews come in is safe. It only brings over what's new.
  • Etsy reviews always arrive published and visible on your site.
  • If everything is already across, it tells you: All Etsy reviews have already been imported.

Not connected yet? The card links straight to your Etsy settings so you can connect first.

Very large Etsy shops: a single run brings across up to about 2,000 reviews. If you have more than that, run the import again — duplicates are skipped, so each run picks up where the last one left off.

Importing from a CSV file

For reviews from anywhere else, the Import from CSV card takes a spreadsheet. There's a Download the template link right there — start from it and you can't get the format wrong.

The columns are:

Reviewer The customer's name, as you want it shown publicly.
Date The date of the review, like 01/15/2025.
Rating A number from 1 to 5.
Review What they wrote.
Product Optional — the product title to attach it to, matching the title on your site. Leave it blank for a general store review.

Upload the file, tick Publish imported reviews if you want them live straight away, and click Import CSV. Large files are processed in batches with a progress bar, so a few hundred reviews is no problem.

Fill in every Date. A row with a blank or unreadable date is imported dated today, which parks an old review at the top of your product page as though it were brand new. It happens quietly, with no warning — so check that column before you upload.
Star-only ratings don't import. Rows with a rating but no written text are skipped, and IndieMade tells you how many it passed over. This catches people out with Etsy exports in particular, where plenty of buyers leave stars and no words. If you want one of those on your site, add it by hand with + Add Review — that form lets you save a rating with no text. Rows missing most of their columns are dropped silently, so if your totals don't add up, look for short rows.

Where imported reviews land

Imported reviews keep their original date, and product pages show reviews newest first by that date — so a three-year-old Etsy review sorts as a three-year-old review rather than as something posted this morning, as long as the date came through.

Fixing reviews that came in unattached

Reviews imported without a product match aren't stuck that way. On the Reviews tab, tick the ones you want, choose Assign product to selected, and set the product.

That assigns the same product to everything you've ticked, so work through one product at a time: select all the reviews for your blue mug, assign the blue mug, then move on to the next.

Not sure where to start? Run the Etsy import first, see what landed unmatched, then fix those in batches. Email support@indiemade.com if an import doesn't look right — don't spend an afternoon fighting a spreadsheet.

See also: Product Reviews and Getting More Reviews.