Product Reviews
Reviews are the closest thing a small shop has to a friend vouching for it. IndieMade's review system collects them, keeps them honest, and gives you the tools to answer back — and it now does a great deal more than it used to.
Turning reviews on
In your dashboard go to Reviews, then the Settings tab. The switch at the top reads Reviews are off until you turn it on. It's the master switch — everything below stays greyed out until you flip it.
Under Display:
- Show reviews on product pages — reviews and star ratings appear on each product page.
- Show a public All Reviews page — adds a page to your site collecting every published review in one place, at
/reviews, and puts it in your site menu. - All Reviews page title — what that page is called. "What Buyers Say", "Kind Words" — your call. Leave it blank and it's called Testimonials.
What your customer goes through
Customers reach the review form two ways: a link in an email — an automatic reminder, one you send by hand, or your invite link — or simply by signing in and going to My Reviews in their account, where everything they can review is waiting for them.
The form asks for four things:
- Your rating — one to five stars, required. It starts pre-selected at five.
- In your own words — the review itself, prompted with "What did you love? What might you tell a friend who's considering it?" Required.
- Photos — optional. Up to 3 photos, PNG/JPG/GIF/WEBP, 5 MB each.
- Sign your review — a first name or nickname, shown publicly. Required.
Then they click Submit review. It appears on your storefront straight away — there's no moderation queue and nothing for you to approve.
In their account, customers see what's still Waiting on you and what they've already written under Your reviews. Once they've reviewed everything they bought, the page tells them they're all caught up.
Where reviews appear
On a product page, each review shows the star rating, the reviewer's name, the date, what they wrote, any photos they added, and your reply if you've written one. Newest reviews come first.
Your public All Reviews page shows the same reviews across every product, each one alongside the product it's about, so a visitor can browse your reputation as a whole.
The Reviews dashboard
Everything lives under Reviews in your dashboard, in four tabs — Reviews, Scheduled Reminders, Import, and Settings — with an + Add Review button always at the right.
On the main Reviews tab, a row of counts across the top shows your total and a count for each star rating; click any star to see only those. Alongside it you can:
- Search reviewer names, review text, and headlines.
- Sort by Newest first, Oldest first, Highest rating, or Lowest rating.
- Show 25 to 500 reviews per page.
Tick reviews to act on several at once: Publish selected, Unpublish selected, Assign product to selected, or Delete selected. Each row also has its own controls to publish, reply, edit, or delete that one review.
Adding a review yourself
The + Add Review button records a review that came to you some other way — an email, a note in a package, a comment at a craft fair. You choose the product (optional), the reviewer's name, the rating, the text, up to 3 photos, and the date to post it under, then Save Review.
The review text is optional here, so you can record a plain star rating with no words — useful when that's genuinely all someone gave you.
Replying to reviews
Answering a review — especially a critical one — is often more persuasive to the next shopper than the review itself. Your reply appears beneath the review on your storefront.
Open a review from the Reviews tab and you'll see it quoted back to you with a Your Reply box underneath. Post Reply publishes it. Come back later and that button reads Update Reply, with Remove Reply beside it if you'd rather take it down. There's no length limit — say what needs saying. Each review holds one reply, so posting a new one replaces the old.
In Settings under Owner replies, the Your name field sets the name shown on your replies. It defaults to your store name; change it to your own if you'd rather answer as a person than as a shop.
Know the moment a review lands
Under New review alerts, tick Email me when a customer leaves a review and IndieMade emails you as soon as one arrives. It always goes to you, the store owner — the address can't be pointed elsewhere. The subject tells you what you're walking into before you open it, for example New 5 Star review from Dana.
Next steps
- Getting more reviews — automatic reminders, asking one customer directly, and the invite link that reaches your whole customer list.
- Importing reviews — bring your Etsy reviews and any others across so your shop doesn't start from zero.