How to Get More Product Reviews: 12 Levers, Ranked by Effort

What is the single highest-payoff lever?

Reducing submission friction. Every extra field, login wall, or page redirect between the ask and the submitted review costs you responses, and the losses compound. The highest-leverage version is an ask where the customer rates the product inside the email itself, with one tap, and lands on a page that already has their stars selected and only needs a sentence.

This is low effort to set up and it lifts volume more reliably than anything else on this list, which is why it sits at the top. Fix the path before you spend on incentives.

• Embed the star rating in the request email, so the first tap is the review.
• Drop the account requirement: collect reviews without a forced login.
• Pre-fill what you already know, the order and product, so the customer writes one sentence.
• Keep it on one page: no redirect, no second screen.

When should I send the review request?

Time the ask to arrival, not to checkout. A request that lands the day an order ships is premature, because the customer has nothing to say yet. Anchor the send to estimated delivery plus a short settling window, so the product is in hand and used at least once when the email arrives.

The right delay varies by category. A phone case can be reviewed in days; a mattress or a course needs weeks. Match the window to how long it honestly takes to form an opinion, and you will get fewer empty five-star shrugs and more specific reviews worth quoting.

Where should I ask: email, SMS, or on-site?

Use more than one channel, because each reaches a different slice of your customers. Email is the workhorse and carries the embedded rating well. SMS gets opened fast and suits a short post-delivery nudge, where you have consent for it. An on-site prompt on the account or order-status page catches repeat visitors who ignore inbox asks.

Do not blast all three at once. Lead with email, layer SMS for non-openers where you are permitted, and treat on-site as a quiet backstop rather than a fourth message.

• Email: the default ask, with the rating embedded.
• SMS: a short post-delivery nudge, only with consent.
• On-site: an account or order-status prompt for repeat visitors.

Do reminders actually work?

Yes, and they are underused. Most customers who will leave a review do not do it on the first ask; they meant to and forgot. A single, polite reminder a few days after the first request recovers a meaningful share of those non-responders for almost no extra effort.

Keep the sequence short and stop the moment someone reviews or opts out. One reminder is worth sending. A third and fourth chase turns a willing customer into an unsubscribe, so cap it and move on.

Should I offer an incentive for reviews?

Incentives lift volume, but they come with obligations, so they sit low on the effort-to-payoff ranking. A small discount or loyalty points for leaving a review will raise your response rate. The catch is that in the United States the FTC requires the incentive to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously, and you cannot condition the reward on the review being positive.

If you incentivise, reward the act of reviewing, not the sentiment, add a plain disclosure line, and never gate the perk behind a high star rating. Done within those limits, incentives are a legitimate volume lever. Done carelessly, they are a liability that can poison the trust the reviews were meant to build.

• Disclose the incentive clearly and conspicuously on the review and the ask.
• Reward submission, not a positive rating.
• Never withhold the perk for a low star rating.
• Keep the value modest, so it nudges rather than buys.

How do I get photo and video reviews?

Ask for them by name, at the moment of writing. A generic prompt yields text; a prompt that says "add a photo of it in your space" yields photos, because most customers will add one when invited and skip it when not. Make the upload optional and one tap, never a barrier to submitting the text.

Photo and video reviews carry more weight with shoppers and give you richer, more specific content. A modest incentive can tip more customers into adding media, subject to the same FTC disclosure rules as any other incentive.

Can I import reviews I already have?

Yes, and it is the fastest way to raise the count on day one. If you are switching apps or have reviews sitting in past emails, a CSV import or a platform migration brings your existing social proof onto the page without waiting for new requests to trickle in. It is a one-time lever, but a high one.

Getting the reviews onto the page is only half the job. Most review apps were built for the on-page shopper and stop there; getting those reviews readable, corroborated, and cited in search and AI answers is the gap BetterReviews is built to close. Volume earns the reviews. Visibility is what turns them into traffic.